The Regency Season: Wicked Rakes: How to Disgrace a Lady / How to Ruin a Reputation

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Alixe seethed. She’d been caught out again by that scoundrel.

‘Yes, you do, you little fool.’ Merrick gave a warm chuckle. ‘Look at you, sitting there with your straight back and folded hands like a genteel angel all worried about propriety when moments ago you were the very devil in my arms and propriety be damned.’

Alixe’s face burned. She could not gainsay the truth. He was right. She’d been all hot abandon and it was positively disgraceful. She could not argue otherwise.

‘Come now,’ Merrick coaxed, ‘there’s no need to be ashamed. Why not admit you enjoy our lessons?’

‘There can be no more lessons, as you call them.’ Alixe made an attempt to return her attentions to the manuscript. He’d shown her his vulnerable side and she’d shown him hers. She was certain it was far more than either had intended.

Merrick was letting her stew. She didn’t dare look up, but she could hear him rifling through book pages and shuffling papers. She pretended to read and scribble some illegible notes in the margins and waited.

‘You do realise you’re in an enviable position to combine business with pleasure. You should make the most of it,’ Merrick said casually at last, not bothering to look away from his papers.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to explain that,’ Alixe replied with the aloofness that had staved off most of male London.

It didn’t freeze Merrick in the least. If anything, it had the opposite effect, encouraging him to indecently honest conversation.

‘Most young women would like to be in your position, privy to the secrets I can teach you.’ He leaned back again in his chair, his feet hooked about the front legs. ‘Perhaps your father has accidentally started a new fad: coaching one’s daughter in the ways of Eve.’

Alixe slammed down her notebook. She was angry at herself for having proved so gullible as to allow herself to be seduced. She was angry at her father for forcing her into this situation and most of all she was angry at Merrick, who refused to be anything but outrageous. ‘My father may have blackmailed you into this, but he did not expect you to take such liberties. You were only assigned to raise interest in me. I dare say that can be done without the “lessons” you’ve apparently designed for my edification.’

Merrick was thoughtful for a moment. ‘All right. No more lessons unless you ask for them. However, I do need to raise interest in you and you must allow me to do my duty—’

‘Without kissing, without excessive touching beyond what is expected in polite society,’ Alixe interrupted.

‘Agreed,’ Merrick said without hesitation.

‘Agreed,’ Alixe answered with equal swiftness. But deep down, her confidence faltered. She’d got her terms. There’d be no more moments like the one at the villa, like the one in front of the window. But she was going to pay—she just couldn’t determine how.

Or when.

Chapter Ten (#ud65efc4b-de5a-5629-872a-181afb2f8254)

Four days into their agreement, Alixe was regretting it. Merrick had kept his word. He’d not kissed her, not tempted her to wanton passions, at least not in any way she could take issue with. He’d kept his part of the agreement, holding to the letter of the proverbial law, if not the spirit of it.

Even the slightest of his touches at her elbow managed to send frissons of anticipation through her, reminding her of other, less-decent touches, and of possibilities that existed if she would only ask for them. Mostly those touches reminded her that this was all her fault. The frustration that plagued her late at night alone in bed was of her own doing.

He was doing it on purpose, but she couldn’t prove it, just as she couldn’t substantiate the niggling feeling that the other shoe still hadn’t dropped.

* * *

And then it did with a resounding clatter bright and early one morning when she’d least expected it. Of course, that was how it always happened. She should have known.

Alixe awoke to a sun-soaked room, well aware that today held both excitement and danger. Today was the day she was to take her completed translation to Vicar Daniels and help set up the historical society’s display for tomorrow’s fair in the village. That was the exciting part. The danger was what the fair stood for—a day closer to the departure to London and the fate that awaited her there.

She was keenly aware the house party had reached its zenith and was careening towards its conclusion: the fair in the village followed two days later by her mother’s much-anticipated midsummer ball. And she had failed to stop it—not the ball, but her imminent departure.

It wasn’t all she’d failed at. She’d failed to shake Merrick from her side and where she’d failed, he’d succeeded magnificently. She might not be the Toast of London yet, but she’d become the Toast of the house party. Merrick’s presence at her side ensured a heightened interest in her that not even her plain, unobtrusive garb could counteract. Being in his company made her visible to others.

She had not noticed until it was too late that he’d orchestrated their days into an easy pattern—mornings spent in the quiet seclusion of the library working on the manuscript where they were joined at times by Jamie or Ashe pursuing their own projects. During the afternoons, she and Merrick were taken up with various groups until no one even considered inviting Merrick without her. They played lawn bowls with Riordan and the young bucks he’d gathered whom he felt met his standard of debauchery. There was croquet and a badminton match against Ashe and Mrs Whitely. Merrick cheered from the sidelines for her at an impromptu archery contest among the young ladies and he saw to it that she stood beside him while he and Ashe engaged a pair of bragging riflemen in a friendly competition of marksmanship.

She had never lived like this before. She’d never allowed herself to as part of her self-imposed exile from society. She was discovering it was fun to be the centre of a group, to play and to laugh. Most of all it was fun to be with Merrick and it was easy to forget why he was with her.

Such forgetfulness was her biggest failure. He was luring her to London and then he’d disappear when his job was done. It had to stop. Today would be a day to start afresh in her campaign of resistance. The first thing to do was get dressed. She had a dress in mind, a sallow-yellow muslin that did nothing for her complexion.