Chapter 1
It was completely and utterly outrageous.
“I do beg your pardon,” replied Lady Amalie Victoria Weatherston, as she stared in astonishment at the four faces peering at her with varying degrees of scandalized expectations. Surely, they jested, and in quite poor taste.
“You heard us,” said Dorothea, Lady Wimbotton, their most illustrious and perhaps even the naughtiest widow of their small society of friends that met at least thrice per week at this particular townhouse in Russell Square.
Dorothea—Thea—stood, strolled over to the door of the drawing-room which had been left slightly ajar, and ensured it closed. “We can never be too careful,” she said with an airy laugh, before returning to her position on the plush sofa by the fire, casting Amalie an expectant stare.
Amalie took a careful sip of her ratafia, composing her scattered thoughts. Her heart pounded, the malaise, which had been dogging her, had simply vanished. How extremely alarming and all from a ridiculous suggestion which certainly should not even bear consideration. Her reaction would bear introspection later when she was alone in her bedchamber with her memories of him—Maximilian Langdon, Earl Kentwood, renowned as the author of the ton's most salacious erotic literature: A Guide to Passionate Romps between a Lord and his Lady.
“Are you not to answer us, Amalie,” Julianna—Jules—said, her dark blue eyes soft with amusement. “I told everyone we would have rendered you speechless!”
Amalie took another sip of her wine, or more like several unladylike gulps. “Surely, I misunderstood your meaning, Thea. Did you…did you say I must seduce London’s most profligate rake and make him my protector? That is what you all wanted to discuss with me so urgently?”
There it was again, that very nervous flutter stirring in her stomach. Or was it anticipation? Good heavens, surely not!
“Yes,” her four friends said in unison, startling her.
Clearly, they had had a tête-à-tête before her late arrival. Now she understood the probing stares she had received for the last hour, the insistence they had a discussion instead of playing their usual games of charades and cards while drinking wine, brandy, catching up on gossip, and sharing their dreams and hopes.
“Me…seduce Lord Kentwood?” she drawled with affected indifference, staring at her friends in bewildered amusement.
“Yes!”
Something unknown darted through her heart, a wonderful sense of thrill. Amalie was the most wretched of creatures to be so effortlessly intrigued. Entice London’s most depraved and wildly exciting lover?
“I cannot credit you would even suggest that I should undertake…such…such a…” words failed Amalie as she grappled with finding the right words to express her astonishment.
“You are the most suitable one of our group as you are without a protector,” Bess, Countess Hufford said, taking a careful sip of her wine, her deep brown eyes burning into Amalie.
The Countess was Amalie’s dearest friend, and Bess of all people knew how unhappy Amalie had been for the last few years. Bess also knew the truth of Amalie’s situation—that at five and twenty, she remained untouched, despite having been married for two years before being widowed.
Certainly, she hadn’t expected her closest friend to agree with this!
‘There are days I am so desperate to assuage the yawning emptiness which lingers inside me, Bess.’
Words Amalie had whispered to her friend only last week as they reposed on this very carpet, giggling like loons after drinking too much wine. They had been foxed, but it seemed her friend had taken Amalie’s wistful words to heart.
“I daresay no one needs to undertake this at all,” she said a bit primly. “To what end would I need to seduce Lord Kentwood or make myself open to his advances? I am not seeking to be the mistress to any lord.” How odd that Amalie felt this surge of anxiety. It is just a suggestion! “Melinda is also without a protector. Why has this suggestion not been put to her?”
The widowed baroness tossed her impeccably coiffed head, her lips forming a moue of displeasure. “I am without my dear Archibald because he decided that when he married, he would be faithful to his wife. He said after reading that book, he was certain he would not need a mistress, and that his lady wife would surely fulfill all his needs. If men are to start thinking such an unlikely thing, where would that leave us widows who are no longer interested in marriage but long for the freedom to have a lover at our beck and call?”
Amalie lowered her wine glass to the long French rococo table with a clink. “I hardly think it should matter that your lord has decided not to continue keeping you after he married, Melinda. When we founded our club and reveled in our wicked ways together, we had all agreed never to take a lover who is already married or try to keep up with him if he then takes a wife. When we were married, our lords had mistresses, and we did not like it. Did you forget that, darling?” she gently asked.
Melinda’s lower lip trembled, and it was with an evident effort she contained her emotions. “I did not forget it,” she said, swallowing, her light blue eyes smarting with tears.
She patted her elegant coiffure, knowing very well not a strand of her blonde hair was out of place. Melinda lowered her hands and folded them in her lap, lifting her chin to meet her friends' gazes “But I had hoped…I had ardently hoped that he would marry me.”
A hushed silence fell over their small gathering. Oh, Melinda.
She lifted her chin bravely. “But Archibald now believes he does not need me. That damnable book has led him to believe that a debutante would satisfy his carnal needs. How odiously silly! How can a woman of priggish manners and inexperience satisfy him in ways that I cannot?”
With an irritated huff she stood and made her way to the sideboard to pour brandy into a glass.
Amalie sipped her wine. “Well, I hardly need to seduce the author of A Guide to Passionate Romps between a Lord and his Lady. If such a concern truly matters, we only need to read the book to see what he suggests…and do it!”
Melinda swallowed the content of her glass in a long, unladylike swallow. “I’ve read it, and I daresay there is nothing there that I’ve not done with my Archibald. Nothing.” This bit was said on the saddest of sighs and a rueful twist of her lush mouth. “I really thought…he would have married me but it seems that the scandal which hovers around my name will remain forever.”
One of the things that had drawn them together a few years ago was that Society had not forgiven them for perceived infractions. Whatever scandal had touched them in the past had lingered like stubborn dirt on pristine white gloves.
The ton was a world of glamorous elegance and lavish extravagance, but an ugly fickleness and an unforgiving nature lingered within its belly. All of her friends had some scandal attached to their names, and they had formed a lovely group to support each other. They had created genuine friendships that had helped them weather so much together.
Amalie sighed. What the book actually did was give men permission to treat their wives as they would like to treat their mistresses. Most people of the ton thought it the most indelicate and scandalous piece of advice. She thought it rather…romantic.
Very sweet and romantic.