A Regency Courtesan's Pride: More Than a Mistress / The Rake's Inherited Courtesan

It had been a long time since she’d known the pleasure of a man. But she never expected to be attracted to a man like him, a nobleman who no doubt would mock her in his clubs and to his friends. Blast it. Pricked by her pride, she’d let him push her too far and been tempted by his beautiful body. What a fool.

Thank goodness he’d be gone in the morning and leave her in peace.

‘I’ll collect the rest of my winnings tomorrow,’ he murmured.

Her heart lurched.

Money. He meant the money. ‘It will be waiting for you,’ she said with a calm she did not feel.

She acknowledged his sweeping bow with an inclination of her head.

He closed the door softly behind him. She sat still, imagining him climbing the stairs. Would he walk slowly? Lingering, hoping she might follow? Or would he run, glad of his escape? Or had it all been one great joke?

Did he know she was his for the taking had he persisted? Did he know she’d lie awake all night, reliving his touch on her flesh?

Shame sent more heat to her face. Her stomach fell away. Would she never learn? She inhaled a deep breath, pushed to her feet and looked up at Grandfather’s portrait beside the hearth. A gentler one than that in the other room. ‘I certainly made a pig’s ear of that, didn’t I?’ No doubt more scandal would attach to her name when he gossiped to his friends.

Thank God, he would be gone in the morning.

Chapter Four (#ulink_6e70a359-04e6-59a3-8bd7-d8a6f952198f)

Voices. Female voices. As consciousness returned, Charlie lay still, eyes closed, his cold naked body rigid. One movement would be his downfall. A laugh chilled his soul.

‘Do you think he tupped the missus?’

‘Why else would she bring him home?’

Odd. Charlie cracked an eyelid. Peered at the two women at the end of a monstrous four-poster bed and remembered. He was in Yorkshire, not a war-torn field in Europe. He let go of his breath, relaxing his body.

The women were dressed modestly, like chambermaids, one a chubby young blonde with an inquisitive expression, the other a sallow-faced brunette past the first blush of youth. Their eyes perused his body as boldly as a farmer sizing up a bull at the market.

Flipping the sheet over his groin, Charlie sat up and smiled. ‘Good morning, ladies.’

The blonde one squeaked. The other put her hands on her hips. ‘Sorry, your lordship. We didn’t mean to wake you. Your fire is made up and we stopped to admire the

‘You should draw t’curtain,’ the younger one said defensively, ‘if you don’t want us looking.’

He choked back a laugh. Miss Draycott had the most unusual of staff. But then there was nothing about Merry Draycott that was usual.

The dark one lowered her lashes a fraction and her gaze to the sheet, which hid little of the evidence of his morning arousal. ‘I could help you out with that for a shilling.’

‘I wouldn’t charge you at all,’ the blonde said, licking her lips and smiling. ‘I’d bounce on that any day of t’week.’

Good God, what sort of house was this? Charlie tried to keep his jaw off his chest. ‘Thank you, but no.’

The hopeful smile faded. ‘You won’t say nowt to missus, will you? About us waking you. We are supposed to be quiet.’

With a sense of unreality, Charlie shook his head. ‘Thank you for the fire.’

The older of the two narrowed her gaze. ‘How come you left all the candles burning? Not scared of the dark, are you?’

Scared didn’t come close to describing the insidious panic he felt in the hours before dawn. He grinned. ‘I fell asleep reading.’ He gestured to the book on the night table, placed there in case of such questions.

‘Waste of good beeswax, that is,’ she muttered and flounced out of the room.

The other girl followed, lugging the coal bucket and a dustpan and brush.

Charlie collapsed against the pillows and let out a laugh. There was no mistaking the sort of fires those women preferred to light and it had nothing to do with hearths and coals.

He should have guessed from the style of Merry’s dress and her lapses of speech that the damned woman was a brothel keeper.

An abbess. And one with enemies? Overnight he’d been thinking about that broken axle.

Another look at her carriage was required, but this latest piece of information added to his suspicions about her supposed accident. It wasn’t one.

He glanced around the room. The candles augmented by light from the window illuminated a carved and tapestry-hung nightmare of a room in every shade of green. It looked worse than it had the previous evening.

He threw back the covers and slipped from the bed. He strode to the window. He’d left the curtains open, too, as well as the bed curtains. Unending white accounted for the unnatural light. He frowned at the sky. While the clouds seemed less lowering, he doubted the roads would be passable.

And he was stuck in a house of ill repute. A joke Robert would have loved. Charlie didn’t find it in the least bit humorous. She should have told him last night instead of her pretending to be respectable—well, almost respectable.

A vision of Merry’s lovely slender leg in his hand popped into his brain. The arousal that had tormented him the previous evening, and upon awakening, started anew. He cursed. He’d behaved like a perfect gentleman with a woman who kept a bawdy house. What a quixotic fool she must have thought him.

He turned away from the window at the sound of the chamber door opening. Brian with boots in hand. The lad bowed deeply. ‘Good morning, my lord. Mr Gribble said to tell you the snow on the moors is really deep.’

‘I guessed as much. You don’t need to stay. I can manage.’

The lad looked so crestfallen at the dismissal, Charlie relented. ‘Brush my claret-coloured coat and then iron my cravat, if you wouldn’t mind.’

The lad touched his forelock. ‘Reet gladly, my lord.’

In less than an hour, Charlie was hunching his shoulders against a wind stronger than the previous evening and holding fast to his hat brim. The drifting snow came close to the top of his boots as he slogged down a hill to the stables. Set around three sides of a square courtyard, the building offered welcome shelter from the gale. He entered through the first door he came to and almost bumped into a fellow coming out. Not a groom. Of course not. It was Miss Draycott in a man’s low-crowned hat and her mannish driving coat.

Charlie raised his hat and smiled. ‘Good morning. I didn’t expect to see you up and about at this early hour.’

After the startled look faded from her expression, she frowned. Not pleased to see him. ‘I didn’t think London dandies rose from their bed before noon.’

‘Mr Brummell has given us all a very bad reputation,’ Charlie said mournfully. He knocked the snow off his boots against the door frame. ‘I came to see how the horses were doing.’ No sense in alarming her, when he had nothing but vague suspicions.

‘Don’t you trust my servants to take proper care of your animals, my lord?’

My, her temper was ill today. ‘If I didn’t trust your servants, Miss Draycott, I would have come out here last night.’

She acknowledged the hit with a slight nod.

‘I also wondered about your team. How is that foreleg?’

Her shoulders slumped. ‘Not good. Jed poulticed it, but it is badly swollen.’