Rake's Honour

by Beverley Oakley

  A Total-E-Bound Publication

  www.total-e-bound.com

  Rake’s Honour

  ISBN #978-0-85715-858-1

  ©Copyright Beverley Oakley 2012

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright January 2012

  Edited by Rebecca Hill

  Total-E-Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2012 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-burning and a sexometer of 2.

  This story contains 107 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 8 pages.

  RAKE’S HONOUR

  Beverley Oakley

  No debutante was ever more desperate to escape the clutches of a detestable suitor than Fanny Brightwell, but will she find the burning kisses of her secret lover worth the price?

  With just weeks before the end of the season, London’s most daring debutante, Miss Fanny Brightwell, must contract a brilliant match or face the consequences—marriage to the pestilential Lord Slyther.

  When Fanny unexpectedly participates in a night of stupendous passion with the delectable but notorious rake Viscount Fenton, his offer of a carte blanche instead of holy matrimony ignites more than just a polite refusal. The time has come for Fanny to take the reins.

  Dedication

  To my wonderful and wildly desirable husband, Eivind.

  Chapter One

  Vauxhall Gardens, 1818

  One balmy summer evening in Vauxhall Gardens, the irresistible but impecunious Miss Fanny Brightwell made the biggest miscalculation of her life.

  She realised it as she tore herself from the arms of her evening’s unsatisfactory escort, choking on a sob as she stumbled from their supper box onto the Druid Walk. She knew the repercussions would be very terrible unless the discretion of her deficient admirer could be relied upon—which was scant consolation since Lord Alverley’s notion of honour was the very reason she was in such a predicament.

  Yes, there would be consequences for her surprising lapse.

  She just had no idea how terrible they’d be.

  “Forgive me, Fanny!”

  Alverley’s voice, desperate and disembodied, competed with the distant strains of the orchestra as he hurried after her. “Lady Georgiana has been my intended bride since we were children… I thought you knew that.”

  Alverley wanted her to forgive him for such a betrayal when her future lay in tatters? Her mother would never forgive her.

  Clutching the spider-gauze fichu of her daring costume, Fanny turned with a glare, stepping back to avoid his open-armed approach.

  He wanted her, but not as his wife. Could he really imagine she’d sacrifice her reputation, and that of her family, to be his mistress?

  Fighting back tears, she delivered her parting words, more a hiss than the dignified approach her mother would have counselled. “You deceived me, Alverley.”

  The thought of being in his embrace ever again made her stomach churn. He had betrayed her, wasted more than a year of her precious life. A year, when she had less than weeks…

  “Fanny, wait—” His eyes were beseeching.

  Cow’s eyes.

  She’d thought it from the start, so why had she persisted in this futile courtship, knowing, yet refusing to acknowledge, that his outward charms were illusory, his address gauche and his intentions—she trembled at the indignity—so extremely dishonourable?

  The answer taunted her before she’d even finished asking herself the question.

  Because the alternative was worse than death.

  She thought of fat Lord Slyther, with his moist skin and his repulsive breath, and trembled even more.

  Yet it wasn’t only Alverley’s deception that had landed her in this predicament. She had to take responsibility for her own gullibility. The normally careful, calculating Miss Fanny Brightwell had miscalculated, and wouldn’t her mother remind her that Lord Slyther was both just punishment and more than a girl like her could have hoped for?

  She would, and Fanny couldn’t bear it.

  “Fanny, I—” He was right behind her. Quickly, she spun away, her flimsy-soled slippers skidding on the gravel, her ankle giving way beneath her. She felt the brush of leaves, the scratch of branches, and thought of the pitiful sight she would make as her mother vented her fury upon her.

  Fanny was to have made the Brightwells’ fortunes. She amended this in the split second available for thought. Fanny had begged to be given this last chance before the ghastly alternative that would ensure the Brightwells’ survival…

  …but Fanny had failed.

  The ground rushed to meet her. So! This was to be the final indignity—to land in the dirt at his feet!

  She closed her eyes, throwing out her hands and tensing as she anticipated the pain, wishing the price of her failure could be similarly condensed.

  Instead, strong, unfamiliar bare arms scooped her up and an amused voice murmured in her ear, “Young lady, I think you’d be far safer tucked up in your own bed than consorting with this obviously unsatisfactory gentleman.”

  She was pinioned against a hard chest clad in fine linen. When she looked up, a pair of dark eyes glinted at her through the slits of his demi-mask. Instinctively, Fanny struggled, causing her rescuer to chuckle. “It seems your companion has bitten off more than he can chew.”

  His levity in the face of her humiliation, still so fresh, swept away the gratitude Fanny might otherwise have felt.

  “Put me down,” she demanded, as Alverley appeared beside the hanging lantern and, with tragic, bovine eyes, regarded her clasped to the stranger’s chest.

  “Your intervention, sir, is appreciated…” When the stranger made no move to set Fanny on her feet, Alverley’s voice became diffident. “However, we must rejoin our party. Please…put the lady down.”

  Was he afraid? For her? Her reputation? Or did Alverley fear for his own safety, since her saviour’s piratical costume revealed that this was a man who did not resort to padding to bolster his masculine attributes?

  The man who held her sounded amused. “I had gained the impression the young lady has no wish for your company, sir.”

  She was not going to deny it. Having realised the futility of her struggles, she could enjoy the intimate warmth he radiated. How different to feel a man’s arms around her, instead of Alverley’s, a boy’s…or Lord Slyther’s.

  She shuddered again and the stranger held her closer. “You are cold, madam, and this man has caused trouble enough.”

  Fanny could not make out his features clearly in the gathering dusk but his voice was rich with humour, his confidence far more appealing than Alverley’s post-adolescent arrogance. Alverley, who now asserted himself, shouting, “Sir, I must object!”

  She g
asped as Alverley sprang forward and she was swung wide, her bare arm feeling the brush of Alverley’s vainly grasping fingers before she was borne into the gloom. A crowd of revellers rounded the bend, sweeping Alverley into their midst as Fanny was carried in the opposite direction. She did not struggle as his shouts faded into the distance.

  “Shouldn’t you scream?” The stranger’s voice was conversational as he traversed the serpentine walk that led to the river.

  The strong beat of his heart through her fine muslin gown made Fanny’s beat all the more erratically, as he went on, “Isn’t that what ladies do when they’re kidnapped?”

  “I thought you were rescuing me.” Despite her uncertainty, she found his sardonic humour appealing. She consoled herself with the thought that indeed she need only scream and he would set her back upon her feet. She would be free.

  It was not a liberating thought. Free to tell her mother she had misjudged matters? Free to become an object of pity—if not ridicule—to her so-called friends?

  Clinging to him more tightly as he negotiated a hazard upon the footpath, she added primly, “Besides, bringing attention to my predicament might injure my reputation.”

  “While my attentions won’t?” They were by the river now. A short crossing would take them out of the gardens. Almost disappointed, she acknowledged she’d been in good hands after all. Her rescuer was going to put her in a hackney carriage when they got to the other side, rather than smuggle her into some secluded arbour and have his wicked way with her—whatever that actually meant.

  She’d never see him again. She’d certainly never know him if she did, even if perchance they met upon the dance floor at some entertainment before the end of the season, for his demi-mask concealed his features. She certainly would not know him in his evening clothes and yet his eyes…surely she’d know those anywhere.

  Signalling to a waiting ferryman by the river’s edge, her pirate saviour deposited her upon the bench of the barge, the corners of his mouth turning up at her obvious embarrassment when he sat so close that their thighs touched.

  “My Lady of Troy is an enigma,” he murmured, settling closer while he rearranged his sword and scabbard. “Cavalier enough of her reputation to cavort alone with gentlemen in secluded supper boxes and offer no resistance when a better offer comes along, but suddenly so prim.”

  Fanny’s objection was truncated by the jolt of the boat as it pushed off from the river bank, which threw her closer against her companion. Drawing back, she said icily, “I am not from the ranks of the Fashionably Impure, sir. Might I remind you that you tore me from the arms of a serious suitor—”

  “—whose marital criteria I believe you failed to meet—?”

  “His mama’s marital criteria!”

  “I beg your pardon.” He flashed her a smile before issuing instructions to the ferryman. He was a gentleman—his voice, his bearing left her in no doubt about that.

  Pressing herself against the side of the river craft, she ran her gaze the length of his leather-booted feet and calves, up his long, outstretched legs and lean hips and across the hard, flat chest against which she’d so recently been pressed.

  An admiring study of his strong, well-sculpted jaw had her locking gazes with him when she reached his treacle-brown eyes. She slid her own away in embarrassment. Confident eyes, she thought. Like hers, his demi-mask sufficiently concealed his identity for an amour such as this, but the eyes were pools of information and she was satisfied that his conveyed all the attributes she considered essential in a man—humour, decisiveness, confidence and, just briefly, kindness. He was not a swaggering ‘Johnny-take-all’. She was prepared to take a chance on that.

  The moon was high in the sky now, a golden orb above the revellers in masquerade who promenaded along the river’s edge. Others lolled in boats upon the water.

  Rather than shame, she felt shivers of excitement. Not for the events already played out with Alverley—they were best forgotten—but for the sudden anticipation of what might happen during the next few minutes in the river barge with this handsome stranger…if she was bold enough.

  She sucked in a breath. Would he kiss her? Did she want him to?

  Oh, yes!

  Having experienced her first kiss in Alverley’s thin-armed embrace this evening, she wasn’t sure such an unsatisfactory mingling of tongues and saliva deserved the title. But an opportunity had been handed to her on a platter. If Fanny was destined to become the wife of Lord Slyther, the handsome pirate beside her, she decided, would provide the benchmark of comparison.

  The voice of reason perched upon her shoulder.

  If Mama were ever to find out…

  She shuddered. If anyone at all were ever to find out.

  Yet how would they and what was her crime—if it could ever be laid at her door?

  Her companion studied her, an interested twist to his mouth, a curl of dark hair falling across his forehead in Byronic imitation.

  “How disappointing. Not a fair Cyprian? So if I offered you five shillings for a quick tumble you’d turn me down?”

  She stared at him, unsure she’d heard him correctly before her suppressed anticipation was swept away by outrage.

  “How dare you!” Any cautious, properly brought-up young lady would have considered the indignity of Alverley’s let-down infinitely preferable to a horribly compromising situation with a stranger. She was a fool!

  Fanny scrambled to her feet, causing the small vessel to rock perilously and the riverman to round on them with an angry curse.

  “Careful, or you’ll drown us all.” With another lazy smile her rescuer—or was he to be her ravisher, after all, by the time he was done with her?—tugged at her hand. Clumsily, she landed across his lap, her head thumping against his chest. So hard and broad. So unlike Alverley’s.

  Arms like steel bands encircled her upper body and knees as he held her tucked against him like a baby.

  Fanny realised she had behaved like a baby. He’d been teasing her. She pretended to be so worldly but in truth she knew nothing of men—at least of handsome men possessed of confidence and humour. Men who could offer her what she wanted—a pocket book that would please her mama, a title her sister and brother could trade upon and…

  Wistful longing for the seemingly unobtainable stayed her struggles as she stared up at him and his face fractured in her imagination before reassembling into the incarnation of all she could desire and more—a man who promised excitement and adventure at the very least.

  “Many people lose their nerve on the water”—his eyes glinted mere inches above her face with wicked pleasure—“and, while I’ve neglected to bring along my burnt feathers, a kiss works wonders for warding off the vapours.”

  Oh, she was tempted, but was this one more miscalculation?

  However, a demeaning struggle that might pitch them all into the Thames seemed an extreme reaction, Fanny decided, when this man’s close proximity was the antithesis of distasteful.

  Yes, the antithesis, she confirmed, her bones going soft as his long, elegant fingers caressed her hair, her throat and shoulders with surprising gentleness, for he had shifted her so her head rested in his lap. She gazed up at his face, with all the glory of the starlit sky behind him, closing her eyes as her companion contoured her décolletage with gentle fingertips, causing her mind to spin with wicked, sensuous thoughts.

  She would never accept Lord Slyther. Like a patient toad, he was waiting to crawl back out of the wings to repeat his offer of three months ago, revelling in the knowledge that Fanny was cornered.

  When the stranger’s hand brushed across her breast, she caught her breath.

  “The unworldly virgin is out for adventure,” her pirate lover murmured, lowering his head to whisper in her ear, “and, if I’m not to be accused of nefarious deeds, I think our encounter should end here.”

  The desolation of his withdrawal caused her to open her eyes and cry out, “My companion earlier this evening kissed me and it was h
orrible.”

  He tilted his head in enquiry.

  “You just promised to kiss me!”

  “I can’t promise it won’t be just as horrible.”

  She reached up and stroked the plane of his cheek, contouring his high cheekbones before resting her forefinger tentatively upon his lower lip. With a glint in his eye, he bit down gently and hot, lustful longing speared through her.

  “I’m prepared to take that risk.”

  “In that case, my bold ingénue…” He brought his mouth down to hers, murmuring against her lips, “Let me show you one of the things for which I am renowned.”

  He began gently, brushing his lips against her cheek, nose and lips with featherlight touches that seemed to promise more than they delivered.

  She wanted more. What harm could come from a lusty kiss and a quick fondling with no one the wiser? Tomorrow she would deport herself like a lady and venture forth to do her mother’s bidding. She would find herself the husband her mother demanded.

  Lord Slyther…

  Ugh…

  She sucked in the scent of the man who held her—fresh sweat and sandalwood—revelling in the wonderfully suffocating proximity of his body against hers.

  Oh, sweet heaven…that’s exactly where she was. Heaven, in the arms of a man who had brought her to life—for excitement had never before fizzed through her veins or curdled her juices like this.

  The gentle lapping of the water and the splash of the oars reminded her that their journey would soon be at an end. So would her sensory adventure—a brief flash of pleasure in an otherwise dried-up existence.

  Reaching up her hands, she pulled his face down to deepen the kiss. His dark, tousled hair, his full, poetic mouth, and the sardonic gleam in his treacle eyes made him the consummate lover of her imagination. A lover she could never have.