Loretta Chase - Regency Rogues and Rakes - Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares

She did a great deal he found intriguing—starting with the way she walked. She carried herself like a lady, like the women of his class, yet the sway of her hips promised something tantalisingly unladylike.

‘I married Marcelline knowing she’d never give up her work,’ Clevedon was saying. ‘If she did, she’d be like everyone else. She wouldn’t be the woman I fell in love with.’

‘Love,’ Longmore said. ‘Bad idea.’

Clevedon smiled. ‘One day Love will come along and knock you on your arse,’ he said. ‘And I’ll laugh myself sick, watching.’

‘Love will have its work cut out for it,’ Longmore said. ‘I’m not like you. I’m not sensitive. If Love wants to take hold of me, not only will it have to knock me on my arse, it’ll have to tie me down and beat to a pulp what some optimistically call my brains.’

‘Very possibly,’ Clevedon said. ‘Which will make it all the more amusing.’

LORETTA CHASEhas worked in academe, retail and the visual arts, as well as on the streets—as a meter maid (aka traffic warden)—and in video, as a scriptwriter. She might have developed an excitingly chequered career had her spouse not nagged her into writing fiction. Her bestselling historical romances, set in the Regency and Romantic eras of the early nineteenth century, have won a number of awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s RITA ®.

Website: www.LorettaChase.com.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was made possible by the support of: my insightful and inspiring editor, May Chen; my indefatigable agent, Nancy Yost; my witty and fashion-wise friend and blogging partner, Isabella Bradford, aka Susan Holloway Scott; my patient French adviser, Valerie Kerxhalli; my loyal, funny and crazy sisters, Cynthia, Vivian and Kathy; and, most especially, my brainy and brave husband, Walter, a hero every single day.

Observe his fierce, fighting-cock air; his coal-black gipsy curls; his aristocratic (not to call it arrogant) expression of countenance—never laid aside, whether he is smiling on a fair dame or frowning on a fawning dun.

—The Court Magazine,

“Sketches from Real Life,” 1835

London

Thursday 21 May 1835, early morning

The trollops knew how to throw a party.

On Wednesday nights, after dancing or playing cards with Society’s crème de la crème at Almack’s, London’s wilder set continued more eagerly to a very different assembly at the house of Carlotta O’Neill. On offer was a roulette table, along with other games of chance, as well as spicier games with the demireps who played ladies-in-waiting to London’s current queen of courtesans.

Harry Fairfax, Earl of Longmore, was on the scene, naturally.

Carlotta’s wasn’t the sort of place his father, the Marquess of Warford, would wish his twenty-seven-year-old son and heir to frequent, but heeding his parents’ wishes, Longmore had decided a long time ago, was the fast and easy route to murderous boredom.

He was nothing like his parents, on any count. He’d inherited not only his great-uncle Lord Nicholas Fairfax’s piratical looks—black hair, black eyes, and a tall, muscular physique usually associated with buccaneers—but Great-Uncle Nicholas’s talent for Doing What He Was Not Supposed To.

And so Lord Longmore was at Carlotta’s.

And she was draped over him, wafting waves of scent. And talking, unfortunately.

“But you’re intimately acquainted with them,” she was saying. “You must tell us what the new Duchess of Clevedon is really like.”

“Brunette,” he said, watching the roulette wheel spin. “Pretty. Says she’s English but acts French.”

“My dear, we could have found that out from the Spectacle. ”

Foxe’s Morning Spectacle was London’s premier scandal sheet. The high-principled Marquess of Warford called it disgusting tripe, but he read it, as did everyone else, from London’s bawds and pimps on up to the Royal Family. Every detail it published regarding the Duke of Clevedon’s new bride had, Longmore knew, been artfully crafted by the bride’s fair-haired sister Sophia Noirot, evil dressmaker by day and Tom Foxe’s premier spy by night.

Longmore wondered where she was this night. He hadn’t spotted her at Almack’s. Milliners—especially slightly French ones—had as much chance of receiving vouchers to Almack’s as he had of turning invisible at will. But Sophia Noirot had her own mode of invisibility, and she was perfectly capable of inserting her elegantly curved body anywhere she pleased, in the guise of a temporary servant. That was how she dug up so much dirt for Foxe’s scandal sheet.

The roulette wheel stopped spinning, one of the fellows at the table swore, and the wench acting as croupier raked a pile of counters in Longmore’s direction.

He scooped them up and handed them to Carlotta.

“Your winnings?” she said. “Do you want me to keep them safe for you?”

He laughed. “Yes, m’dear, keep them safe. Buy yourself a bauble or some such.”

Her well-groomed eyebrows went up.

Until a moment ago, when visions of Sophy Noirot sashayed into his mind, he’d assumed what Carlotta had assumed: that he’d soon disappear with her into her bedroom. She was supposed to be in Lord Gorrell’s keeping, but he, while rich enough, wasn’t quite lively enough to keep Carlotta fully amused.

Dependent on an allowance and gambling winnings, Longmore probably wasn’t rich enough. But while he didn’t doubt he possessed the necessary stamina and inventiveness to hold her interest, it occurred to him now that she wasn’t likely to hold his for more than five minutes. Even by his careless standards, that hardly justified a large financial investment and the subsequent tedium of listening to his father rant about overspent allowances.

In other words, Longmore was tired of her already.

Not too long after abandoning his winnings, he took his leave, along with two of his friends and two of Carlotta’s maids of honor. They found a hackney and after a short discussion, set out for a gaming hell with a very bad reputation, in the neighborhood of St. James’s. There, Longmore could count on a brawl.

Bored with the conversation inside the coach, he turned to gaze out of the window at the passing scene. The sun rose early at this time of year, and though the window was dirty, he could see well enough. A drably dressed female carrying a shabby basket was hurrying along the street. Her pace and dress, along with the basket, made it clear she wasn’t one of London’s numerous streetwalkers but an ordinary female on her way to work at about the time her betters in the beau monde were going home from their parties.

She moved at a fast clip, but it wasn’t fast enough. A figure darted out of an alley, grabbed her basket, and knocked her into the street.

Longmore stood, put down the window, opened the carriage door, and jumped out of the moving carriage, deaf to his companions’ shrieks and shouts. After the first stumble, he quickly gained his balance, and charged after the thief. His prey was fast, darting this way and that. At a busier time of day, he would have soon shed any pursuer. But the hour was early, and hardly anybody stood in Longmore’s way. He wasn’t thinking, only running, in a blind fury. When the fellow sprang into a narrow court, Longmore never thought of ambush or danger—not that he’d care, had he thought about it.