Temptations of a Wallflower

To Zack, who never doubts

Thank you, as always, to my agent, Kevan Lyon. Much gratitude to my editor, Nicole Fischer, as well as Caro Perny, Pam Jaffee, and the whole team at Avon Books. A special thank you to the Avon Books Art Department, for giving me the most incredible covers I have ever seen.

Thank you to Meredith Levy. You're amazing.

Conventional wisdom says that the Internet wastes time, and that it doesn't foster interpersonal relationships—but without the support, encouragement, and general awesomeness of my friends online, there is a high degree of likelihood that this book wouldn't have been written. Specifically, thanks to my Facebook misandrists, and to the Loop That Shall Not Be Named.

Thank you also to my #1k1hr folks, for helping me get this book written, including, but not limited to: Carolyn Crane, Cynthia Eden, Rhonda Helms, LB Gregg, Heather Lire, Judith Leger, and Katie Reus.

Thank you to Briana Proctor, Timitria Cozier-Bobb, Elizabeth Walker Blumenfeld, Lizabeth S. Tucker, Cecilia R. Rodriguez, Valerie Halfen, Kay Sturm, Pat Elliott, Crystal Holloway, Melody Brooke May, Tina Burns, and Carolyn Jewel for your advice on how to be a rake. Clearly, you know your rakes!

Many thanks to Julia Quinn, Sarah MacLean, Elizabeth Boyle, Laura Lee Guhrke, and Caroline Linden for guidance about titles.

In late summer, London sweltered. Worse—
the city grew exceedingly dull as the hot months dragged on. All my usual lovers had gone to the country, leaving behind boors with an appalling lack of knowledge of female anatomy. I decided that I would take my leave of London and seek pleasure somewhere in the green of the country. Thus resolved, with thoughts of lusty rustics in my mind, I had my trunks packed and set off in my carriage for a pastoral escape. Too intent on finding relief, I paid no heed to warnings of highwaymen who prowled the roads. Perhaps I should have given those warnings more regard . . .

The Highwayman's Seduction

London, 1816

T
oo much time had passed since Jeremy Cleland had last been in London. A few months in the country made quite a difference in a man's life. As Jeremy rode in his father's carriage to the family's Mayfair
mansion, he felt every inch the humble vicar that he'd become.

Streets seemed dizzyingly congested, sounds ricocheted like bullets from close-set buildings, and the pervasive smell of soot and smoke cloaked the avenues.

He didn't precisely
mind
all the sensory commotion. After all, he'd spent his youth traveling back and forth between London and various country estates. That included the Hertfordshire mansion that served as the seat of his father, the Earl of Hutton. Yet being the earl's third son had its advantages—and many burdens. Granted, the earldom had been gifted to Jeremy's father due to service to the Crown as the nation's moral paragon, but the impact of the title remained the same.

The carriage turned onto Berkeley Square, and it was such a marked contrast from Jeremy's little rural parish of Rosemead that he gave a strained laugh. What would Mr. Kinross, the church sexton, think of the soaring marble and stone mansions that housed dozens of servants but only one family? Likely Mr. Kinross would shake his head and spit tobacco onto the ground, muttering about citified gentry. Bad enough that the sexton already looked at Jeremy with suspicion. If the old man knew precisely what kind of wealth gleamed in the vicar's background, he'd never listen to a word Jeremy said, let alone attend his sermons.

Jeremy was getting closer now to Hutton House. As the distance shortened, concern churned in his gut. What had prompted his father to summon him from Devonshire? Father's letter had been opaque, revealing nothing. And, if Jeremy wanted to be perfectly honest—which vicars were supposed to be, anyway—he wasn't
precisely looking forward to seeing the earl again. Not the warmest or most effusive of men, his father. He took his title and responsibilities very seriously, which meant that his offspring were largely means to an end. But they were also extensions of the earl—his representatives to the world at large.

Jeremy didn't envy his brother John the obligation of being heir. Jeremy also didn't have the terrifying uncertainty of being second son, like his other brother, Mark. That left Jeremy the burden of embodying the earl's morals, and his father was a greater taskmaster than the Church.

In his early years, Jeremy hadn't known precisely what he wanted to do with his life—only that it involved helping people. So many charitable organizations needed figureheads and organizers that he had been certain he would take his place there. But his father had had other plans. The earl had made it clear that if Jeremy didn't go into the Church, his allowance would be reduced to nothing. With that threat, Jeremy hadn't possessed much choice but to do his father's bidding and become a vicar.

There was a positive side to it—he did get to help people, only without the freedom he'd dreamed of as a boy.

Upholding a scrupulously moral appearance remained his foremost obligation, serving as an example for not only everyone in his parish but also to the world at large.

Yet, to his highly provincial parishioners, trips to London weren't precisely considered virtuous.

Still, he couldn't deny his father, though he had no
idea what the earl wanted. Now he rode in a phenomenally expensive carriage, pulling up outside an extraordinarily old, costly home in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the world. Doubt assailed him. What did his father want with him now?

Long ago, Jeremy's closest companion had been his wild cousin Marwood. Yet the earl hadn't approved of the association and had forbidden Jeremy from seeing Marwood except at family gatherings. As always, the threat of disinheritance had been given. Too young to make his way in the world, Jeremy had done as his father had demanded. He hadn't liked it, but what choice had there been?

Beaten-in habits died hard. Years later, Jeremy still rushed to his father's bidding. His income from his living was modest—he could ill afford to refuse the earl, especially on a financial level.

When the vehicle stopped and a footman opened the door for him, Jeremy stepped down and smoothed the front of his clerical jacket. Compared to the liveried servants, he looked severe and dour.

Jeremy mounted the stairs and had barely raised his hand to the door before it opened and Jeffries, the butler, silently escorted him in.

Soaring marble archways comprised the foyer, designed to intimidate the visitor. Even though Jeremy had grown up in this very home, even he felt a little small and gauche as he gazed up at the crystal chandelier.

“My favorite son!” a female voice called out from the top of the winding staircase.

Any sensation of not belonging dissolved immedi
ately when Jeremy beheld his mother descending the stairs, her arms open.

When she stood before him, he kissed his mother on her cheek. “You say that to all three of us,” he murmured.

“Yes, but I mean it with you,” she answered with a smile.

“And you say
that,
too.” He took her small, powdery hands in his.

“I can't be accused of favoritism,” Lady Hutton replied, sniffing. “Though,” she added conspiratorially, “you certainly received the bounty of the looks. You're the image of your father. No wonder he stole my heart.” She sighed. “How the other girls envied me when he made his suit. I held him off, you know, just for appearance's sake, but I couldn't wait too long, lest he find another gel to take my place.”

Jeremy had heard this story his whole life, but he always indulged his mother. “As though any girl could replace you,” he answered, as he usually did.

Lady Hutton tapped him playfully on his arm. “I didn't realize the Church required vicars to flatter old women.”

“I am, in all things, scrupulously honest.” He bowed. “A hazard of the profession.”

“Oh, but you were ever a truthful boy,” she said with an almost despairing shake of her head. “Used to sneak off to go swimming in the middle of the night, then came running to us full of confession.”

He hadn't abandoned his habit of midnight swimming. The pull of the water along his body, the burn of his muscles, the moonlight and liquid isolation.
Sometimes he felt it was the only thing that kept him from descending into bored melancholy.

A vicar's life was, if anything, marked by quiet, solitary routine. The pinnacle of morality was a lonely place to be.

“You were marked for the Church from an early age, my darling,” his mother continued. “Your father wouldn't have it any other way.”

And she hadn't protested, either. “Fortunate, then, that I didn't become a lion tamer.”

“You have the souls of your parishioners to tame and guide,” Lady Hutton answered. “A much more noble and dangerous endeavor.”

The butler, standing nearby, coughed quietly.

“Oh, all right, Jeffries,” Lady Hutton said with a roll of her eyes. She sighed again. “
'Tis a sad day when a mother cannot spend five minutes with her son—whom she hasn't seen in an eternity, mind you.”

“I promise hours of unexpurgated time alone over tea,” Jeremy said. “After I see what Father wants.”

“He's in the study with Allam,” his mother replied with a wave of her hand. “Neither of them has said a word to me about this matter. But you know how those brothers can be. Silent as wolves.”

“Wolves howl, Mother.”

“Mute wolves, then.” She shooed him off. “Go on, then. See what he wants. The sooner you get that out of the way, the sooner we can talk. About finding you a wife, specifically.”

Jeremy fought the urge to roll his eyes. Marriage always beckoned. Wives were crucial for vicars, helping with the duties of the parish, but his needs and
desires also burned with an unseemly heat. Nightly, he prayed to withstand the fires of his own body's demands. He'd banked them for so long that they threatened to burn him from the inside out. As the son of the highly moral Earl of Hutton, Jeremy couldn't avail himself of actresses and demimondaines. And vicars certainly didn't. Which left him a seething, simmering volcano of need.

How likely would it be that he'd find a good, sweet, patient woman with a siren's sexual appetite? Not likely at all.

Loneliness had made itself too common in his life. Its constant emptiness was a hunger that could never be satisfied.

None of this would he tell his mother, of course. They might be close, but they weren't
that
close.

“This way, please,” the butler intoned.

“I know the way to the study, Jeffries,” he answered with a smile.

The servant bowed. “As you wish, Master Jeremy.”

With a last kiss for his mother, he headed toward the study.

An uneasy energy pulsed along Jeremy's neck as he contemplated what, exactly, necessitated the presence of his uncle, the Marquess of Allam. Perhaps it had to do with Allam's son, Cameron, Viscount Marwood. Recently, Marwood had married—a commoner who was also a
playwright,
of all things. Allam couldn't be happy about that.

Reaching the door to the study, Jeremy tapped lightly. His father's voice called out for him to enter.

Jeremy took a deep breath. Being called before his
father had never been a pleasant experience as a boy, and little had changed. Dread pooled coldly in his belly.

He stepped inside.

The room was paneled in dark wood, full of books and gravitas. An acre of desk occupied one corner; his uncle sat in front of it. His father stood behind the desk, a slim book in his hands.

Lord Hutton strode forward as Allam rose. Jeremy took turns shaking their hands and murmuring greetings. The two brothers held themselves with the same proud, upright bearing, and both wore their age remarkably well.

Jeremy did indeed feel as though he gazed at himself through the lens of time whenever he looked at his father. They both had the same long faces, the same bright blue eyes. Even, God help them, the same curly blond hair. Yet for some reason, women found their hair extremely charming, so Jeremy had little cause for complaint. Still, where Jeremy saw curiosity and openness in his own eyes, his father's were much harder, more demanding.

He couldn't help but feel that his father was sizing him up, taking his measure. The earl bragged to many about having a son in the Church—his virtuous son, the future archbishop. His father's scrutiny reminded Jeremy that he needed to remain constantly vigilant, lest his halo slip or tarnish.

“Had a good journey, I hope?” his father asked.

“Passable roads,” Jeremy answered, “made all the better by the services of your carriage.”

Lord Hutton nodded, though the excellence of his vehicles was never in doubt.

“Good to see you, my boy,” Allam said jovially, thumping Jeremy on his back.

At twenty-eight, Jeremy could hardly be called a boy anymore, but he accepted his uncle's compliments and returned them with his own. Genuine pleasure lit within him to see the older man again. “It's been too long,” he said. Marwood's wedding had been small, and quickly performed. There hadn't been time for Jeremy to come in from Rosemead for the event.

“Indeed it has. You must come for dinner,” Allam enjoined. “Though,” he added darkly, “I cannot guarantee the presence of my eldest son.”

“I'm sure he's quite busy,” Jeremy said diplomatically. “When my parishioners are newly married, the first few months keep them remarkably . . . occupied.”

His uncle's look darkened, and he grumbled under his breath.

His father asked, “A drink? Something to eat? It's a long way from Devonshire.”

“I promised Mother tea after our . . . meeting.”

“Good lad,” Lord Hutton said stiffly. He never offered praise without sounding uncomfortable.

“Perhaps we should get to it, Hutton,” Allam suggested.

“Yes, of course. Have a seat, please.”

“May I stand?” Jeremy asked. “My legs are cramped from the journey.” Though being tall made for an advantage when leading services, it had its drawbacks as well, including discomfort from long carriage rides. He now walked to the fire to warm himself.

“As you like.” The earl stood as well, though Allam, leaning on his cane, took a seat.

“You came a fair distance,” the earl said, “so I shall come right to the point.” He held up the book in his hand. “Are you familiar with the . . . I hesitate to call her an author . . . with the
person
known as the Lady of Dubious Quality?”

“Of course he wouldn't be,” Allam interjected before Jeremy could answer that he was, in fact, acquainted with her work. “The lad's a
vicar.
Why would he read such filth?”

Jeremy said nothing. Not very long ago, when he'd visited Cam to offer some counsel, his cousin had actually given him a copy of
The Highwayman's Seduction,
the latest erotic offering from the Lady of Dubious Quality. It was the first time Jeremy had ever heard of the woman or her novels—but not the last.

Underneath his bed, in a hidden, locked chest, he now possessed every single one of the Lady's books.