Marguerite Kaye - Rumours that Ruined a Lady

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Marguerite Kaye - Rumours that Ruined a Lady» — ознакомительный отрывок электронной книги совершенно бесплатно, а после прочтения отрывка купить полную версию. В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: unrecognised, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Rumours that Ruined a Lady: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Rumours that Ruined a Lady»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Amongst the gossip-hungry, no name has become more synonymous with sin than that of Lady Caroline Rider. Cast out by her husband and disowned by her family, rumour has it that the infamous ‘Caro’ is now seeking oblivion in the opium dens of London!There’s only one man who can save her – notorious rake Sebastian Conway, Marquis of Ardhallow.With Caro installed in his country home, warming his bed, their passion may not be enough to protect them once news of their scandalous arrangement breaks out…

Rumours that Ruined a Lady — читать онлайн ознакомительный отрывок

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Rumours that Ruined a Lady», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

I’d like to thank my editor Flo for her enthusiasm and support, without which I think I might just have given up on Sebastian and Caro. I’d also like to thank Alison L for suggesting Lady Jane’s biography to me, and for coming up with Hamilton Palace as the model for Crag Hall. And finally I’d like to thank all my Facebook friends, for all your suggestions and encouragement during the writing of this book. You helped get me there in the end!

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Chapter One

London—August 1830

Sebastian Conway, Marquis of Ardhallow, glanced wearily at his watch before returning it to his fob pocket. Just gone midnight. Ye Gods was that all! He’d expected the evening to be substantially more entertaining, especially since this house had a reputation for hosting the raciest parties on the ton’s social circuit.

The recent death of King George the Fourth having caused many social gatherings to be cancelled, there was a very healthy turnout at this one. The relative earliness of the hour meant that the veneer of respectability cloaking the main salon was still more or less intact. The ladies sat clustered in small groups, idly swapping gossip, artfully posed to display their ample charms. Their gowns cut fashionably but daringly, they comprised the so-called fast set, women long-enough married to have done their duty by their husbands, who therefore considered themselves to have earned the right to conduct the kind of discreet affaire which frequently both began and ended at a party such as this. On the other side of the room the gentlemen gathered, sipping claret and appraising their quarry with a practised eye. The air crackled with sexual tension. Everything was the same, just exactly as he remembered, and none of it interested him one whit.

Sebastian exited the drawing room. In the adjoining salon, for those eager to lose their wealth rather than their reputation, card tables had been set up. The play was deep and the drinking which accompanied it deeper still, but he had never been interested in games of chance. Out of curiosity he made his way to a room at the back of the house which had been the subject of salacious rumour.

The chamber was dimly lit, the windows heavily shrouded. He paused on the threshold. The atmosphere inside was thick with a sweet pungent smell which hung like incense in the air. Opium. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he could make out several prone figures lying on divans, some lost in the dream-like state induced by smoking the drug, others clutching their pipes to their mouths, eyes glazed, attention focused inwards.

The room had been decorated in the Eastern manner, strewn with low divans, the rich carpets covered in jewelled and fringed cushions of silk and velvet. He had seen numerous such places on his travels and his own, single, experience of the drug in Constantinople had been, on the whole, pleasant. His dreams had been highly sensual, heightening the pleasure of the release he sought afterwards in the adjoining seraglio. He knew that others endured waking nightmares and grotesque hallucinations while under its influence, or suffered shivering sweats in the aftermath, and so counted himself fortunate. Perhaps if he indulged tonight, it would make one of the beauties so patently on offer in the salon more tempting.

A low, grumbling objection from one of the smokers reminded him that he was still holding the door ajar. Closing it softly behind him, he leaned against the oak panelling and scanned the room. In the centre, a low inlaid table held the complex paraphernalia required to vaporise the opium. A selection of bamboo pipes with their bowls and saddles were set out on a lacquered tray beside several opium lamps. Scrapers, scoops and tapers were scattered across the table, and the drawers of the little cabinet which contained the opium itself were askew. His host, that most flamboyant and failed of poets, Augustus St John Marne, had married an heiress, he now recalled. It must be she who was funding her husband’s hobby, which was like to be very expensive, especially since he was supplying his guests’ requirements so generously.

The poet wafted into the room at that very moment, waving distractedly at Sebastian. St John Marne was a wraith-like figure who had in his youth, if one were to believe the gossip, had the ladies swooning over his beauty and the breathless romance of his verse. A few of the other faces in the room were frighteningly familiar, men he had known all his life. Rich, titled, dissolute and purposeless, they looked much older and more jaded than their years, though many were the same age as he.

Slightly sickened by this realisation, Sebastian deciding against partaking of the drug and was turning to leave when a long tress of hair caught his attention, stopping him in his tracks. It was far too long to belong to any man. The colour, that of burnished copper, made his heart freeze for one long, terrible moment. He had never known another with hair that precise colour, but she would surely not frequent a place such as this.

The woman was lying with her back to the door, her figure obscured under a swathe of shawls and embroidered throws. It wasn’t her, and even if it was, he had sworn he would have nothing to do with her ever again. If she chose to make herself insensible with opium, it was none of his business.

Thus spoke his head. Sebastian’s feet were already moving of their own accord towards the divan, his heart thudding hard and fast in his chest, his skin suddenly clammy with sweat. If it was indeed her, and he simply couldn’t bring himself to believe it was, then the wisest thing he could do would be to turn around and leave forthwith.

Now!

He leant over the divan and roughly pulled back the covering from the comatose woman’s body. She did not stir. Sebastian swore heavily, reeling with shock. He barely recognised her. Thin, painfully so, under the emerald gown which hung loosely around her, the only sign of life was the pulse fluttering under the fragile skin at her temple. He cursed again. Her eyes were closed. Wisps of copper hair clung to her high forehead, which had a glistening sheen of perspiration. Her hand, when he touched it, was clammy. The skin which had once been so milky-white was ashen. Her cheekbones were too prominent, flushed not with health but fever. Her mouth, whose sensual, teasing smile he had once found irresistible, was drawn into a tight grimace. Beneath her lids, her eyes fluttered. Her hand gripped him like a claw and she moaned, a tiny, hoarse sound of protest against the opium-induced hallucination she was experiencing. Hers had always been the kind of beauty which reflected her mood, sometimes in full bloom, at others so withdrawn into itself as to make her look quite plain. Now, she looked more like a cadaver than a living, breathing woman.

Scarcely-breathing woman, Sebastian corrected himself as he bent his head towards her face. Her breath was the merest whisper upon his cheek. What had happened to her? The woman he knew was so strong, so full of life, so vibrant. She had been patently unhappy when last they met, but this stupor went way beyond the seeking of painless escape. What had befallen her to make her so careless of her life?

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Rumours that Ruined a Lady»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Rumours that Ruined a Lady» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Rumours that Ruined a Lady»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Rumours that Ruined a Lady» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x