Forever Yours Box Set 3

by Stacy Reid

  The widowed baroness tossed her impeccably coiffed head, her lips forming a moue of displeasure. “I am without my dear Archibald because he decided that when he married, he would be faithful to his wife. He said after reading that book, he was certain he would not need a mistress, and that his lady wife would surely fulfill all his needs. If men are to start thinking such an unlikely thing, where would that leave us widows who are no longer interested in marriage but long for the freedom to have a lover at our beck and call?”

  Amalie lowered her wine glass to the long French rococo table with a clink. “I hardly think it should matter that your lord has decided not to continue keeping you after he married, Melinda. When we founded our club and reveled in our wicked ways together, we had all agreed never to take a lover who is already married or try to keep up with him if he then takes a wife. When we were married, our lords had mistresses, and we did not like it. Did you forget that, darling?” she gently asked.

  Melinda’s lower lip trembled, and it was with an evident effort she contained her emotions. “I did not forget it,” she said, swallowing, her light blue eyes smarting with tears.

  She patted her elegant coiffure, knowing very well not a strand of her blonde hair was out of place. Melinda lowered her hands and folded them in her lap, lifting her chin to meet her friends' gazes “But I had hoped…I had ardently hoped that he would marry me.”

  A hushed silence fell over their small gathering. Oh, Melinda.

  She lifted her chin bravely. “But Archibald now believes he does not need me. That damnable book has led him to believe that a debutante would satisfy his carnal needs. How odiously silly! How can a woman of priggish manners and inexperience satisfy him in ways that I cannot?”

  With an irritated huff she stood and made her way to the sideboard to pour brandy into a glass.

  Amalie sipped her wine. “Well, I hardly need to seduce the author of A Guide to Passionate Romps between a Lord and his Lady. If such a concern truly matters, we only need to read the book to see what he suggests…and do it!”

  Melinda swallowed the content of her glass in a long, unladylike swallow. “I’ve read it, and I daresay there is nothing there that I’ve not done with my Archibald. Nothing.” This bit was said on the saddest of sighs and a rueful twist of her lush mouth. “I really thought…he would have married me but it seems that the scandal which hovers around my name will remain forever.”

  One of the things that had drawn them together a few years ago was that Society had not forgiven them for perceived infractions. Whatever scandal had touched them in the past had lingered like stubborn dirt on pristine white gloves.

  The ton was a world of glamorous elegance and lavish extravagance, but an ugly fickleness and an unforgiving nature lingered within its belly. All of her friends had some scandal attached to their names, and they had formed a lovely group to support each other. They had created genuine friendships that had helped them weather so much together.

  Amalie sighed. What the book actually did was give men permission to treat their wives as they would like to treat their mistresses. Most people of the ton thought it the most indelicate and scandalous piece of advice. She thought it rather…romantic.

  Very sweet and romantic.

  It was clear to her the author believed in fidelity and perhaps love, for he had been very verbose and artful in his descriptions to his fellow Lords of the wicked romps they could have with their wives. Sensual plays and overtures that would nullify the need for another woman to keep them satisfied. Of course, it had shocked, titillated…and intrigued the jaded senses of the lords and ladies within Society, for many believed wives were delicate creatures, and men’s baser needs should be satisfied between the legs of more passionate women—whores and mistresses. Genteel wives were not built to satiate men’s baser urges.

  Utter rubbish, of course.

  She waved her hands in a dismissive gesture. “I hardly think a man who is such an avid supporter of good relations between a man and his wife would be interested in a mistress,” Amalie said. “He’s been the new Lord Kentwood nigh on seven months, and the only rumors surrounding his name are that he was the author of that wicked book.”

  Bess sipped her wine, deviltry sparkling in her hazel eyes, and murmured, “Perhaps not a mistress, a woman he would support, but perhaps a lover then, dearest. You are a woman of financial independence; you do not need a man to keep you. But you do need one to warm your bed,” she drawled provocatively. “How long has it been, five years?”

  Amalie’s heart hammered against her breastbone. More. A flash of heat seared her as the memory of delicate fingers rubbing firmly over the aching flesh between her legs. He hadn’t touched her bare flesh…but had caressed her through the material of her nightgown and drawers, making her so mortifyingly wet. How she had quaked and trembled before that elusive sensation had drifted away.

  That man… a boy she had fallen in love with had been the only one to ever awaken her body to pleasure, even if it had been unfulfilled. And that boy had transformed himself from the carefree and charming young man she had known to the enigmatic Earl of Kentwood.

  Oh, Max. She closed her eyes briefly, hating to recall the fury and disgust which had been in his eyes the last time they had seen each other. Even if she wanted to rekindle a friendship with him—reminiscent of the precious one they had formed years ago—he had changed. She couldn’t expect him to be that same amiable, good-humored, and obliging boy. And perhaps she too was different. Amalie did not see that shy, naïve girl in the woman who stared back at her in the mirror anymore. She did not see the silly girl who had longed to dance all night at balls or stroll in the gardens with a beau under the stars hoping for a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “I shall think on it,” Amalie said with a bright smile that did not fool her friends one bit.

  “Please do more than think on it,” said Carlotta, the widow of a naval captain. That had been her great scandal, daring to run off with the captain even though she was the daughter of a duke, and much more had been expected of her.

  The mighty and exquisitely beautiful Lady Carlotta has fallen…into the mud with a Navy man. That had been the first screaming headline that had condemned her choices and reputation.

  Carlotta pushed back a few wisps of her silver-blonde hair behind her ear, her dark green eyes glowing with surprising worry. “While we’ve all bought the earl’s book, being close to the source of such knowledge would be invaluable. Bess, Julianna, and I have lovers who…who I daresay we’ve fallen in love with despite our resolve to keep our hearts protected. It is not wrong for us to want to know everything about how to keep them satisfied and by our sides. Hopefully despite our mishaps they would make offers.”

  “It isn’t wrong,” Amalie whispered, her heart breaking for her friends.

  Few men in Society would marry a widow when they were perfectly suitable to be mistresses. Especially widows who had not shown these gentlemen that their greatest asset as Society dictated—their wombs—had born fruit, and with damning scandals permanently affixed to their reputations.

  Except for Bess, who had the most darling six-year-old daughter, no one else in their merry and wicked band of friends had any children. They were under thirty years of age and were likely to remain unmarried. Amalie had come to realize not all her friends craved to maintain the independence their widowhood permitted. There was still that crushing need for a family…children of their own, a love that could weather any storm. And that need now glowed from Melinda and Carlotta. Even Julianna seemed a bit wistful.

  And what do I want?

  Amalie had lovely financial independence. Her departed husband of a little over five years had left her with a considerable jointure of five thousand a year, an unentailed townhouse in Berkley square, a carriage and horses, a phaeton, and even a modest but beautifully situated charming ten-bedroom cottage in Derbyshire.

  Despite the scandal which had surrounded her at her husband’s death, she maintai
ned a close relationship with his son—the new Lord Weatherston, who had been tearing up the town with his rakehell ways. The man had declared to her some months ago that he had no intention of settling to domestic bliss at the age of one and thirty.

  ‘Don’t you agree, Stepmother,’ he had mockingly called her, knowing her full well to be six years younger than him. But what she liked and admired about James was that despite his proclivities for gambling and women, he managed his estates rather well, and had a golden touch with investments.

  But he did not have a favorable reputation himself. A rumor had been circulating in the ton that he had ruined a debutante. James had been seen kissing the girl, most passionately, but had not presented himself to make an offer of marriage.

  ‘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 a
ppealing 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 her 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!”