by Reid, Stacy
‘I daresay you should direct your thoughts to secure some happiness for yourself instead of meddling into my affairs,’ had been another of his caustic replies after she had scolded him most fiercely.
Some happiness for myself. What an intriguingly naughty notion.
Another glimpse of wicked gray eyes filled with tenderness and lust swam in her vision. A lump grew in her throat as those eyes in a flash turned dark with anger and distaste.
“The next topic on our agenda,” Jules, the Earl of Darby’s widow, said with a bright smile. “My very wicked masquerade party! I want our costumes to be wildly attractive…and shocking. And when they leave and speculate in the scandal sheets of our fast and wayward natures, it will be even more scandalous than last year’s headline.”
An event she arranged simply to shock her guardian—the powerful and intractable Lord Pembroke. How it irritated Julianna that as a widow, she still had someone who managed her money. As the youngest member of their group at three and twenty, she had lost her husband at nineteen to a fever only a few months after their marriage. Since then, she had been in a silent, rebellious war with the man who had swooped in to order her life until she was five and twenty. All manner of immorality became permissible at Julianna’s parties, and that had been calculated primarily with the aim of aggravating the very proper Marquess of Pembroke.
With merry laughs and brazen banter, the conversation shifted to Jules's most notorious and exclusive yearly party, one that many lords and ladies eagerly hoped they would receive an invitation to. Yet Amalie’s thoughts had been effectively fractured. What would it be like to lie beneath a man who had gained such delightful skills during his time abroad? What would it be liked to be stripped and splayed atop sheets, and teased with light touches and licks as how in his book he ordered husbands to prime their wives’ ‘cunnies’?
She was suddenly filled with a desperate longing that threatened to overwhelm her good sense. Amalie admitted to herself if she ever did drum up the courage to cross Max’s path, it would not be because her friends wished it…it would be to mend the friendship she had long despaired might never be repaired. It was perhaps a foolish expectation that had remained in her heart for too long. And even more alarming, wasn’t it Max Amalie dreamed about when the nights had been lonely? Just perhaps her friends’ suggestion was not so foolish after all. They had only nudged at the desires she had deep in her heart, pushing them to the surface with shocking intensity.
Oh, Max, how do I dare approach you?
Chapter 2
Only a few hours after meeting with her friends, Amalie handed over her cloak to the butler in the receiving line of the Countess of Rushworth’s midnight ball. She greeted Bess, who was adorned in the most charming rose-colored gown with a very revealing decolletage, as she reached her. They chatted while they made their way down the stairs leading to the heart of the ball. Lords and ladies twirled with elegant vigor across the dance floor to the sensual strains of a waltz. Chatter and laughter floated on the air, and the champagne flowed freely.
Yet no surge of excitement raced in her veins. Amalie recalled the very first time she’d been sent to London for her come-out at seventeen years of age, how dazzled and awed she’d been by everything. Only a mere eight years had passed, but it felt like a lifetime.
“So,” Bess said, leaning closer. “Have you given our suggestion any other thoughts?”
“I have.”
“And?” her friend demanded, with an arch of her brow.
“I might…seek a reintroduction,” she said with a smile, knowing she was being mysterious.
Bess gasped and grabbed her gloved hand. “A reintroduction? Whenever did you meet Lord Kentwood, and why am I just hearing about this?”
Amalie looped her hand around her friend’s arm, ignoring the gentlemen giving her inviting smiles. So many of them had approached her with their scandalous proposals over the years, and she had rebuffed all their advances to their great frustration. She’d then developed a reputation of being unattainable…but also as being an exciting and exacting lover. As the speculation grew more lurid so did their conquests, and so did her indifference to their ridiculous pursuit.
At first, it had been tolerably amusing, but this season, all Amalie experienced was tedium and that frightening feeling of being alone in the world. “I…I have told you, my dear, Bess, of that encounter with the man in my bedchamber five years ago,” she said, a flush heating her face.
Bess's eyes widened in stunned surprise. “It was Lord Kentwood?”
“Yes. But at the time, he was simply Mr. Maximilian Langdon. A friend…a boy…a boy I loved with my entire heart.” It took so much to admit that truth, and even more courage to look Bess in the eye when she grounded them to a halt.
“Oh, Amalie, I am so sorry. You must have been so devastated when he walked away without a word.”
She had told her friend the entirety of the situation which surrounded her dreadful scandal, but she’d never revealed that the man in her room had been Max. “I suspect you’ve agreed with Jules, Thea, and Melinda that I should seduce the earl because of my slip of the tongue last week.” She took a deep breath. “I love you for thinking of me, Bess, and I admit it, I am frightfully lonely, terribly bored, and disenchanted with the frivolities of the season.” And perhaps life in general. Just as she had been last season, and the one before.
Despite supporting several charities and indulging in rousing hobbies—archery competitions, fishing, and painting—something was missing, and frustratingly she could not identify what she needed to fill that emptiness. The relationship with her parents were strained with little hopes of it being mended. Marriage was long off the cards for her, and she did not long for the state because Amalie understood the challenges of her situation. No gentleman worth his weight in wealth, connections, and standing would ask a woman with her tarnished reputation to be his wife.
Her well-meaning friends had encouraged her for years to select a lover from the suitable gentlemen of the ton. Many widows had such arrangements, including her friends. Though each entered an affaire de coeur for different reasons—including missing remembered pleasure, loneliness, and the need for financial security.
“I’ve known Max…Lord Kentwood has been back in town for a few months now, and I’ve been avoiding the events I thought he chose to attend.”
“Nonsense,” Bess said, her eyes flashing. “You should have told me before.”
“Perhaps,” she said, squeezing her friend’s hand slightly. “But I do believe I will seek to rekindle a friendship.”
There…she’d said it! A clash of raw fear and excitement filled her veins, the duality of the conflicting emotions making her heart pound. “One with kisses, perhaps…” she murmured on a light laugh.
At that moment, a ripple of gossip went through the crowd, and she turned to see the very devil they spoke of descending the stairs with Countess Rushworth’s son George, Viscount Bramwell. It was a rare occasion when one of that pair was mentioned in the scandal sheets without the other also being mentioned. Amalie idly wondered when Max had become as thick as thieves with the Viscount.
“Oh my,” Bess murmured admiringly, “He is quite handsome, isn’t he? And so frightfully appealing with all his knowledge of bed play!”
And it was that awareness of his alleged skills that had many women unfurling their fans and using them quite vigorously. Society had labeled him a Casanova and, from the ingénue to the most experienced courtesan, everyone in the ballroom seemed to want to slide between the sheets with the man!
His clothes were faultlessly tailored to his lean, graceful physique, and he cut quite a dashing figure in his black trousers, well-fitted matching jacket, and an exquisitely designed blue waistcoat. Midnight black hair complimented his lean, strong features, even Amalie had to admit he was a strikingly handsome man.
He was the sort of man any young lady of virtue should stay away from, but Lady Emily deliberately dropped he
r lace handkerchief as he approached.
She tittered and batted her lovely lashes at him when he picked it up and handed it to her. He held enormous appeal to the ladies because here was a man who thought wives should be pleasured…that such adventures should not be restricted to mistresses alone.
Max made the rounds, many ladies shamelessly approached the earl, and he seemed to indulge each one. Yet she could not tell from his expression whether he particularly enjoyed the attention or if he was bored. His expression was carefully neutral, and it occurred to her Lord Kentwood was merely being polite.
“Will you go to him?” Bess asked softly.
“There is a bevy of ladies around him,” she said with an astonished laugh. “Even the men are waylaying him. I cannot credit it.”
Bess leaned in closer. “I think perhaps his book is working for many. I’ve heard that Lady Shelton and her husband have been on very good terms of late, and he even gave his mistress of six years the boot! The rumors also say he is not looking to replace that mistress but devoted his romantic efforts towards his wife. How utterly delightful I think it all is!”
This was said so wistfully, Amalie tore her gaze from the man and directed her attention to her friend.
“Bess,” Amalie began tentatively. “Do you not…derive pleasure from your time with Lord Deveraux?”
Her friend’s current protector did seem a bit cold and aloof, but the fact the man pursued passion with a mistress, she expected him to thaw when he took his lover into his arms. Bess had been with him now for six months, and Amalie thought her friend happy with Lord Deveraux.
A frightful blush engulfed Bess’s entire body, and she sucked in a harsh breath. “We will not talk of that here!”
She flicked open her fan and wafted it with some energy. “I see Jules sneaking away into the gardens. I have some questions about this year's masquerade party. Try to think about how you’ll gain Lord Kentwood’s attention when every single female in London seems determined to be the man’s next lover.”
Then she darted through the thick of the crowd before Amalie could fashion a suitable reply. With a sigh, she glanced around, and her intense observation of the ballroom revealed Max and his friend were nowhere to be seen. Approaching him would have to wait until she could get him alone.
Do I really dare approach him?
* * *
“I beg your pardon!” George, Viscount Bramwell said, his expression creased in shock. Even his brown eyes seemed glazed as if he’d consumed too many drinks, but Max knew the glass in his hand was his first of the evening. “You said you’re what?” the words exploded from George on a sharp and very uncharacteristic gasp.
Maximilian Langdon, Lord Kentwood—Max to his close friends and family—scowled at his friend’s ill-concealed astonishment. He drummed his fingers on the thick pad of the wingback chair on which he sat, wresting his gaze from George’s slack-jawed countenance. Max tipped his head to the ceiling, wondering if he was doing the right thing in taking his friend into his confidence.
Max had determined to procure himself a lover and had thought his friend, who seemed a true Lothario, could offer him some wise advice. It was laughable really, the entire ton believed that he was so bloody brilliant at bedsport, and ladies flocked to him in droves, but he was uncertain exactly what to do to entice one to be his lover. Did it start with artful conversations or illicit touches? Did he truly even want a woman? Yet, there was a nameless hunger inside him, and to Max’s mind, he’d had everything but someone to touch, hold, kiss, and love.
“You heard me,” he said, not liking that his heart twisted a bit or that a heavy, uncomfortable feeling pressed against his stomach.
“I did not,” George muttered, emptying his glass of brandy in a long swallow, grabbing the decanter on his desk and quickly refilling his glass. “I could not have heard my best friend, and one of London’s most sought-after lover said that he’d…” George choked on a pained gasp. “I truly cannot say it! It’s blasphemous.”
“I’m a virgin,” Max said dryly, sipping his own brandy.
“A virgin,” George said faintly. “As in a person who has never had sexual relations with a woman or a man?”
Max calmly sipped his brandy. “Yes.”
His friend narrowed his gaze, thoughtful. “Is this another one of Simon’s outlandish pranks, and you are actually going along with it?”
“Good God, man, don’t be an arse, what need do I have to pretend I’ve never tupped a woman?”
George’s jaw slackened and he sucked in a harsh breath. “Is it a man—”
“For fuck’s sake!” Max snapped, surging to his feet, sudden restless energy burning through him. “I am not attracted to my own sex. But be that as it may, I’ve never had a lover.”
Something in his voice must have finally reached his friend because George now stared at Max in wonderment.
“Is it a religious thing?”
“No.”
“You made a vow of chastity to someone you love?”
“No.”
“But you are seven and twenty.”
“I am aware of it.”
Max groaned and closed his eyes in defeat. “Forget I mentioned it,” he said flatly, knocking back his drink in one fiery swallow. “I cannot endure any more of your idiotic reactions.”
“Very well,” George said on an irritated grunt. “I believe you. Do you know that if this should come out, you’ll be the laughingstock of all of London? I am certain the scandal would even reach the Continent.”
Max smiled. “You are being overly dramatic. I only informed you because I am thinking to finally find myself a lover.”
Relief lit in George’s eyes. “Thank Christ!”
Something else seemed to occur to the viscount, and he clearly grappled with voicing whatever it was.
Max sighed. “What is it, George?”
“You wrote the book. Wait…it was you who wrote it, correct?”
“Yes, it was me,” he replied with some level of exasperation. If his good friend responded in such a manner, Max couldn’t fathom how Society would behave. Though whenever he dwelled on their possible reaction, he realized he did not truly care to ponder on the fickleness of their nature.
If he had dreamed that he would have become the earl, perhaps he wouldn’t have written that damn book. That bloody book! A moment of madness where he’d boasted to his friends that all women were carnal creatures, and it was foolish beyond belief to treat a wife differently than a mistress between the sheets. What had started as a dare, had become the bane of Max’s existence.
In the distance, he heard the muted clicks of champagne glasses, the strings of the orchestra as they played a waltz, and the merry laughter and chatting. A ball should be good fun, but he could not bear the idea of returning to the fray. Since his arrival in the crush he’d deflected three Society ladies who allowed their fingers to linger on the lapel of his jacket. The most daring one, a friend of the countess’s had given him several come-hither smiles, but the suggestive lick of her lips left him cold, and he was thoroughly annoyed with himself. For what felt like the hundredth time, he questioned his decision in taking a lover when he had such little interest in the women who had been inviting him to their beds.
The conversation he recalled a few months ago with George and a couple other friends in this very room, resurrected itself in his thoughts.
“Wives are biddable, passionless creatures,” Simon, Lord Cornick, had cried. “I should know…I’ve been a married man for three years!”
“This book will be a failure,” another had groused.
“I think,” George had said, “Many gentlemen will, of course, purchase it, out of pure unchecked curiosity, but none would try the adventurous positions with their wives. Gentle ladies were not made to feel such wanton pleasures.”
“Yes, they are,” Max had refuted. “Every indecent tup you give your mistress you can give your wife, and every careful kiss and caress granted to y
our wife can be given to your mistress!”
“Say it isn’t so, man!” Lord Benoit had exclaimed. “I am married, and I love my darling Laura, but I could never mortify her with my rough needs and desires. That I must reserve for my mistress.”
Max had scoffed. “Do your mistress and wife not have the same anatomical form? The same breasts, belly, and quim? Do they both possess a clitoris and erogenous zones?”
They had stared at him in contemplative silence.
“Yes,” George had said, “But surely they possess different sensibilities, and that surely must be foremost in our consideration when we take them to bed.”
“You are daft,” Max had scoffed. “I will write out everything I’ve learned in my travels, and you shall see!”
“We dare you!” They replied in unison.
After that conversation, he had marched to the publisher and within a few weeks, his book had been published. It had not gone out under his real name of course, but even that minor subterfuge had been seen through and he had been embarrassingly identified as the author. The wave that had followed him for the past ten months, he’d never imagined possible. He kept waiting for the furor to die down, but no one seemed of the mind to simply purchase a copy, read it, and move along. No, they wanted to discuss it further, asked for more pointers, or congratulate him on his marvelous breakthrough! And that damn publisher kept printing and advertising, gleeful at the amount of money it made them both, not that he himself needed it.
George rubbed his hands together, a bit too excitedly for Max’s liking.
“So, you want a lover or two to warm your bed.”
Or maybe something more permanent, he mused. Max hadn’t always been the earl. No, his father had been the third brother of a most illustrious family, who had disappointed his family by marrying a daughter of the landed gentry, well beneath their notice. Still, the family had accepted Max’s mother after some time, and he and his sisters had never been strangers to the life of elegancies amongst the ton. His mother had enjoyed the immense connection of being the wife of the son of an earl. Even if he was the third son.