Seducing the Single Lady

by Maya Rodale

  “Shhh….”

  Frannie approached them slowly, carefully holding in each hand a mug full to the brim of ale, with some of the amber liquid spilling over and sliding down the length of the glass.

  “Here’s your ale,” she said, pushing the glass across the bar. As Susannah reached for it—eagerly, for she was surprisingly parched from that morning’s hard ride—their fingers brushed.

  Frannie’s cheeks turned pink. Susannah’s did too, she was sure of it, for the novelty and strangeness of the situation overwhelmed her. She was used to practiced rakes and hardened flirts with their carefully crafted compliments. Frannie’s innocent interest in Susannah was such a sweet contrast. Complicating matters was the girl’s angelic beauty, which drew second glances from men and women alike.

  “I haven’t seen you ‘round here before,” Frannie said. By you she clearly meant Susannah. Damien, ignored by the girls, stood to the side, sipped his ale and watched their awkward conversation with a bemused smile.

  “It’s my first time here,” Susannah said.

  “Travel far?”

  “A few miles,” she replied. She had no idea where she was, actually.

  “What brings you this way?”

  At this Susannah grinned and leaned across the bar. “Adventure,” she whispered.

  “I’d love to have an adventure,” Frannie said wistfully. It was a sentiment Susannah recognized.

  “It is my understanding that young ladies don’t have nearly enough of them,” Susannah said, thinking it sounded like something Damien or any other man might say.

  “Isn’t that the truth! What a nice change to have a man who understands,” Frannie said. “My brother Angus is a big old lummox…he says all the adventure I need is right here, serving beer and meat pies. What a dolt. I swear our mama must have dropped him as a babe.”

  Her adorable vehemence made Susannah laugh, which made Frannie blush.

  Then Damien cut into their conversation. “Speaking of meat pies…might you bring us a few?”

  “I’d be happy to,” Frannie said, before disappearing into the kitchens.

  “It seems you have a sweetheart,” Damien remarked.

  “She’s lovely, isn’t she? Her heart will be broken if she should learn the truth about me and I would hate to make her sad.”

  “We’ll have to call you something else then. Susannah is hardly a boy’s name.”

  “Xavier,” she said spontaneously. “Call me Xavier. It sounds so dashing.”

  “It sounds ridiculous,” Damien said flatly.

  “How about Peregrine?” Susannah suggested. She could see herself as a Peregrine.

  Damien indulged in another long look at her. Every time it affected her strangely. Every time!

  “Percy could suit you,” he said finally.

  “Peregrine Xavier Grey,” Susannah said slowly, her lips curving into a smile. “I daresay I like it.”

  Damien half laughed, half groaned. “Why do I feel that I’ll be receiving missives from you signed Percy?”

  Just yesterday, or even hours ago, Susannah would have replied that there could be no reason for them to have a correspondence and he needn’t expect any missives from her signed Percy or otherwise. The words were there on the tip of her tongue, ready to be spoken, but she bit them back because she no longer meant them at all.

  Funny, what a change had occurred within just a few hours! As if in her corsets, gowns and jewels she were the imperious and haughty Miss Grey who lived only to enjoy and preserve her liberty to live as she wished.

  But in breeches, with a mug of ale in hand, she was Percy, a young lad engaged in a flirtation with the barmaid and the hulking man beside her on a barstool. She rather being liked Percy.

  “I do think I will write to you,” Susannah said. “ After all, good manners compel me to send you a thank-you note for the gifts. Unless you want them back?”

  “Not my size,” Damien drawled.

  “Not at all…” she said, and indulged in along hot look of her own at Damien. He was bigger than she remembered. Brawnier, too. The years had been good to him. His mouth curved into a smile and she caught a spark in his eye. He raised his glass to hers.

  “Cheers,” he said.

  “Cheers,” she replied. “To adventures.”

  “Together. Adventures together.”

  Susannah/Percy just smiled and sipped her ale, which was cool and bitter on her tongue. Until that moment, she had banished his proposal from her thoughts. But now she dared to consider it.

  Her mind immediately strayed to the wedding night.

  This was Damien—her lifelong nemesis and constant plague upon her—but as she sipped her ale and gave him a good look from under the shadows of her cap, she saw the rogue everyone else did.

  She saw the way his dark hair fell rakishly across his forehead. Maintaining her disguise was the only thing that kept her from gently brushing it aside. She saw his firm, sensual mouth and imagined a kiss. She took note of the slashes of his cheekbones, the distinct line of his jaw—shadowed slightly with stubble. His eyes were bright green and fixed upon her. She blushed, imagining the wedding night.

  Not that she was going to marry him.

  Freedom! Liberty! Mistress to herself and no one else!

  She had solemnly vowed her allegiance to those things.

  She had promised herself.

  And yet…his mouth, upon her lips. Those strong hands, all over her. That mischievous grin, in the moonlight.

  “Your sweetheart is coming,” Damien murmured with a slight nod of his head. “Percy.”

  Indeed, Frannie was heading their way with a tray in her hands, one laden with plates and food. She carefully set the tray down and served them plates with steaming hot meat pies, slices of wheat bread with fresh butter, mismatched cutlery and rough linen napkins.

  “Can you I get you anything else?” Frannie inquired. “Anything?”

  “I think we are alright, thank you,” Damien said.

  “This is excellent. Thank you, Frannie.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” she said, blushing. “We don’t get folks like you in here to much.”

  “Oh?”

  “All mannered and all,” she said with a nod to Susannah’s delicate handling of cutlery for the meat pie. Damien—and for that matter, everyone else in the tavern—ate favored hands over utensils. “Such a gentleman.”

  “Well someone ought to set an example,” Susannah/Percy replied. “My mother would have my head otherwise.”

  Frannie leaned against the bar and smiled dreamily. “My mum says you can always tell a good man by how they talk about their own mums. I reckon she’d say you were a good one.”

  From blushes to meeting her mum after just a pint of ale and a few bites of pie. An amazingly delicious meat pie. The crust was flaky and buttery. The filling was hot and savory. Susannah took another sip of ale. Damien had nearly finished his and she’d barely touched hers.

  “Here I’ll refill that for you,” Frannie said, taking Susannah’s—Percy’s—glass. Damien just grinned and muttered, “Sweetheart is sweet on you.”

  “I might be falling for her myself,” Susannah whispered. “Most of the women I meet aren’t so kind. At least not to me.”

  “That’s when they see you as competition. Frannie sees you as someone to be won.”

  “Or someone to love.” Susannah said the words softly. For all of her wealth and newfound circle of acquaintances, Susannah did not have someone to love or to rely on. When matters vexed her, she had only her maid to discuss them with. But while Abigail excelled at styling her hair, she wasn’t quite an expert in matters of the heart or high society.

  Susannah saw a similar loneliness in Frannie’s eyes and imagined that most of the men she met were far more coarse, rough, ill-mannered and possibly even unkind. She was glad to be Percy, a slight, gentle, feminine man who would was kind and nonthreatening.

  Even though Damien, beside her, was kind—for all o
f his wretched behavior as an adolescent boy, she knew this to be true—there was still something dangerous about him. He could overpower her in an instant, if he so chose.

  If he wanted, he could pick her up and carry her off, perhaps over the threshold to Bedford Manor. And from there, straight through the foyer, up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom where he’d lay her on the bed and…

  “Is the pie very hot?” Damien inquired politely. “You colored up for a second there.”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine.” She stumbled over the words under his knowing gaze—even though he couldn’t possibly have read her thoughts.

  “Could you get your sweetheart to serve me more ale?”

  “Sure,” Susannah said. And with a smile and a kindly worded request for “another glass for my mate” Frannie fetched more ale for Damien—her eyes on Percy all the while, though.

  “What else might you have in store for us, Damien? For that matter, what do gentlemen do all day, anyway?”

  “I have recently discovered that it actually involves a lengthy review of accounts with our stewards and estate managers, followed by a lengthy review of correspondence with our secretaries. Then one must stomp around and act haughty and lordly for at least an hour.”

  “And here I thought you blokes just played games of cards, made ridiculous and exorbitant wagers and had pissing contests.”

  “We do,” Damien said with a sigh that spoke of fond memories. “That is, before we inherit and become responsible.”

  “How tragic,” she drawled.

  “Indeed.”

  “I was sad to hear about your father. He was always so kind to me,” she said softly. She didn’t need to add when no one else was. It was understood.

  “Of course he was. You were his future daughter-in-law, whom he selected himself.”

  “When I was a babe and looked just like a Christmas ham,” she grumbled.

  “You did! But you do not any longer, if that is any consolation. Not at all.”

  “No, now I look like a handsome young man,” she said boastfully.

  “Not quite, Susannah,” Damien said, taking a long sip of his beer. “Or should I say Percy?”

  “That’s not what Frannie thinks. And don’t say anything. I’m rather fond of her.”

  “She is adorable,” he agreed.

  “She is a kind, lonely soul, hungry for love,” Susannah said softly.

  “And what of you, Percy? Are you lonely?”

  ******

  Damien found himself leaning in closer to Susannah, awaiting her answer. He had planned to marry her, but he hadn’t planned to care about her. Yet here he was certain and terrified of her reply. Just as she could see the loneliness in Frannie’s eyes, he could see it in hers. It had been there yesterday, even in the room full of “friends.”

  “I hardly want for company,” she replied.

  “Your drawing room was a mob scene of fortune hunters, lovesick suitors, desperate rivals and their machinating mothers. It made my head ache wretchedly.”

  “Just how I like it. Everyone will be speculating madly when I am not at home to callers today. I am always at home to callers.”

  He was glad, deeply, to have whisked her away if only for one day.

  “What will you tell them?”

  “I shall let them invent fictions,” she answered. “I will smile demurely and neither confirm, nor deny. This day’s adventures shall be our secret.”

  “Though if word got out…”

  “Yes, I know you’d gallantly marry me to save my reputation, meanwhile assuring that you become the proper, upstanding and respectable gentleman your father always yearned for you to be. He did miss you, you know.”

  “I know,” Damien said softly. He thought of the letters full of lectures on an heir’s duty—including the commitment to Susannah. It was his father’s way of asking him to come home; he could understand that now. Then there were no more letters, save for one informing him that shortly after hearing news of Damien’s death, his father suffered an apoplexy. He felt partially responsible for his death.

  “Your father did enjoy your adventures, though,” Susannah said. “You should know that. He read of them avidly in the papers and shared the contents of your letters with me when I saw him.”

  “He did? You saw him?” Damien wanted to hear more of this—it was all news to him—even as it broke his heart to do so.

  “Every so often our paths would cross,” Susannah said. But not often enough for his father to discover her wretched circumstances or do anything about them.

  “It was wrong of me to stay away so long.” What an awful son he’d been, throwing away valuable time with his family for stupid trouble with degenerate “friends.” When he thought of all the years, money and time wasted, he felt sick.

  “You were young and wild and would have gotten into monstrous amounts of trouble had you stayed in London. Look, you haven’t been back a fortnight and already you are actively encouraging me to indulge in all sorts of scandalous behavior. After you had promised to behave, too.”

  “Wicked means to a noble end,” Damien said simply. Since he had set eyes on Susannah, wanting to marry her had less to do with duty and more to do with desire.

  “We shall see about that. I find I quite like adventures before breakfast.”

  Damien was about to tell her they could have adventures before breakfast every day as man and wife. If she wanted to ride hell for leather, they could do so in Bedford Hills. If she wanted to flirt with barmaids, he could invite Frannie to move to the Bedford village tavern. If she wanted to dress as a boy and stroll around the estate, he would not stop her. But Frannie reappeared, drawing Susannah’s attention and making it quite inconvenient for him to propose. Again.

  “Would you like more ale, Percy?”

  “Please.”

  “Careful now, Percy. That stuff will go to your head. Bad ideas will seem good. Trouble will ensue.” He was jesting—but only a bit. He enjoyed watching Susannah relax and enjoy herself and he was here to keep her out of any real trouble or danger.

  “Oh, you,” she said dismissively. “I can hold my liquor.”

  “It’s beer. It’s different.”

  “Bother that,” Susannah muttered. “You take my meaning.”

  He did take her meaning. The ale had already gone to her head. And she wished to chat with Frannie. “I’ll leave you two for a moment while I hit the privy.”

  When he returned, the two girls—or one young lad and one young lady as far as anyone knew—were having a soft conversation, with sweetly awkward pauses, light laughter and affectionate gestures of a quick touch of a hand to a wrist. He paused to watch them for a moment.

  High-society Susannah did not act thusly as far as he had seen…and he had watched her closely at the ball and during calling hours. He wanted to chase away the loneliness and offer his affection. He wanted to be the one to make her blush. For the first time, he found himself jealous of a barmaid.

  Susannah—Percy—excused herself to use the necessary. Frannie offered to show her the way. Damien sipped his mug of ale and watched Susannah walk away, her hips swinging and swaying like clockwork temptation.

  ******

  Thus far, this was the greatest, happiest day of Susannah’s life. And it was not even luncheon yet! Fresh air, sunshine, hearty food, comfortable clothes, adventures galore. Damien and she were managing civil conversation for possibly the first time in the long history of their relationship.

  Matters were helped by the fact that he hadn’t tugged her hair or poured ale on her lap or put a toad on her plate or any other juvenile prank that he found uproarious and she found horrifying. But then again, she hadn’t acted like a scrappy brat or a young girl permanently scowling at him and his antics.

  Nor did she slouch and sulk and stare sullenly at him through stringy hair as she had done when she’d grown older and accepted that he had wanted nothing to do with her, not at all, not ever.


  She had been happy to be free of him, then troubled by his return. But then why was she enjoying herself tremendously? How did he know just what she wanted when he’d been a stranger to her for nine painfully long years?

  When these perplexing thoughts and feelings about Damien threatened to overwhelm her, Susannah took a sip of her ale (so lovingly kept full to the brim) and chatted with Frannie, in whom she recognized a kindred spirit of a girl who didn’t quite belong to anyone and who managed to get by in a world that largely overlooked her. Susannah’s heart ached for she at least had the prospect of a fortune and freedom but she suspected that Frannie had no such twist of fate awaiting her. She only had the hope of a decent marriage to a nice man. A man like Percy.

  Frannie was waiting for her after Susannah used the necessary. Lingering in the dimly lit corridor.

  “I haven’t met a man like you before, Percy,” she said wistfully. She leaned against the wall and Percy did the same. “Most are so brutish and boorish. My brother Angus is the worst and the blokes that come in here aren’t much better. But you are nice.”

  “You are nice too, Frannie.” She was truly lovely. For the longest time no one ever told Susannah that she was nice—or paid her any compliments, really. She had felt the absence keenly and did not want sweet, lovely Frannie to feel the same.

  “Percy.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think…maybe…Oh…” Frannie’s hands knotted in her dress. Her eyes were wide and questioning and nervous. Her lips parted.

  She didn’t need to say the words for Susannah to understand everything. When you found something good and sweet you wanted to hold on to it, drink it in, drown in it.

  When their lips collided it wasn’t clear who had leaned in first or farther. There was only one true thing, and that was the softness of Frannie’s lips. And the way the world spun softly. And the way Susannah’s heart beat hard in her chest. This.

  This kiss was wicked and scandalous but it was also sweet, so sweet. Strangely innocent. Completely lovely. Susannah wasn’t sure if she parted her lips first, or did Frannie? Which one was so bold? Tongues tangling, tasting. Fingers sliding through soft hair. Bodies inches apart then closer, almost touching, breast to breast.