Bronwyn Scott's Sexy Regency Bundle: Pickpocket Countess / Grayson Prentiss's Seduction / Notorious Rake, Innocent Lady / Libertine Lord, Pickpocket Miss / The Viscount Claims His Bride

‘Undress me, Nora,’ he repeated, extending the unwritten contract again. He wanted her and he fully comprehended what the price of wanting her meant.

‘Patience, Brandon.’ Nora smiled, reaching for the placard of buttons on his ruined waistcoat. Now that the decision had been made, she was free, her passions could be hers alone tonight. There would be no worries about manipulation and hidden agendas. Just pleasure.

‘Brandon. I like the sound of that. I haven’t been simply Brandon for a long time.’ His breath caught as she slid back the waistcoat and the panels of his dirty white shirt, thumbing his nipples with her nails.

Her elation increased. He understood! Although it was for entirely different reasons, he too longed to simply be himself, to lay aside the strain of the earldom, of life as a peer of the realm, and to just be.

She bent to suckle him in imitation of his earlier overture. Her hands moved lower to release the fastenings of his trousers. She paused long enough for Brandon to pull off his boots and kick free of his clothes.

Naked and in the obvious throes of full arousal, Brandon held out his hand to her. ‘Come to bed with me, Nora.’

She did not miss the import of his words, all designed to set the rhythm of partnership this night. There would be no leading and following. There would be mutual explorations. They would learn each other’s bodies together with no artifice between them, and at the end of it would be completion.

Chapter Fourteen

The sun had been up for a scant hour when the door to Brandon’s study slammed open and bounced off the mahogany panelling of the wall.

Brandon looked up from the papers spread before him on the desk, startled by the intrusion. Jack filled the room, his elaborate cape swirling about his knees in fair imitation of a whirlwind. ‘What have you done? I’ve been away from your side for a mere twelve hours and now the village is on fire with news of your engagement. I hope you haven’t done anything foolish.’

Brandon leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head while he studied his friend’s chagrin. Calmly, he replied, ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you this early in the morning before, Jack. Sit down and settle yourself. You look as if you’ve been up all night.’ Brandon gestured to a chair and rang for coffee.

‘If I’ve been up all night, it’s your fault. I spent the wee hours in the public house, listening to the latest scandal brewing on your behalf. First, there were harrowing tales of The Cat hauling you out of the dinner party up in Cheetham as a hostage. Then Witherspoon and his friends launched into stories of your delectable betrothed who was beside herself with worry over your wounds.’ Jack gave a wry smile. ‘What wounds would those be?’

‘Self-inflicted.’ Brandon held up his cleanly bandaged hand.

‘It didn’t take me long to add up all the bits and deduce that the supposed intended was none other than The Cat. Deuce take it, Brandon, I’ve heard politics make for the most unusual bedfellows, but this is beyond the pale.’

Jack might have gone on with his scolding, but a footman entered with a tray of morning coffee and toast.

Brandon gathered his thoughts against Jack’s attack. Jack was only the first of many visitors who would demand explanations. He’d left Nora sleeping peacefully more than an hour ago in order to organise his defences, beginning with a missive to Manchester’s leading dressmaker.

Jack voiced the most pressing issue facing him as the servants left the room. ‘Now that you’ve got her, what are you going to do with her?’ Jack asked over the rim of his coffee cup.

‘I am going to play out the ruse and present her as my intended. It will buy some time until everything settles down.’ Brandon laid out the plan that had been taking shape in his head. ‘It’s the only way I can think of to get what I want.’

Jack gave a disbelieving guffaw. ‘If it were me voicing those sentiments, I’d know exactly how self-serving that plan was. Humour me, Brandon, and tell me what it is that you want? Somehow I don’t think the answer will be the mill progressing.’

‘I want to keep her safe. If she goes back to The Grange, she’ll try something else just as dangerous as that performance she gave last night at St John’s.’

‘And you worry that you might not be there to rescue her?’ Jack’s flippant tone softened. ‘You can’t keep her, you know that, don’t you? The Cat’s as wild as they come.’

‘Not all of us are as jaded as you, Jack. It’s not a character flaw to be less cynical.’

‘Still, it’s my job as your friend to disabuse you of any foolish notions you might harbour about taming The Cat. It’s what you called me up here for,’ Jack reminded him.

He gave Brandon a half-grin. ‘But I can see my preaching falls on deaf ears. You’ve got that “morning after” glow about you.’ Jack rose and put down his cup. ‘I’ll leave you to play house with your supposed betrothed and let your ruse run its course.’

Brandon drew a deep breath. ‘That’s another thing, Jack. I am not sure I want to see the ruse end.’

‘Well, it has to eventually, unless you actually—’ Jack broke off the sentence. Brandon was rewarded with a view of Jack at his most nonplussed, a feat few accomplished. ‘Are you suggesting you would make the relationship more permanent in nature? Make The Cat your Countess?’ Jack managed to get out when the initial shock passed.

‘Yes, my Countess. I have not forgotten,’ Brandon said placidly. ‘It is time I marry and look to my nursery.’

Jack resumed his seat, scrubbing at his face with his hands. ‘Yes, yes, of course it’s time to spring the parson’s mousetrap and all that. We’re getting no younger, but why couldn’t you find a nice débutante?’

Brandon hooted with disbelief. ‘A nice débutante? Listen to yourself, Jack. I could no more settle for a nice, white-gowned virgin half my age than you could. Just because I must marry to beget an heir doesn’t mean I’ll leg-shackle myself to the first débutante and her mother who come along. If that was the case, I would have married ages ago. There would have been no point in waiting. I have standards that must be met. I’ve waited to marry because no one has yet met them.’

‘Until now? Surely you’re not in love with her?’

‘Until now, no one has provoked me enough to think of a more permanent arrangement,’ Brandon said tentatively. ‘As for love, well, I’m not sure I’d know exactly what that is, having not ever truly been in love.’ He toyed with a pen, avoiding Jack’s knowing gaze. Too many people thought love could be feigned if the prize was large enough. He wanted more than that.

Brandon sighed heavily. ‘I’m probably not in love with Nora any more than she’s in love with me, but she makes me feel alive, Jack, in a way I’ve felt with no other. When I am with her, life is a grand romp.’

‘An illegal romp, don’t forget. Surely that can’t be one of your standards.’ Jack was all silky sarcasm. ‘I admit I find myself insanely curious as to what those standards might be. What does a thief have that an eligible girl of good family lacks?’ Jack stretched out his booted legs and waved his empty coffee cup toward the decanters collected on the polished sideboard. ‘I’ll need something stronger than coffee, however, to get through this.’

Brandon rose and obliged, pouring a healthy dose of brandy into the cup before adding a splash of coffee from the silver urn on the tray.

Jack sipped and sighed deeply. ‘Much better. Nothing like good French brandy to dull the shock that one’s best friend has gone completely mad. Now, about those standards.’

‘I want a wife who shares my causes and has a passion for the political welfare of the country.’ Brandon began ticking his standards off on his fingers. ‘I want a wife who cares for people. I want a wife who has a healthy appetite for the bedroom and a sense of adventure. I want a woman who wants me for myself, who looks at me and doesn’t see estates, titles, coronets and enormous pin allowances, but sees an intelligent man who thinks and has ideas of his own. In short, I want a woman who will be my partner in all aspects of my life.’

‘In short, you want a paragon. The irony of it all is that you think you’ve found this paragon in the notorious Cat of Manchester, who is robbing your investors blind and hobbling the very ideas for which you want to be appreciated,’ Jack asserted.

He shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t wish to demean your standards. We all want the paragon. In the end, we all settle for the débutante and the glimmer of hope that we might make her blank canvas into someone we can passably spend the rest of our lives with.’

‘I don’t settle,’ Brandon said with conviction.

Jack rubbed his hands on his thighs. ‘True enough. I’ve known you since our school days. You’ve always found a way to get what you want. It’s what I like about you, Brandon. I hope she’s worth it. For your sake, I hope she’s not upstairs stealing your mother’s damnable amethyst ring, again.’

Jack rose. ‘I will take my leave of your hospitality. When you decide you need me, I’ll be close by. Send word to the inn. In the interim, I wish you well.’

Nora sleepily groped the big bed, searching for the warmth of Brandon’s body. Her seeking hands found only cold sheets. Disappointingly, Brandon’s side of the bed was empty.

She pulled herself up into a sitting position and scanned the room, looking for traces of him. His clothes were gone. He was up and dressed.

She sighed heavily, flopping back against the down-filled pillows. It was better this way. She could be dressed and gone out the window before he knew it.

The two of them were unsuited for a long-term future together, as much as she wished that could be different. The realisation that she did wish it could be different struck her with such force she sat upright, trying to quell her rising emotion.

Her mind cruelly played the ‘what if’ game. What if there could be more than a short-term relationship between them? What if their passion was based on more than mutually shared lust? What if Brandon had been right, that they wanted the same things?

But they were only fantastical ‘what ifs’. In order for them to come true the world would have to be a far different place, a place where Earls married outlaws, a place where The Cat was not needed. That would be a perfect world indeed, an utter utopia where workers were treated fairly, where children did not risk limbs scavenging cotton droppings from under machines.

Those days were far away and probably beyond her lifetime, which might be a short one if she wasn’t careful. As much as her body yearned for Stockport, she had no business giving him her trust carte blanche. And really, Brandon had no business giving her his. He was in this game up to his neck and she wondered if he realised how deeply he played these days.

She could not allow him to develop a connection to her. It would be too dangerous for them both. She would end up dead. He would end up hurt if he developed a connection to her that could be traced or an attachment of an emotional nature. That was putting the cart before the horse. They had never spoken of love or affection last night or ever.

But sometimes sex did crazy things to a relationship, creating the illusion of something being there that wasn’t. Neither one of them could afford that delusion.