Her Secret Affair
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Contents
With love to Greg and Alisa Dawson and their two heroes in the making, Christopher and Will.
Acknowledgments
As always, my gratitude goes to Jennifer Enderlin, editor extraordinaire, for believing in this book and making it even better …
To Helen Breitwieser, for being a superb advocate of my work …
And to my fearless and peerless critique group, Susan Wiggs, Betty Traylor Gyenes, Christina Dodd, and Joyce Bell, for providing the very best in advice, support, brainstorming, and most of all, friendship.
Author Note
In my last novel,
Once Upon A Scandal,
an excerpt from this book appeared under the title of
The Venus Touch.
I wanted you to know that
Her Secret Affair
is that very same book; only the title has been changed. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
London, 1822
He would teach her a lesson she would never forget.
Standing in the gloom beneath a plane tree, he scrutinized her house. It didn’t look like a brothel. Situated on a quiet street, the town house was built of the same pale stone as its neighbors. Rain scoured the tall windows and sluiced down the fluted columns that flanked the porch. Three granite steps led up to a discreet white door, its brass knocker gleaming in the twilight. From time to time, the lace curtains showed shadows of people moving inside the lighted, ground-floor rooms.
According to his spy, the harlots would be eating dinner. Upstairs, the closed draperies shut out all but a glimmering of candlelight in one room.
Her
room.
A cold sense of purpose consumed him. He wanted no witness to their meeting. He would wait in her boudoir and use the element of surprise …
He pivoted on his boot heel and crossed the wet cobblestones. Raindrops flew from his caped overcoat. A carriage rattled past, harness jingling and wheels clattering. He averted his face, then ducked into the mews behind the row of town houses.
Shadows darkened the narrow passage, and the odors of rubbish and droppings tainted the damp air. The stamping of a hoof came from inside a stable. At the third house, he spied the plain wooden door that marked the servants’ entrance.
The knob turned easily and he stepped inside. He paused, orienting himself in the murky corridor. A faint, musky aroma hinted at decadent pleasures. From the front of the house came the clink of cutlery, the whining complaint of a woman, and the shrill laughter of another. To his left lay the door to the basement kitchen; he could smell the stench of boiled cabbage and fried fish. The door to his right hid the stairwell, and he mounted the steep steps in the unlit shaft.
In the second-floor passageway, lewd paintings cluttered the walls. A golden arm of light beckoned him toward an open doorway.
He walked quickly, quietly. He would take her unawares when she returned from dinner. He would put an end to her plans once and for all.
Stepping through the portal, he stopped dead.
She was
here.
At the dressing table, his quarry sat on a gold-fringed stool. The hissing of the coal fire must have masked his footfalls, for she did not notice his presence. Or perhaps she was too absorbed in grooming her hair.
She looked young, no more than eighteen. Not that her age mattered; she was old enough in the ways of corruption. And like others of her calling, Miss Isabel Darling was an expert at controlling men.
But for once she had met her match.
She admired herself in the oval mirror, turning her head this way and that, her eyes half closed as if she were entranced by her own beauty. Russet strands blazed amid the rich brown mass that curled down past her waist. Each stroke of the brush lifted her hair, teasing him with glimpses of a curvaceous form clad in a copper silk wrapper.
His body responded with untimely appetite. His blood heated and his loins tightened. With senseless greed, he wanted to abandon his mission, to avail himself of her services instead.
Damn her.
He flexed his fingers and walked into the boudoir, his boots making no sound on the plush rose-pink carpet. An opened door in the far wall revealed a room dominated by a four-poster bed with a mirrored headboard and gaudy gold hangings. The bed where she serviced her customers.
He stopped directly behind her. His thin, black kid gloves descended to her shoulders, his fingers curling lightly into her tender flesh. Her skin felt like a babe’s, warm and satiny and unblemished.
Her brush froze in mid-stroke, and her startled gaze flew to his in the gilt-framed mirror. Her eyes were wide and sherry-brown, fringed by thick lashes.
She gasped, her bosom lifting, luring his attention downward. He leaned closer, drawn to the feast of her breasts. Though it might earn him a place in hell, he wanted to taste her—
With a wild cry, she pivoted on the stool. The hairbrush flashed out and whacked him in the ribs. The blow thundered through his chest. Her face fierce with savagery, she whipped her arm back for another strike.
He seized her wrist. “I wouldn’t do that, Miss Darling.”
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Who let you in here?”
“I showed myself in.”
She jerked against his grip. “Get out. Before I scream.”
“Go ahead. The other women are too far away to hear.”
He could sense her fear. It was there in the flaring of her slim nose and the trembling of her lips. He relished his power over her. One sharp twist and he could break the fragile bones of her wrist. He could punish her for what she had done. For what she intended to do.
He pried the brush from her fingers and set it down on the dressing table. Then he planted his hands on either side of her and murmured into her ear, “That’s no way to treat a guest. It’s bad for business.”
Isabel Darling reared back and blinked warily. “I don’t know who you are, but I did not invite you here. This house is closed.”
“Not to the Duke of Lynwood.”
“The duke—?” Brazenly direct, she looked him up and down—white cravat and caped greatcoat, tan breeches, and polished Hessians. She gave a toss of her head, causing her long, wavy hair to shift around her shapely figure, brushing places that iron control denied him. “You’re too young to be His Grace. Too … too…”
“Civilized,” he said with a note of derision. She couldn’t begin to fathom how different he and his sire were.
Isabel Darling sat watching him. “You’re Lynwood’s son,” she said slowly. “You’re Justin Culver. Earl of Kern.”
He stood back, acknowledging her words with a mocking bow. “I see you’ve done your research.”
She looked into the mirror and deftly wound her hair into a loose topknot, securing the luxuriant dark curls with tortoiseshell pins. The utter femininity of her action bewitched him. The urge to press his lips to her soft skin warred with his sense of purpose. “Go away,” she said. “My business is with Lynwood.”
“Your business is with me. My father is indisposed, and I am handling his affairs.”
“This is a matter of some delicacy,” she said, clasping her hands on the dressing table. “I’m willing to wait until I can speak to the duke.”
“No. We’ll settle things now.”
“On the contrary, I must insist—”
“Insist all you like, Miss Darling. It will do you no good.” Kern spoke in an uncompromising tone. “I’ve read those bogus memoirs—or at least the portion you sent to him.”
She countered his gaze with a frigid glare of her own. “Do you always open letters marked ‘Private and Confidential’? It is not the honorable thing to do.” Turning from him, she fussed with her hair again. “Now go away.”
Kern’s chest throbbed with bottled-up rage. She would never see his father. Nor would anyone outside his family.
Controlling his temper, he leaned down, scowling at her in the mirror. “Heed me well,” he stated. “You’ll deal with me, and me alone. I’ll wager you didn’t bargain on
that
when you put together your vicious little scheme.”
For the length of several heartbeats, Isabel Darling stared at his reflection. An aura of startled purity haloed her. Then a sultry smile transformed her face, banishing the illusion of innocence.
She rose gracefully from the stool, a dainty woman who barely reached his collarbone. As she walked away from him, her hips undulated with subtle sensuality. The coppery sheath did not reveal so much of her slim figure as he’d expected. Yet Isabel Darling embodied male fantasies.
His
fantasies.
“Say what you have come here to say, then,” she murmured.
“You are in possession of an obscene work involving my father. If you dare to publish it, I shall see you arrested for libel.”
“Prove the memoirs false, then. That will make for a lively court case indeed, m’lord.”
He stood very still, hating her audacity and hating even more to admit she was right. Isabel Darling possessed the means to sully his good name, to make his father a laughingstock, to subject his family to gossip and ostracism. And her proposition could not have come at a worse time.
“His Grace misused my mother,” Miss Darling went on, picking up a pink feather boa from the chaise and caressing the plumage. “Everyone shall know of his vile behavior. Unless, of course, you comply with my request.”
“Request.” Kern let out a harsh laugh. “Extortion is more the word.”
“
Is
that the word?” She tapped her forefinger against her small chin. “Hmm. I should call it justice.”
“Justice? You think to coerce my father into sponsoring you. To pass
you
off as a lady. To present a strumpet’s bastard to the
ton.
”
Her gaze was unwavering, shameless. “Yes.”
Kern paced the over-furnished boudoir, loathing the dissipated life it represented. The carnality
she
represented—the pain of broken lives, the stigma of degradation and dishonor. “That is ludicrous. You have no breeding. You don’t belong in polite society.”
“It is no more ludicrous than
your
father mincing about at the royal court, pretending to be respectable.”
“His Grace of Lynwood has the blood of kings flowing through his veins.”
“And the lust of a lecher flowing through his…” She paused delicately. “Well, you know what.”
Her reproachful demeanor angered him. She acted as if she—and her mother—had been wronged. Kern slashed his hand downward. “Your mother was a whore. She did what whores are paid to do.”
Miss Darling paled, but held her chin high. Her small white fingers gripped the feather boa. “And who pays
you
to be a self-righteous snob, sir?”
“Very amusing. How much gold will it take to buy your silence?”
“I do not want your money. Entree to society will suffice.”
“Where you can dupe some rich fool into marrying you? I think not.”
Though she gazed steadily at him, he had the impression of some deeper purpose in her, secrets he could not fathom. “Why shouldn’t I marry well?” she asked. “I want the life that was denied to my mother. She was a penniless gentlewoman seduced by Lynwood. And then abandoned to her fate.”
