How to Sin Successfully (Rakes Beyond Redemption)

by Scott, Bronwyn

  Her challenge made him angry. Well, good. This was one situation he couldn’t charm his way out of with a wink and a smile. His gaze was dark when he looked her way, his blue eyes veiled, his usually transparent soul obscured. He shook his head. ‘Any of it—I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.’

  By that, she knew he meant more than what had happened between them. The room went still, as if his words had sucked all the air, all the life out of it.

  ‘Young women want a paragon, they want this.’ With a fluid movement, Riordan pulled off the tarp to reveal the portrait of a young man who looked vaguely familiar: the dark hair, the blue eyes, the smile. The features were the same as Riordan’s and yet not the same at all.

  Maura stared. She’d never mistake the man in the portrait for Lord Chatham.

  His eyes weren’t nearly lively enough to compete with Lord Chatham’s dancing sapphires. His smile was not mischievous enough, his hair too perfect against Riordan’s ruffled unruliness. This was no early version of Riordan as he’d been in his youth. All at once she knew. ‘This is Elliott. This is your brother.’

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on the painting. ‘It was one of the last I did before I went to Italy. He would have been twenty-five.’

  ‘Your work is good.’ Maura studied the detail evident in the portrait right down to the pattern of the waistcoat peeping ever so briefly out from under the coat with its buttons. The work was excellent, in fact, and it made her wonder a thousand things about the man who stood beside her. It had always been the wonder, the intrigue about him that had drawn her. This was dangerous ground, to let herself be intrigued again. Even when she thought she knew the sum of him, there was another layer revealed.

  ‘Elliott was the ideal earl: handsome but not audacious, immaculate without being fussy, authoritative without being tyrannical. He knew how to balance all things against each other for maximum benefit. Everyone loved him.’

  She heard a wealth of meaning in those statements. ‘People like you, too.’

  He chuckled at that. ‘Thank you for your validation. People like me well enough, but for reasons I’m ashamed to admit in a lady’s company.’ He paused, his jaw working as he debated something in his mind. His jaw tightened.

  Whatever it was, he’d decided.

  ‘It’s true, Maura. I’m awful. Do you know where I was when the news came?’

  It was a rhetorical question. Maura waited. ‘I was at the Academy art show with the express purpose of seducing Lady Meacham. We were standing in front of Turner’s latest and I was stroking her arm. I’d just closed the deal, so to speak.’ He drew a breath. ‘You see, I’m awful.’

  The admission stunned her. It was patently false. ‘Flawed, maybe, as we all are, but you’re not awful,’ Maura argued.

  ‘How would you know? Have you met a truly awful man?’

  She held his eyes. ‘I have and you are not awful.’ It was the most she’d told him about herself, her real self.

  ‘I shouldn’t have even told you these things.’

  She laughed softly to ease his angst. ‘Don’t fear for my sensitivities. I’m not as innocent as all that. I’m well aware of the inclinations of men.’ There were layers to her, too. She was tempted to let it all spill out, how she’d run out days before her wedding, how Wildeham had pawed at her every chance he got, the horrid things he’d said to her, describing what he’d do to her once they were married, how it was such a horrible life to contemplate she’d preferred running away and giving up the life of a lady for the anonymity of a governess. But she didn’t dare say any more.

  ‘That doesn’t make you less of a lady, Maura.’

  Maura blushed. ‘That is generous of you.’ He had a way of making her feel special. She wondered if he meant it.

  Riordan looked back to the portrait. ‘The question that haunts me is this—with all his perfections, why did Elliott die? It should have been me. I’m reckless. I’ve been in more dangerous races than I can count.’ He couldn’t look at her as he spoke. She understood what it cost him to speak the words out loud.

  ‘Things happen, people take ill,’ Maura began, groping for the familiar comforts people offered in the face of such tragedies. She knew before she began the words would be useless. The words had meant nothing to her when her parents had died.

  Riordan shook his head, his tone harsh as he dismissed her platitudes. ‘He took his own life. Polite society called it a self-inflicted bullet wound to the head, trying to pretty it up and make it sound like a hunting accident. The blunt truth of it is, the very proper, very perfect previous Earl of Chatham committed suicide.’

  Maura stared in horrified fascination at the portrait, pieces of incomplete ideas coming together. This must be one of the reasons the governesses had left. Suicide was a grievous sin no matter who did it. Some even thought it a curse or bad luck.

  ‘I never meant for something like that to happen, not to Elliott. I never wanted his title, never wanted to be the heir.’ Riordan pushed a hand through his hair.

  ‘You see, I was there with him just weeks before. He’d asked me to stay and delay my trip to London for a month. Usually we came up together. Since his death, I’ve often wondered—if I had stayed, would Elliott be alive? Could I have saved him if I hadn’t gone off to London to win a ridiculous wager over Lady Meacham?

  I think I could have.’

  His voice wavered, coming dangerously close to breaking. Layers, Maura thought again. He carried so much beneath his laugh and his merry eyes. He swallowed hard. ‘When I was in Sussex, I learned something disturbing. Two days before Elliott’s death, a relative, Viscount Vale, was in the area. He met with Elliott, but not at the house, which is why the servants didn’t report anything out of the ordinary. The foreman for our home farm happened to spot them out riding. Vale never came to the house afterwards, it was as though he didn’t want to be seen. The foreman said it all seemed very furtive and when he approached Elliott later, Elliott seemed distracted.’

  Riordan took up his seat once more beside her. ‘I wonder if that had something to do with it. Do you think I’m crazy? Am I seeing conspiracies where there are none?’

  She wanted to reach out and give him absolution, but that was not hers to give.

  He had to forgive himself before any words from her would have merit.

  ‘I think it’s natural to want to look for reasons. When we have reasons we can generate solutions and that creates a kind of understanding. When my parents died, I thought much the same thing,’ Maura said softly. ‘They were drowned in a freak boating accident. I was sixteen and I wondered if I’d gone with them that day, if I’d seen the boat from the shore, if I could have got help fast enough to save them, or maybe if I’d been with them they wouldn’t have gone out in the first place. I replayed any number of scenarios. But in the end I simply had to accept what was. I was alone except for my uncle’s family.’ Maura shrugged here to make light of it. ‘Much like you and your Aunt Sophie and Uncle Hamish.’

  Something moved in his eyes. ‘Oh, my mother is very much alive and well, living at a spa in Switzerland.’ He paused, waiting for the first shock to settle. She was a bit surprised. He’d not said either way, but she’d felt from the tone of their conversations that his mother had passed. ‘It was the price for her freedom, to leave discreetly and never come back. She was all too happy to pay it. She wanted my father’s title, he wanted her money and an heir or two. After they’d acquired those things the bubble was off the wine.’

  Maura nodded, unsure what the appropriate response was. They were both silent. Even Riordan was unsure now that the disclosure was out. ‘Forgive me, I’m surprising myself.’ Riordan looked down at his hands and her eyes followed his.

  He had beautiful hands, long-fingered and strong, perfect painter’s hands. ‘I’ve never told anyone that. People know, certainly, but not from me.’

  He reached out one of those hands and caressed her cheek. ‘You do that to people, Maura. You listen to them. Y
ou inspire their confidence and in turn their confidences. You inspire me.’ The charming gentleman was back, his blue eyes softening with desire. The dark earl with his family and its secrets was pushed offstage.

  Maura covered his hand with hers where it lay against her cheek. She had to stop this before it started. He wanted her, she could see it in his eyes. She wanted to believe him and resist him all at once, her mind and her heart torn between logic and desire.

  ‘Riordan, nothing can come of this.’ Her defence was a façade only and the words weren’t entirely true. Heartache would come of this.

  He nipped gently at her earlobe, his tongue tickling the conch of her ear.

  ‘Pleasure can come of this.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Pleasure’ was too small a word, far too inadequate a word as Riordan took her in his arms, lowering her back against the sofa. Fulfilment, loneliness banished, emptiness filled, those more aptly described what could come of this. He wanted Maura, needed Maura to fill the void inside. The profundity of that need overwhelmed him, claimed him, becoming the centre of his universe. Every kiss, every caress designed to worship her as his mouth took her breast, as his hands caressed her legs, removing stockings and pantalettes in their wake until she was bare to him, her skirts pushed up in provocative invitation over the curve of a bent knee.

  Her auburn curls were damp where he touched her, a wave of validation sweeping him. She wanted him, too, desired him, too, he wasn’t in this alone, swept away on a current of his own making. His hands bracketed her hips, his thumbs rested at the cradle of her pelvis as his mouth bent lower.

  She arched to him, her hands in his hair, fisted and tight against the tides sweeping her, the honesty of her passion pushing his own arousal to the brink. He growled her name, primal and low in his throat, his hands working his trousers.

  At last he sprang free and he broke from her long enough to shove his trousers past his hips, calling on the reserves of his self-control not to rush this, not to plunge into her and seek his own relief. In this room, in this moment nothing mattered—not Vale’s threats, not the burgeoning scandal, only giving Maura his all, in showing her the glorious possibilities between them.

  *

  This was magnificent and irrational. All capacity for thought had fled the moment his mouth had touched her, there was only the capacity to feel, to move with him, move to him. Maura shifted her hips, opening to him, revelling in the feel of him against her bare thigh, hot and hard. She was feasting on sensations and yet it wasn’t enough to fill her. Something more hovered on the horizon and she was hungry for it.

  The one thought that clung to her consciousness was the idea that had haunted her for days: it was not going to end well for her here. Her time was limited. The scandal had ensured no wife would tolerate her presence. Why shouldn’t she take the knowledge of passion and the memory of pleasure with her? In the life she’d chosen, she’d not get such a chance again.

  Riordan rose above her, the muscles of his arms straining beneath the loose cloth of his shirt, the mix of bare skin and fabric intoxicatingly masculine.

  Perspiration beaded his brow, a testament to his efforts, to his restraint, waiting for the right time. She thought fleetingly of the kite, of the lover who waited until the most final of moments to claim the ultimate pleasures. Then he was there, at the entrance to her core, seeking purchase. She opened to him, feeling herself stretch around him as he claimed her inch by inch until he was fully sheathed within. The newness of him brought a stab of pain. His movements halted, waiting for her to urge him on and she did. She’d come too far not to see this through, not to want to see this through, this miraculous feeling of being joined to another—not just another, of being joined with Riordan.

  He began to move, picking up a gentle rhythm that rocked them back and forth, growing in its intensity as she joined him. Her hips drove up to meet him, pushing them towards some inevitable, cataclysmic end that beckoned, honing their pleasure to the sharpness of a knife’s edge, each thrust taking them nearer to the completion they sought until at last they were there. Riordan gave a final thrust that catapulted her into a shattering ecstasy that left her exhausted and replete, the curiosity and the desire satisfied. He was there with her in that shattering darkness, his head resting against her neck, his breathing coming hard as the pleasure took him, and this was another source of satisfaction, to know they had journeyed to this incredible place together. The only word that came to mind was ‘extraordinary’. Simply extraordinary, and it described both the man and the experience. She dared to breathe the word in the darkness.

  Riordan raised his head ever so slightly and whispered, ‘Of course, Maura. You inspire me.’

  She laughed softly, a touch of the bittersweet encroaching on the moment.

  Extraordinary, perhaps, because of its singularity. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It could not happen again. It had only served to prove they were both right; heartache lay down this road she’d embarked upon, as did pleasure, although it had been more than that. Surely there must be a better word, but she could not think of it because Riordan had begun kissing her again, and the window for rational thought was closing once more, and what happened outside the room ceased to matter.

  *

  Baron Wildeham favoured his hostess with a smile. Lady Sarah Meacham was a lovely woman, all lush curves and knowledge. Her hand had lingered on his sleeve long enough to convey her message, which had been received—well received—as they talked of other things.

  ‘Good help is difficult to come by,’ she said. ‘I fully understand your dilemma.

  When we staffed our town house, I used Mrs Pendergast’s referral agency for some of the maids. She specialises in placing well-bred young women as ladies’

  maids or companions, governesses, too.’ She tapped him on the sleeve with her fan, trailing it down his arm and leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Of course, the agency is losing its edge these days. All six of Chatham’s governesses have come from there, including the latest one, the one that was at the dinner party.’ She gave him a worldly look. ‘Chatham’s aunt says the girl was there to round out numbers after a last-minute cancellation, but Chatham couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was in the papers this morning.’

  He’d have to catch up on his reading, not that Chatham’s scandal was of any interest to him. But what Lady Meacham said next was about to change his mind.

  ‘There was another incident today. I just heard about it from Lady Fellowes.

  Chatham took Miss Sussington to the zoo with his wards and the governess. He all but snubbed poor Miss Sussington while they were there. He’ll never get anyone decent to marry him now. He’s gone and lost his senses over a pretty red-haired chit out of nowhere.’

  ‘A redhead?’ Lady Meacham had all of his attention now. ‘Have you seen her?’

  Perhaps Lady Meacham could offer a full description before he went haring off on another goose chase.

  ‘No, I’ve not seen her.’ Lady Meacham sounded disappointed. But it was enough, Wildeham thought. He’d see what Mrs Pendergast had to say about her latest client tomorrow. After a drought in which nothing had turned up, at last there was a possibility.

  *

  Wildeham leaned over Mrs Pendergast’s desk. ‘Let me ask you again, did a woman meeting my description come here? We have good reason to believe she did.’ The ‘we’ in question was Paul Digby. He slouched in the corner of the office, his presence making it clear they were not leaving until they had answers.

  Wildeham continued. ‘You’re not telling us anything we don’t already suspect.

  If that doesn’t clear your conscience, perhaps my sharp little friend will.’ The steel of a knife glinted dangerously in one hand. The woman straightened, pressing her back as far against the chair as possible to get away from the blade.

  Finally, progress, Wildeham thought. He should have started with the knife in the first place. The agency owner had been a tough bird. O
ne name and he’d know if Chatham’s governess was his errant fiancée. He’d send Digby to check out the address. ‘Well, Mrs Pendergast, a name, if you please?’

  ‘You need to know this goes against my policy of privacy.’

  ‘And you need to know this blade can just as easily go against your throat. Or if you prefer, I can tell everyone your agency shelters women of a criminal nature.

  A virtuous woman doesn’t need to hide her past, does she?’

  ‘I do not harbour criminals!’ In her pricked pride, Mrs Pendergast forgot to be afraid for the moment.

  ‘You’re harbouring this one,’ Wildeham said with a sneer. ‘If it’s the girl we’re looking for, she’s wanted for breach of contract. She’s broken a legal agreement.’

  He brandished his blade close to her nose. ‘A name, Mrs Pendergast. I won’t ask again.’

  ‘Her name is Maura Caulfield and I sent her to Chatham House on Portland Square.’

  ‘Very good.’ Wildeham slid the knife back up his sleeve and smiled. ‘As you see, I can be reasonable. Good day, Mrs Pendergast.’

  Once outside and away from the agency, Wildeham and Digby assessed their options. Portland Square was high living, just the right sort of address for an earl.

  It was appearing more likely that Maura and Chatham’s governess were one and the same. His search was coming to a close but with one complication—how to take her without drawing attention to himself?

  He would definitely have to wait, watch and plan this all very carefully. Digby could do reconnaissance. Meanwhile, Wildeham decided he needed to learn all he could about Riordan Barrett, rake and newly coroneted earl. What had Lady Meacham said—he’d been through six governesses? Whatever did Barrett need governesses for? Recently discovered bastards? A man like him surely had a couple of those tucked away. With a reputation like Barrett’s there were bound to be skeletons in his closet. If he could rattle a few, he just might be able to shake Maura free without a fight.