1884
f all the chits in England his nonsensical brother could have gone lovesick over, Lady Boadicea Harrington was, indisputably, the most unsuitable. Spencer had never been more certain of it than the moment he caught her in his library with a bawdy book in her hand.
Oh, she’d disguised the tripe in a pretty, embroidered cover. The ordinary observer would never guess the contents of the small book she’d held nestled in her elegant, fine-boned hands. But she’d dropped it when he startled her from her rapt reading.
Naturally, he’d played the gentleman despite his acute dislike of her. He’d known without a doubt that she was trouble. Everything about her—from her bold auburn hair to her vivid blue eyes and her beauty so singular that the first time he’d seen her at close proximity, a jolt had gone straight through him—yes, everything about her was in bad taste.
She flirted with each able man in her vicinity. She smiled too much. She laughed too loudly. She was gauche and opinionated. Even her dress, a dark scarlet satin trimmed with velvet rosettes, was far too attention-seizing and daring for an unmarried lady. Fresh from Paris unless he missed his guess, the gown hugged her body as though fashioned to bedevil any poor sod who gazed upon her in it.
But he wouldn’t think of the gown now. Nor her perfectly shaped mouth with the tiny beauty mark offset to the right like a planet in orbit around a blazing sun. And he most certainly would not contemplate the sudden snug fit of his trousers as the scent of her, jasmine and lily of the valley, hit him with the force of a blow to the gut.
Dear God. He could not possibly be aroused by such a creature. No. He was not.
Spencer forced himself to read another sentence in the small volume he held in his hands, just to be certain he hadn’t misjudged.
I was well-pleased at the tumescence of the shaft I held in my hand.
Jesus Christ. He snapped the book closed and pinned Lady Boadicea with the most cutting glare he could manage. “Lady Boadicea, you are trespassing in my personal library.”
A charming flush traced her cheeks. Her eyes were wide upon him, attempting, it seemed to him, to judge precisely how much of the obscene drivel he’d read. “Your Grace, please forgive me. I do have a tendency to wander, and I’m afraid the beckoning sight of a fire and these lovely windows proved too much of a temptation to resist. I hadn’t realized, of course, that it was your private library.”
Damn it, that flush on her skin went down her throat and disappeared beneath her décolletage, making him wonder if even her lush breasts were tinged pink. Bloody hell, this wouldn’t do.
His brows snapped together in a frown. “See that you do not come here alone again, my lady. Not only is it most improper, but I treasure my solitude.”
“I have heard, Your Grace.” She held out her hand impolitely. “Once again, I do offer my sincerest apologies. If you’ll just return my book to me, I’ll be on my way.”
She had heard. He stiffened, wondering what else she’d heard. The whispers about him seemed to always abound, regardless of how much he tried to remain above reproach.
“You heard?” he repeated, unable to keep the displeasure from his voice. He despised being the target of others’ conjecture above all else.
Lady Boadicea blinked at him, a tentative smile curving that beautiful mouth of hers. “Why yes, from Lord Harry of course. Don’t worry. I shan’t tell a soul.”
Bloody hell. He didn’t need her promises. And he damn well didn’t need her smile. “Forgive me if your assertion is far from reassuring, my lady.” His tone was deliberately frigid and forbidding.
He’d feared her unacceptability from the moment Harry had requested he extend an invitation to their annual Boswell Manor house party for Lady Boadicea and her sister and brother-in-law, the Marchioness and Marquis of Thornton. But Thornton was a potential political ally for Harry, and Spencer had relented on that account alone.
Look what good his equanimity had done him.
“Make of it what you will,” the chit dared to snap at him in dismissive tones now, her hand still stretched out in anticipation of the lecherous volume he had no intention of returning to her. “My book, if you please, Your Grace?”
He tucked the slim volume inside his jacket. “No. I don’t think I’ll be relinquishing it.”
Her smile was gone, and some ridiculous part of him—a part he’d thought long buried—felt the loss like a physical ache in his chest. She considered him, lips pursed, her expression shifting to one of irritation. Her hand remained open, waiting. Rude, damn it all. Even if some far more ludicrous part of him contemplated running a finger over her palm just to see if the circle was as soft as it looked. To trace the lines bisecting it with his lips and tongue.
“I’m afraid I don’t see why you’re so unwilling to return my property to me, Your Grace.” She cast a sweeping glance around her. “Surely you have a more than ample supply of reading material at your fingertips?”
The baggage had more temerity than he’d imagined. “Indeed, though perhaps nothing quite so…edifying. I wonder what Lord and Lady Thornton would make of your reading proclivities, my lady.”
Her eyes flared. “Are you threatening me, Your Grace?”
“Perhaps.” It occurred to him that he could use this discovery to his advantage. “Here is what I propose, Lady Boadicea. I’ll hold on to your little book and keep it our secret. In return, you stay the hell away from Harry.”
At last, she withdrew her waiting hand, bringing it to her waist as she struck a defensive pose. “You mean to bribe me?”
Had he thought she possessed temerity? That wasn’t the proper word for the impudence emanating from the lush beauty before him. First, she’d dared to trespass upon his private library. Not to mention he’d caught the hoyden reading the sort of filth that should make any proper, unmarried female faint from horror. Instead of being duly chastised, she dared to challenge him. She stood, as fierce and defiant as the warrior queen who was her namesake.
No question of it.
The wench was as troublesome as she was comely.
He gritted his teeth. “Bribery is rather an ugly word, is it not? I prefer to think of it as bargaining to achieve our mutual ends. Keep away from my brother, and I’ll give your lecherous book back to you at the conclusion of the house party. No one ever need be made aware of your depraved nature, and Harry won’t find himself shackled to a wanton tart masquerading as a lady.”
The alluring pink that had clung to her skin vanished as she paled at his viciousness. He ought to be ashamed, he knew, to speak with such savage indifference to a lady, albeit one with unseemly tendencies and a vulgar reading habit. Had Millicent destroyed all the good in him so that there was nothing left save cruelty and ice? Or, a more troubling question prodded him, was there merely something about Lady Boadicea that unleashed the beast within him?
Lady Boadicea didn’t remain silent or pale for long. In a heartbeat, twin flags of angry red rose on her patrician cheekbones. “Did it ever occur to you that it’s Lord Harry’s prerogative who he decides to marry?” She paused. “Or, for that matter, that perhaps a wanton tart wouldn’t want to marry into a family with the reputation of yours?”
The arrow of her insult found its intended target with deadly accuracy. He stalked toward her, closing the distance between them before he could think better of it, and stared down into her upturned face. But she didn’t stare at him, as some in polite society did, with fear or suspicion. Every bit of her, from the irritatingly lustrous auburn locks that had been woven into an intricate series of braids, to the firm set of her sensual mouth, oozed defiance.
“The Marlow family is one of the wealthiest and most well-known families in England, madam,” he growled as another note of her airy scent swept over him. Tuberose, and damn if he didn’t actually go hard in his trousers right then and there.
She raised a brow, challenging him still, seemingly unmoved by his proximity. “Is it? I confess, I hadn’t realized.”
Without warning the words he’d read returned to him. I was well-pleased at the tumescence of the shaft I held in my hand. Bloody, bloody hell. The vulgar words and her scent entwined, inciting a fire in his veins that pulsed through him and shot straight to his groin. For a moment, he imagined that fine-boned, slender hand of hers—the one that had awaited her book’s return—on his cock. Stroking.
What the hell was the matter with him? His brother was wearing his heart on his sleeve for the vixen. Yet here he stood, the Duke of Bainbridge, a man who had not wanted any woman in three goddamn years, fantasizing about her. A minx who was altogether unacceptable in every way, who read obscene books in his bloody library and dared to defy him, whose very name was as ridiculous and fierce and lovely as the rest of her. Hadn’t the last few years taught him anything?
The familiar coil of resentment and bitterness tightened within him as memories of Millicent returned to him again, chasing lust back into the dark recesses of his soul like Cerberus. He could control himself. His time of penance had cured him of the need to fulfill his desire.
He sneered down at her. “Hundreds of ladies would do anything to marry Lord Harry, and any one of them would be far more deserving of being his bride than you.”
But she refused to stand down like any rational, well-bred miss in her place would. Instead, her eyes flashed up at him. Her chin upturned with stubborn firmness. “Then perhaps he ought to ask for one of their hands, for the very last thing I should like to do is marry a man with such an insufferable nodcock for a brother. Kindly return my book to me and go browbeat someone else with the misfortune of being beneath your roof.”
He didn’t bloody believe her. She still wanted the book. Still believed she could best him. Still tried him at every turn, as though she were in the right and he was the interloper here on his own turf.
“No,” he snapped. “Now get the hell out of my library and consider yourself lucky I don’t take this book and your behavior both to Lord and Lady Thornton.”
“Very well,” she said grimly.
But if he’d thought she had at long last chosen to show him deference and humbly go on her way, he was wrong. For in the next instant, she closed the final step between them. Her face was so near he detected a smattering of bewitching freckles over the bridge of her nose. Her full skirts swished against his trousers, and his cock went hard all over again.
“My lady,” he warned tightly.
“Oh do shut up,” she told him, and then she locked her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.