Craving the Rake's Touch

“You’re right. I must choose carefully even if it must be quickly. I don’t know them, not like a man would know them. But you do.” She stopped her stalking and fixed him with a hard stare, like a schoolmaster who had come up with the divine punishment for an errant student. She tapped thoughtfully against her chin in contemplation and Benedict knew before she spoke he wasn’t going to like this.

“You’re going to help me. You’re going to tell me everything about each one of them and I’ll weigh the pros and cons. Dinner is at seven. I’ll see you then for round one.”

Benedict groaned as she swept past him in a froth of tulle and rosewater. This wasn’t punishment, this was purgatory.

Chapter Three (#ulink_68db9ae9-77f0-5d4c-934b-8ac03e07cf05)

Why the hell had he ever agreed to such a request? Benedict shoved off the desk and began to pace the room, his body filled with restless, frustrated energy. He knew why.

He’d never really gotten over Sarah, no matter how hard he’d tried, and oh, how he’d tried. The gossips weren’t far wrong when they said he’d bedded over two hundred women. The tally might not be two hundred, but it was close. Sometimes he went for a string of weeks with a new woman every night, but to no avail. None of them took. None of them could erase the memory of Sarah in his arms.

And yet, despite those efforts of near epic proportion, he’d not hesitated to set all that aside when he’d learned of the impending scandal. He could tell himself it had been because of his promise to Ren, but that would be something of a lie.

When he’d jumped on his horse this morning with a hastily packed valise, leaving a wake of broken appointments behind him, his one thought had not been “inform Sarah of impending doom.” It had been “save Sarah.” He’d had no plan. He only knew he had to reach her before the scandal did. He had to give her time to prepare and if that failed he was prepared to do what was necessary, what he’d wanted to do all those years ago before her father had thrown his suit in his face. Then he’d walked into the drawing room and seen all those men thinking they could claim his Sarah and her encouraging it in that apple-green tea gown. She was lovelier than his memories had allowed; her hair richer, her eyes bluer, her laugh more alluring, her gestures more graceful. Every man in the room wanted her and his anger had stirred.

Frankly, more had stirred than his anger. His desire to claim, to possess, had roused. The primal man in him had wanted to toss her over his shoulder and carry her out of there, had wanted to lay her down and strip that gown off her, had wanted to stake that claim in the most blatant ways a man can possess a woman, to show her what she was giving up, what she was risking by bartering herself in a hasty marriage for short-term gains.

He’d meant it when he’d said she was putting herself in a dangerous position. Marriage in Town was permanent. Marriage not only gave a man rights to a woman’s reputation, her family and her connections, but it also gave him rights to her bed and to her body. He would not allow Sarah to surrender those things carelessly, not when her father had been so judicious in protecting them.