Miranda Jarrett - Seduction of an English Beauty

Wicked, heathen…and untamed.

She set the tumbler with the barely touched orange-water onto a nearby ledge, the heavy glass clicking against the stone. “Forgive me, Lord Edward, but I should like to return to the others now.”

“Of course.” He held his arm out to her, and when she took the crook of it, he laid his hand protectively over hers. “Whatever you wish, my lady.”

But what she wished for most was not in Lord Edward’s power to give.

“Wake up, Edward.” Reverend Lord Henry Patterson yanked the bed curtains open, the brass rings jangling mercilessly across the rod as the late-morning sun burst across Edward’s face. “We must talk.”

But Edward didn’t want to talk. He didn’t even want to open his eyes. He wanted to slip back into blissful unconsciousness, where he could forget the queasiness in his belly and the thickness of his tongue and the way that blasted sunlight seemed to pierce right into his blasted aching skull to find whatever poison remained of that blasted Roman wine.

“Edward, enough.” Impatiently his uncle smacked Edward’s leg with his newspaper. “The day is half gone, and you’ve yet to drag your drunken carcass from this bed.”

“I’m not drunk, Uncle,” Edward protested weakly, burrowing against his pillow to defend himself from the sunlight. “I’d be much happier if I were.”

“Now that’s a proper attitude for a Warwick man, isn’t it?” Uncle Henry’s disgust was as sharp as that sunlight. “No wonder my sister despairs so, cursed with a worthless son like you.”

Edward groaned against the pillow. He could make an excellent argument for his being cursed with a shrill, meddlesome mother, too, but not right at this moment.

“Get up, Edward!”

The water that splashed over Edward’s face seemed enough to drown him, and he jerked upright, sputtering and gasping for air to save himself.

“Oh, quit your complaining, Nephew,” his uncle ordered, the empty pitcher from the washstand still in his hands. “What do you think Lady Diana would say if she could see you now?”

“She’d say you were a damned wicked old bastard to treat me so.” Edward squinted at his uncle as he blotted the water from his face with the sheet. “She’d be right, too.”

“What she’d say is that you’re a lazy sluggard with no respect for your elders.” Uncle Henry pulled a chair close to the bed, flipped the tails of his coat to one side, and perched on the edge of the seat. “While you’ve been snoring away your wine, I’ve been to the consulate this morning. I’ve made a few inquiries, and on your behalf, too. Lady Diana Farren is indeed Aston’s daughter, exactly as she and the governess have claimed. They’d letters of introduction so grand that there was no doubt of it. But of greater interest to you, however, is that she’ll bring £20,000 a year to whichever lucky gentleman claims her hand.”

“Twenty thousand?” That was enough to clear anyone’s head. Edward swung his legs over the side of the bed, ready to hear more. “A pretty penny by any reckoning.”

His uncle nodded, patting his pockets until he found his pipe, and the tinderbox with it. “You’ll never have a sweeter plum drop into your undeserving lap, Edward. And you’ll have none of the competition here in Rome that you would back in London.”

“That’s precious hard.” Edward scowled, his pride wounded by the unfortunate truth. “You’ve seen how Lady Diana looks at me. I’d venture she’s rather fond of me already.”

“Perhaps.” His skepticism obvious, Uncle Henry thrust the stem of his pipe into his mouth. “Though you haven’t had much luck with ladies before this, have you?”

“I haven’t been trying, that’s all,” Edward said defensively, running his fingers back through his bed-flattened hair. This was a difficult enough conversation without having to conduct it in his nightshirt, rank with last night’s excesses. “Those smug overbred London bitches—they’re not easy on a man, you know. They’ll cut you off at the knees as soon as look at you.”

“Don’t try to bluff me, Edward,” Uncle Henry said sternly as he concentrated on lighting his pipe, puffing furiously until the tobacco finally sparked. “I know your situation, and why your poor widowed mother put you into my safekeeping here in Italy, away from the bailiff’s reach. You’ve squandered what little inheritance you had on kickshaw schemes.”

“They were legitimate investments in inventions with great promise.” There’d been a sure-fire method for converting wood into coal, a proposal for a wagon-tunnel from Dover to Calais, a way to turn brass into true gold: all that had been wanting had been a cagey investor, capable of the vision to see the potential. How he loved to listen to the scientific gentlemen explain their genius, and how, after a suitable investment, they’d all become rich as Croesus without a day of ungentlemanly toil on his part!

“Such ventures offer enormous opportunity for those clever enough to see it, Uncle,” he continued. “It’s hardly my fault that my funds weren’t sufficient to see the projects through to fruition and profit.”

“Tossing good money after bad into the ocean is more the case,” his uncle said with contempt. “You’ve scarce a farthing left to your name, Edward. You might as well have lost it all at cards or dice for the good it’s done you. There’s only one venture left open for you now. You must marry soon, and marry well. Otherwise you’ll be doomed to keeping yourself by the gaming tables in Calais, or saddling yourself with some thick-ankled coal heiress from the north.”

“I know, Uncle, I know,” Edward said with frustration. Blast, but he was still a young man, and as such he’d hoped to sow a few more wild oats here in Italy before he had to play the docile husband. This was his mother’s idea, of course. She might be three countries away, but he could feel her tentacles reaching out to control him through his uncle, just as she had in London.

But twenty thousand a year would change everything. Twenty thousand, and marrying into the exalted family of the Duke of Aston. Of course he’d have to bow to the traces in the beginning, but once he could pack Diana off to the country to breed like every other noble wife, then he could begin living his life the way a gentleman should. He’d finally have the funds to back his favorite ventures, and see them made real. Let the others invest in old-fashioned plans like fur-trading in Canada, or tea from the Indies. He’d make more than the rest combined, and be lauded as a visionary, too.

And Diana Farren wasn’t some coarsely bred heiress, either. She would make a first-rate wife, the kind of filly that other men would envy. Delighted by such a glorious prospect, he reached for the wine bottle—ah, Virgil’s own inspiration!—that he’d left beside his bed last night.

“No more of that,” his uncle snapped, reaching out to rap Edward across the wrist. “Tell me instead how far you’ve proceeded with the lady.”

“I’ve treated her as her rank deserved,” Edward declared. He’d planned to kiss Lady Diana last night at the Coliseum, but by the time he’d brought her that blasted orange-water, she’d turned odd towards him, and he’d lost his nerve. Beautiful women did that to him, and Lady Diana was very, very beautiful. “You can’t fault me there. I’ve done nothing but blow her the usual puffery about admiration and respect.”

“Then perhaps it’s time you did a bit more,” his uncle advised. “She’s a lady, yes, but she’s also a woman. Women like having a man behave as the master, so long as it is decently done.”

“Uncle, I’ve known her less than a week!”

“Twenty thousand pounds are at stake, nephew, twenty thousand that you could sorely use,” Uncle Henry said through the wreaths of pipe smoke drifting about his face. “You can’t expect to live out your life on my generosity, you know. My regard for your poor mother will go only so far.”