by Megan Bryce
Other Titles by Megan Bryce
The Fashionista and The Geek
Boring Is The New Black
It’s Only Temporary
Some Like It Charming*
Some Like It Ruthless
Some Like It Perfect
Some Like It Hopeless
The Reluctant Bride Collection
To Catch A Spinster*
To Tame A Lady*
To Wed The Widow*
To Tempt The Saint*
*Also available as an audiobook
About To Tempt The Saint
Many years ago, George St. Clair loved and lost– his heart, his faith, his future. Now, he is content to watch not-so-silently as life happens to his friends, secure in the knowledge that no woman could tempt him again. Absolutely certain that no woman is worth the risk. Confident that he is protected from the pain. . .
Honora Kempe lost everything after her fall from grace– her family, her life, a future. Now, Hell hath no fury like a disgraced vicar’s daughter and she is determined to get back what was hers. By hook or by crook. Man by man. Lie by lie. Until one man makes her wonder if love really can heal all pain. And if too late really is too late. . .
Table of Contents
About
London
One
Two
Three
Manchester
Four
Five
Six
York
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Copyright
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One
George St. Clair sat smoking his cigar quietly and gazing into the fire. He worried the crumpled letter in his hand back and forth, back and forth.
He’d thought about tossing it into the fire but knew it wouldn’t do any good. Not for anybody.
He couldn’t unread it. Couldn’t undo the actions of his friend.
George could only pray, and since he hadn’t done any kind of praying in years, he wasn’t about to start on a scab like his friend George Sinclair.
St. Clair choked, not sure whether it was the smoke tickling or the tears threatening or the laughter bubbling.
Only George Sinclair would run off to India with the widow.
Only George Sinclair could do it expecting to arrive at the very end a happily married man with no consequences to pay.
St. Clair thought again about praying. Just a quick, quiet entreaty to keep his friend safe. And whole. And, God, happy.
Someone, somewhere, should be happy.
But God had never answered any prayer of his, so St. Clair stared into the red and yellow flames licking at his boots and went through the quickly memorized letter again.
St. Clair,
Hold tight to your breeches because your worst fear has come true. I am going home to India, Elinor by my side.
Perhaps it wasn’t St. Clair’s worst fear. Being forced to watch a pack of rabid dogs tear the skin from his friend’s flesh sounded just as bad.
I’d apologize for leaving without telling you but there was little time and. . .I know you. You would have locked me away to stop me from doing something so foolish.
He would have.
She’s worth any price. Love is.
Love wasn’t.
May you find a love worth losing.
Or if you can’t manage that, come visit us in India and we’ll find one for you.
Your never dutiful friend,
Sinclair
And if the thought of Sinclair and the widow picking out St. Clair’s bride for him didn’t make him shudder, nothing ever would.
St. Clair tossed the letter into the fire, and then his cigar because the letter hadn’t been enough.
He’d found love already.
He’d found a woman who promised to be steady and true. A woman to give him children and a happy home.
A woman with a demure smile and shy eyes. A woman proper and good.
And then she’d been given to someone else.
His only comfort was that she and her husband stayed in the country and he didn’t have to see them.
His only comfort was that he’d been young and foolish when he’d given his heart away and could, almost, forgive himself.
His only comfort was that he refused to be comforted.
St. Clair stood, straightening his coat. He watched as the paper curled and turned to ash, watched as the cigar smoked and burned.
When he turned away, he did it with no prayer on his lips, but a curse.
For the widow; for a woman with a demure smile and shy eyes; for every woman who could bring misery to man.
A pox on them all.
Miss Letitia Blackstock did not exist.
Oh, somewhere she surely did. Somewhere she spent her mornings walking sedately and her evenings with her needlework and she was good and kind and proper.
The kind of young woman who always obeyed her father and listened to her mother and was kind to her younger sisters.
Honora Kempe had met one or two or a dozen Miss Blackstocks in her lifetime, and though Honora had found them all boring, had chosen to become one this time. For this endeavor.
Next time she would pick someone with a little more spirit and spunk.
But, she was Miss Letitia Blackstock for a little while longer so she simpered a smile and batted her eyelashes and quoted the bible as if Miss Blackstock’s father was a vicar instead of the tea dealer she imagined him to be.
Some parts of her were harder to hide than others and Honora found bible quoting to be one of those things. Inappropriate bible quoting, at that.
Honora had decided that Miss Letitia Blackstock might be a bit simple-minded because she just didn’t have the spite that went with taking scripture out of context on purpose.
Honora Kempe had spite aplenty. Spite and intelligence.
And a forgettable appearance that let her wield that spite and intelligence against the sons of the middle class again and again.
Miss Blackstock, tonight, waved her fan and listened rapturously to a bookseller’s youngest son as he pontificated.
He liked to think he was getting somewhere with her, and he might have been if he hadn’t kept interrupting her conversation with his practiced diatribes.
No woman liked to be interrupted when she was speaking. Especially when she had a particularly useful scripture to wield.
Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5.
But she had no opportunity to share it and when the bookseller’s youngest son delivered Miss Blackstock back to her aunt and uncle, she curtsied and smiled at him, then forgot about him completely.
Uncle “Hubert” said, “I can’t take much more of this.”
Aunt “Gertrude” agreed. “I think we should go back to Edinburgh.”
Honora waved her fan and kept her Miss Blackstock smile on her face. “We can’t go back to Edinburgh, not yet. Not unless you want me married to Mr. Scote in truth.”
Aunt Gertrude made a very un-Gertrude-like face, then rallied. “Bath?”
Honora loved Bath. But, again, it would be too soon and she shook her head.
“It will have to be London, I’m afraid.”
“I hate London.” And it didn’t matter which one of them had said it. They both hated London.
Honora didn’t enjoy it all that much either.
But the perfect city was impossible. The perfect city was too small and too cloistered and there was nowhere to hide.
But perhaps when Honora grew too old to continue collectin
g suitors, and when they’d saved enough money that her majesty’s five percent gave them a respectable living, perhaps then they could return home again. Return to live near her young siblings and not under her father’s thumb and live out her days as a too-odd spinster.
Marriage was not to be for Honora but she liked being engaged. And she enjoyed her engagements while they lasted because, sometimes sooner and sometimes later, they would all end spectacularly. And always by her fiancé because how else could she force him to pay a modest sum for his breach of promise?
She could thank the newspapers for the idea. They adored reporting the goings-on of every poor woman forced to sue when her formerly affianced callously broke off their engagement.
The fact that such a heinous act sentenced the woman to a life of poverty– forevermore unmarried and childless– guaranteed that the courts nearly always gave the woman a nice reward for her suffering.
Those ladies chose to spend it, Honora imagined, walking sedately in the mornings and practicing needlepoint in the evenings and, perhaps, mourning the life they could have had.
Children and a husband.
Honora had already mourned that loss. And no court would ever reward the act that had sentenced her to a life of poverty. Forevermore unmarried and childless.
Aunt Gertrude said, “Everyone’s talking about Miss Smith and the Earl of Ferrers.”
Honora nodded. It was the latest, and greatest, breach of promise suit ever brought to the courts because the lady was asking for a ridiculous £20,000 in damages. She would have been lucky to get a tenth of that.
Uncle Hubert said, “She should have settled out of court. £1000 and she could have had a very comfortable income. In the country.”
Honora smiled. “Do you think she could have even got that without taking him to court?”
He nodded. “£100 for a haberdasher or a clerk. £1000 for an earl.”
Since they’d got £100 from a haberdasher and £100 from a clerk themselves, Honora had to believe him.
Aunt Gertrude sighed. “Oh, for an earl. One fell swoop and we would be done.”
Uncle Hubert fingered his cravat. “And one short misstep and we’d shorten our lives by the length of a rope. Better to stay away from the landed gentry.”
Honora agreed with him. She had no desire to pit herself against the resources of the upper class and no reason to.
It wasn’t an earl who’d stolen her life. It wasn’t a married man of the landed gentry who had preyed on a young girl’s loneliness, naivete, and stupidity, and then left her alone to bear the consequences.
It wasn’t the upper classes she would reclaim her life from, one by one, man by man, until she once again had the future she’d been born to.
George St. Clair had taken an interest in steam courtesy of his new-found love of cigars.
Steam ships sailed daily to the west bringing back the fragrantly rolled leaves. His father had sniffed snuff; George smoked cigars.
He and every gentleman he was acquainted with had caught the craze, the papers announcing that this year more than 250,000 pounds of cigars were imported into England. The number continued to rise incredibly not because there were more ships sailing, but because they were faster.
Steam.
His father had watched masted ships head out to cross the ocean, their sails flapping in the winds; George watched coal-powered puffs rising from stacks.
He had no doubt that in a few years they would find a way to send steam-powered ships eastward, cutting the trip to India from six months to a mere six weeks.
He might see his friend again before another eight years was gone, and St. Clair thought he would enjoy the look on the widow’s face should he track them down.
But today, St. Clair was still in England, sitting in the back row of a large lecture hall, listening to the first in a series on the power of steam. At the heat contained in fractured coal that ran like ribbons down the backbone of England.
The only distraction to his thorough enjoyment of the lecture was the sporadic snores emanating from the gentleman asleep in the row in front of him.
St. Clair shifted, grabbing the attention of the woman sitting beside the snorer.
She turned her head just enough so that he could see muddy brown eyes sitting beneath a hideous hat and she whispered, “My uncle. Some of us do not find heat and water so very intriguing.”
St. Clair muttered, “Then some of us should leave.”
She whispered to her uncle, “Awake thou that sleepest,” and then to St. Clair, “Ephesians 5:14.”
But the man continued to sleep, and to snore, and she merely shrugged and turned her head forward again.
When the lecture was over, St. Clair stood impatiently and jostled the man into waking before stalking off.
At the next week’s lecture, St. Clair stopped as soon as he entered the hall. As soon as he saw a hideous hat placed jauntily over muddy brown eyes. His eyes flicked to the matron sitting beside the woman and he stalked up to say uncharitably, “Is this one going to stay awake?”
The younger woman didn’t tip her head up to look at him but nonetheless said conversationally, “Most likely. She’s married, therefore has extensive experience staying awake while a man pontificates about a subject she has no interest in.”
St. Clair found he had no reply to that.
He stood there looking down at bare twigs sticking out of her hat, then grunted and took his now customary spot.
The older woman did stay awake, taking out her knitting halfway through and click, click, clicking through the lecture.
St. Clair did not miss that the longer the clicking continued the wider the younger woman’s mouth smiled.
St. Clair glared at the back of her head.
When the lecture was over, and he’d missed one word out of every four, he stood with a huff and left.
He nearly made it out the door before turning around and stomping back to the pair of women.
He growled, “I assume you will be here next week?”
The younger woman looked up then, a demure smile stuck on her face but her eyes jabbing.
“Yes.”
“Would you be ever so kind as to sit in the front.”
“I don’t think so. I like to see the crowd as well as the speaker.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Oh, good. Then we will see you next week.”
The next week, she was indeed sitting right in front of his spot, but this time she’d brought a maid.
St. Clair debated with himself, but then, finally, moved to sit in his accustomed place. He would not be chased off.
Especially not by a woman who murmured bravo condescendingly into her leaflet.
George made himself comfortable and said to the back of her hat, “I will not be mocked by a woman I have not been introduced to.”
“Very good.” She turned slightly in her seat to look at her maid and said, “And since we cannot be introduced, you are protected from my scathing wit. Perhaps I will bring my uncle again next week and we can dispense with the niceties.”
St. Clair could only think Dear God and Please, don’t so he said nothing.
The harpy did not heed his silence.
“It doesn’t really work, does it? Introductions and societal standing, not when there are too many new people one must interact with. Not when we must decide on appearance alone how we should act toward each other instead of comparing our familial connections.”
“Appearance alone is enough. I can tell all I need to about you by those barren twigs sticking haphazardly out of your bonnet. You are a bluestocking from a good enough family.”
Her lips tipped up. “Bluestocking? I suppose I can tell all I need to about you from that term. But then I remember you’ve come to learn about the wonders of steam so you must not be so out-of-date and old-fashioned as I imagine.”
The lecturer moved toward the dais, shuffling his papers, and George leaned forward quickly. “And I would enjoy
being able to actually hear all about steam today. Your maid did not bring her knitting, did she?”
The woman turned her head away from him and back toward the dais. “She will refrain.”
“If she snores, I will jab her with my walking stick.”
She looked down at her leaflet again. “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword. Matthew 26:52.”
The surly gentleman sitting behind Honora did not use his walking stick on her poor maid but only because he’d been too narrow in his threat. The maid didn’t knit or snore; she fidgeted. And with every fidget came a creak and a moan from her chair.
With every creak and moan came a loud sigh behind her.
Honora was hardly able to hear the lecture with all the moaning and sighing, and she sighed quietly herself.
She really did want to hear all about the wonders of steam, and she was running out of companions. Uncle Hubert and Aunt Gertrude refused to come again and Honora could hardly blame them. The wonders of steam– pistons and water and coal– were a bit dry.
Honora wouldn’t bring her maid again and there was only one other person she could ask to attend with her.
She didn’t want to.
She wanted to keep him far away from anything pertaining to Honora Kempe, and Miss Letitia Blackstock would have no reason to be excited about a lecture, about steam.
But she wouldn’t be run off by a sour-tempered man.
Especially one who grumbled and sighed and cleared his throat impatiently at her when he rose to leave.
I can tell all I need to about you by those barren twigs sticking haphazardly out of your bonnet.
Honora watched as he stalked out the doors and thought, No, you don’t.
Halfway through the next week, Miss Letitia Blackstock had her first ever mental excitement. It surprised everyone involved, but Honora the most. Perhaps she had underestimated the girl.