How to Woo a Wallflower

by Carlyle, Christy

  “Mmm, and quite artfully too. I particularly admired the way her lush backside landed squarely in your lap.”

  The curvaceous widow had been all too willing to further their acquaintance, but she’d collided with Kit on opening night. Having written the play and performed in a minor role for an indisposed actor, he’d been too distracted fretting over success to bother with a dalliance.

  Of late, something in him had altered. Perhaps he’d had his fill of the city’s amusements. Grey’s appetite never seemed to wane, but shallow seductions no longer brought Kit satisfaction. He worried less about pleasure and more about success. Four years in London and what had he accomplished? Coming to the city had never been about indulging in vice but about making his mark as a playwright. He’d allowed himself to be distracted. Far too impulsive should have been his nickname, for as often as his father had shouted the words at him in his youth.

  “How about the angel in the second balcony?” Grey gestured to a gaudily painted box, high in the theater’s eastern wall. “I’ve never been able to resist a woman with titian red hair.”

  Kit snapped his gaze to the spot Grey indicated, heartbeat ratcheting until it thundered in his ears. Spotting the woman, he expelled a trapped breath. The lady’s hair shone in appealing russet waves in the gaslight, but she wasn’t Ophelia. Phee’s hair was a rich auburn, and her jaw narrower. At least until it sharpened into an adorably squared chin that punctuated her usual air of stubborn defiance.

  “No?” Grey continued his perusal of ladies among the sea of faces. “How about the giggling vision in the third row?”

  The strawberry blonde laughed with such raucous abandon her bosom bounced as she turned to speak to her companion. Kit admired her profile a moment, letting his gaze dip lower before glancing at the man beside her.

  “That’s Dominic Fleet.” Kit’s pulse jumped at the base of his throat. Opportunity sat just a few feet away.

  He’d never met the theater impresario, but he knew the man by reputation. Unlike Merrick’s shabby playhouse, known for its comedies and melodramas, Fleet Theater featured long-running plays by the best dramatists in London. Lit entirely with electric lights, the modern theater seated up to three thousand.

  “What’s he doing slumming at Merrick’s?” Grey turned to face Kit. “Did you invite him?”

  “Months ago.” Kit had sent a letter of introduction to Fleet, enclosing a portion of a play he’d written but been unable to sell. “He never replied.” Yet here he was, attending the performance of a piece that revealed none of Kit’s true skill as a playwright. Merrick had demanded a bawdy farce. In order to pay his rent, Kit had provided it.

  “You bloody traitor.” Grey smiled, his sarcastic tone belying his words. “You wouldn’t dare abandon Merrick and set out for greener fields.”

  “Why? Because he compensates us so generously?”

  Though they shared a love of theater, Grey and Kit had different cares. Grey possessed family money and worried little about meeting the expenses of a lavish London lifestyle. Kit could never take a penny from his father, even if it was on offer. Any aid from Leopold Ruthven would come with demands and expectations—precisely the sort of control he’d left Hertfordshire to escape.

  “You belong here, my friend.” Grey clapped him on the shoulder. “With our band of misfits and miscreants. Orphans from lives better left behind.”

  Belonging. The theater had given him that in a way his father’s home never had. Flouting rules, tenacity, making decisions intuitively—every characteristic his father loathed were assets in the theater. Kit had no desire to abandon the life he’d made for himself, just improve upon it.

  “We came to London to make something of ourselves. Do you truly believe we’ll find success at Merrick’s?” Kit lifted his elbow and nudged the dingy curtain tucked at the edge of the stage. “Among tattered furnishings?”

  “That’s only the backside of the curtain. Merrick puts the best side out front. We all have our flaws. The art is in how well we hide them.” Grey had such a way with words Kit often thought he should be a playwright. “Would you truly jump ship?”

  “I bloody well would.” Kit slanted a glance at his friend. “And so would you.”

  Merrick paid them both a dribble, producing plays with minimal expense in a building that leaked when it rained. Cultivating favor with the wealthiest theater manager in London had been Kit’s goal for months. With a long-running Fleet-produced play, he could repay his debts and move out of his cramped lodgings. Hunger had turned him into a hack writer for Merrick, but he craved more. Success, wealth, a chance to prove his skill as a writer. To prove that his decision to come to London had been the right one. To prove to his father that he could succeed on his own merits.

  “Never!” Tess, performing the role of virginal damsel, shrieked from center stage. “Never shall I marry Lord Mallet. He is the worst sort of scoundrel.”

  “That’s my cue.” Grey grinned as he tugged once more at his cravat and dashed back into the glow of the limelights. Just before stepping on stage, he skidded to stop and turned to Kit. “You’d better write me a part in whatever play you sell to Fleet.”

  With a mock salute, Kit offered his friend a grin. He had every intention of creating a role for Grey. The man’s acting skills deserved a grander stage too.

  Kit fixed his gaze on Fleet. He seemed to be enjoying the play, a trifling modernized Hamlet parody Kit called The King’s Ghost and the Mad Damsel. He’d changed the heroine’s name to Mordelia, unable to endure the sound of Ophelia’s name bouncing off theater walls for weeks. Months, if the play did well.

  After his eyes adjusted to the stage-light glow, he pointlessly, compulsively scanned the crowd one last time for a woman whose inner beauty glowed as fiercely as her outer charms. He wouldn’t find her. As far as he knew, Phee was home in the village where they’d grown up. When he’d come to London to escape his father, she’d insisted on loyalty to hers and remained in Hertfordshire to care for him. All but one of his letters had gone unanswered, including a note the previous year expressing sorrow over her father’s passing.

  He didn’t need to reach into his pocket and unfold the scrap of paper he carried with him everywhere. The five words of Ophelia’s only reply remained seared in his mind. “Follow your heart and flourish.” They were her mother’s words, stitched in a sampler that hung in the family’s drawing room. Kit kept the fragment, but he still wondered whether Ophelia had written the words in sincerity or sarcasm.

  A flash of gems caught his eye, and Kit spied Fleet’s pretty companion rising from her seat. The theater impresario stood too, following her into the aisle. Both made their way toward the doors at the rear of the house.

  He couldn’t let the man leave without an introduction. Kit lurched toward a door leading to a back hall and sprinted down the dimly lit corridor. He caught up to Fleet near the ladies’ retiring room.

  “Mr. Fleet, I am—”

  “Christopher Ruthven, the scribe of this evening’s entertainment.” The man extended a gloved hand. “Forgive me, Ruthven. It’s taken far too long for me to take in one of your plays.”

  Attempting not to crush the slighter man in his grip, Kit offered an enthusiastic handshake.

  “I want to have a look at your next play.” Fleet withdrew an engraved calling card from his waistcoat pocket. “Bring it in person to my office at the theater. Not the one you sent. Something new. More like this one.”

  “You’ll have it.” Kit schooled his features, forcing his furrowed brow to smooth. So what if the man wanted a farce rather than serious drama? He craved an opportunity to succeed, and Fleet could provide it. “Thank you.”

  “If we can come to terms and you manage to fill my playhouse every night as you have Merrick’s, I shall be thanking you.”

  Kit started backstage, his head spinning with ideas for a bigger, grander play than Merrick’s could produce. Never mind that it had taken years to grasp the chance Fleet offered. Good
fortune had come, and he intended to make the most of it.

  As he reached the inconspicuous door that led to the back corridor, a man called his name.

  “Mr. Ruthven? Christopher Leopold Ruthven?”

  Two gentlemen approached, both tall, black-suited, and dour. Debt collectors? The instinct to bolt dissipated when the two made it impossible, crowding him on either side of the narrow passageway.

  “I’m Ruthven.” Taller than both men and broader by half, Kit still braced himself for whatever might come. “What do you want?”

  The one who’d yet to say anything took a step closer, and Kit recognized his wrinkled face.

  “Mr. Sheridan? What brings you to Merrick’s?” Kit never imagined the Ruthven family solicitor would venture to a London theater under any circumstances.

  “Ill tidings, I regret to say.” Sheridan reached into his coat and withdrew an envelope blacked with ink around the edges. “Your father is dead, Mr. Ruthven. I’m sorry. Our letter to you was returned. My messenger visited your address twice and could not locate you. I thought we might find you here.”

  “Moved lodgings.” Kit took the letter, willing his hand not to tremble. “Weeks ago.”

  “Your sister has made arrangements for a ceremony in Briar Heath.” Sheridan lifted a card from his pocket and handed it to Kit. “Visit my office before you depart, and I can provide you with details of your father’s will.”

  The men watched him a moment, waiting for a reaction. When none came, Sheridan muttered condolences before they departed.

  Kit lost track of time. He shoved Sheridan’s card into his coat pocket to join Fleet’s, crushed the unread solicitor’s letter in his hand, and stood rooted to the spot where they’d left him. Father. Dead. The two words refused to congeal in his mind. So many of the choices Kit made in his twenty-eight years had been driven by his father’s wrath, attempts to escape his stifling control.

  Now Kit could think only of what he should do. Must do. Look after his sisters. Return to Briar Heath.

  He’d leave after speaking to Merrick. Any work on a play to impress Fleet would have to be undertaken while he was back home.

  Home. The countryside, the village, the oversized house his father built with profits from his publishing enterprise—none of it had been home for such a very long time. It was a place he’d felt shunned and loathed most of his life. He’d never visited in four years. Never dared set foot in his father’s house after his flamboyant departure.

  As he headed toward Merrick’s office to tell the man his news, worry for his sisters tightened Kit’s jaw until it ached. Then another thought struck.

  After all these years, night after night of futile searching, he would finally see Ophelia Marsden again.

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  A STUDY IN SCOUNDRELS

  Sophia Ruthven is the epitome of proper behavior. On paper at least, as long as that paper isn’t from one of the lady detective stories she secretly pens. She certainly isn’t interested in associating with the dashing Jasper Grey, the wayward heir to the Earl of Stanhope, and one of the stage’s leading men. But when she learns Grey’s younger sister Liddy has gone missing, she can’t deny her desire to solve the mystery . . . or her attraction to the incorrigible scoundrel.

  Responsibility isn’t something Grey is very familiar with. On the boards and in the bedroom, he lives exactly how he wants to, shunning all the trappings of respectability and society. Grey knows he should avoid the bewitching Sophia, but he’s never been able to say no to what he wants. And having Sophia in his arms and his bed is quickly becoming the thing he wants the most.

  As Sophia and Grey’s search for Liddy continues across the English countryside, can this scoundrel convince a proper lady that he’s actually perfect for her, or will their adventure leave them both heartbroken?

  Sophia Ruthven never intended to plaster her palm against the man’s shapely backside.

  In fact, she hadn’t intended to encounter the Earl of Westby at all. True, she had stolen into the man’s private study. But his sister, Lady Vivian, who’d invited Sophia to speak at her weekly ladies’ book club tea, insisted her infamous rake of a brother was not at home.

  How could Sophia have known that a simple request to use the ladies’ washroom would lead her past the half open door of the earl’s study? Who could blame her for succumbing to the mingled aromas of smoke and book leather wafting out of the room?

  The chance to inspect a notorious scoundrel’s lair was simply too tempting a prospect to ignore.

  Purely for research purposes, of course.

  For months, Sophia had been working on a story about her fictional lady detective, Euphemia “Effie” Breedlove, but the details weren’t right. Her rakish villain lacked verisimilitude. A sheltered upbringing in the countryside had provided few opportunities to observe scoundrels firsthand.

  Now her hand was pinned between the room’s dark wood paneling, a firm muscled posterior, and the green velvet curtain she’d hidden herself behind. The man and his companion had burst into the room as Sophia stood inspecting the items on the earl’s desk. Thankfully, the long drape-covered bay window had been near enough to offer concealment.

  “Now. Right here on my desk. You’ve kept me waiting long enough, sweetling.” The man’s husky tone drew a moan from the young lady, interspersed with the squelching sound of wet kisses. Who gave with such fervor and who eagerly received, Sophia couldn’t be sure.

  But she was sure of one thing. The feminine voice beyond the curtain belonged to Miss Emmeline Honeycutt, a fellow guest at the ladies’ tea. Sophia had been introduced to the girl not half an hour ago. She guessed her to be quite young, not many years older than her own seventeen-year-old sister, Clarissa. She couldn’t stand by and allow the girl to ruin herself.

  Shifting her hand, she pushed at the heated swell of the man’s derriere.

  “What’s that?” He stilled, pressing his weight against Sophia’s palm. “We don’t wish to be caught out, little minx. Seems we must wait a bit longer. You should get back to my sister’s gathering.”

  After a few moments of whining protest and what sounded like the thud of dainty feet stomping thick carpet, Miss Honeycutt retreated with the swish and click of beaded fabric. When the study door slid shut, Sophia reached up to stifle a sneeze. She couldn’t get the taste of the earl’s pungent cologne off her tongue. Spicy and overly sweet, the scent was laid on so thick it tickled her nose.

  “You can come out now, whoever you are.” His voice had taken on a hard edge, as firm as the contours of his backside. Not at all the warm murmur he’d offered Miss Honeycutt.

  Thankfully, he’d moved enough to free Sophia’s hand, but she still hesitated a moment before pulling back the curtain and facing the man she’d read the worst sort of stories about in the gossip columns.

  With one push at the drapery, she managed a step forward, keeping her chin up and back straight, lest he think her as brazen as the young woman who’d just left his arms.

  “My lord, I can explain . . . ”

  But she was apparently going to have to plead her case to an empty room. He’d gone, leaving her with nothing but flame-filled cheeks and the knowledge that, in future, she needed to stem her raging curiosity and keep out of scoundrels’ private spaces.

  A clock chimed over the mantel and panic set in. She’d been gone too long. Even longer than the silly girl who’d nearly given herself to the earl on his desk.

  Starting toward the door, she tripped on the velvet drapery clinging to her ankle.

  A vice grip enclosed her wrist to keep her upright. No, not a vice. A hand, large and long fingered, and exceedingly strong, judging by how her own fingers had begun to numb.

  “Lord Westby.”

  With his dark clothing, the man blended into the room’s shadows. He’d been watching without her sensing him at all. Cursing her flawed powers of observation, Sophia
snatched her arm from his grip. He released her and she quickly righted herself, yanking her boot from the drapery and moving toward the center of the room.

  “You’re a foolish woman,” he whispered, “but I suppose men forgive that once they get a look at your face.” He stalked toward her until he was close enough for her to see the glint on his obsidian eyes. Moving slowly, he began circling her like a predator, deciding how he wanted to begin consuming his prey. “And those breasts.”

  “I must return to your sister’s tea, my lord.”

  “You should have considered as much before hiding away in my study.” He drew closer, looming at her back. As his damp breath rushed against her neck, the cloying sweetness of his cologne caught in her throat and burned her eyes.

  “I allowed my curiosity to get the better of me, my lord.” Sophia started toward the door. “A mistake I shan’t repeat.”

  Westby came around to stand before her, blocking her progress.

  Sophia studied the scoundrel for the first time. Dark hair, coal-black eyes, and an arrogant smirk above a strong, squared jaw. Symmetry and sensuality conspired to give the impression of male beauty, as long as one ignored the coldness of his gaze and the cruelty in the set of his mouth.

  He seemed to enjoy her perusal. Lifting his arms out at his sides, he urged, “Do your worst. How may I satisfy your curiosity? With a body like that”—he fixed his gaze on the overly ample bosom she’d spent most of her life trying to bind and conceal—“satisfying you would be no burden.”

  Sophia took his fixation on her breasts as an opportunity to escape. She started past him, gathering a handful of her skirt to keep from tripping on her hem. By the time she reached the study door, he’d sprung into action, rushing up to slam a palm on the panel above her head and pin her against the wood.

  “Don’t you want a taste before you go? One kiss to remember me by?” He drew his fingers across her cheek and chills raced down Sophia’s spine. “I certainly want to taste you,” he whispered, his lips hovering near her ear. “Are you the flavor of honey, like the shade of your hair? Or strawberries, like the flush in those perfect lips?”