My Reckless Surrender

Chapter One

London

July 1827

I want to be your lover.”

Diana was shocked to hear herself issue the invitation. Even more shocked that she didn’t stumble over the bald words.

She’d never been sure she’d summon courage to speak them aloud. Yet they emerged clearly, firmly, without hesitation.

The statement sounded confident, as if she spent her life asking strangers into her bed.

Silence descended. Lengthened. Drew out to become uncomfortable.

She curbed the urge to twine her gloved hands together in her lap. Even though she was sick with nerves, she needed to appear strong, in control. Her heart battered the walls of her chest. She prayed its frantic gallop wasn’t audible in the quiet room.

You can do this, Diana.

On such a sultry summer afternoon, the veiling over her face was suffocating. Her teal dress clung more tightly than her usual clothing. Part of the plan, of course, but uncomfortable. She realized she gritted her teeth, and even though he couldn’t see her face, she relaxed her jaw.

The veils obscured her view. Nonetheless, her attention fixed unwaveringly on her target, sitting across the mahogany desk from her. Through the filmy barrier, she discerned little, apart from his height and dark hair.

Tarquin Vale. The Earl of Ashcroft.

Plutocrat. Collector. Devotee of reformist politics.

Rake. Debauchee. Hellspawn.

Unwitting key to a future greater than she’d dared dream was possible.

An instant before the electric pause became unbearable, the earl leaned back. She couldn’t see his expression in detail, but tension snapped in the heavy air, scented with the tang of old books, leather, and ink. He braced his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his elegant hands in front of him. An incongruously scholarly pose for a man she knew to be shallow and worldly.

“I…see,” he said slowly.

He had a deep voice, pleasant, musical. She imagined he employed it to devastating effect when he set out to seduce. Even sitting here, despising him, despising what she must do, that dark honey baritone rippled down her spine like a caress.

Taut with anticipation, she waited for him to say more, to agree. Reputation indicated he was an undiscriminating and profligate lover. No chance he’d refuse her. She was easy game.

Still, he sat in silence. Still, that strange tension crackled and sizzled. Like summer lightning trapped inside this opulent library with its beautifully bound books lining the walls, its gleaming celestial and terrestrial globes, its elaborately carved furniture.

Her lurid imagination had conjured many settings for her ruin. Bowers of sin draped in scarlet satin. Cabinets decorated with murals of fleshy nudes. A dark cellar crammed with instruments of gothic torture. A library wasn’t on the list.

So far, nothing had gone as she’d expected.

For a minute upon her arrival, she hadn’t even been sure Lord Ashcroft would see her. His butler looked surprised when she asked for his lordship. Although a libertine like Ashcroft must be used to unaccompanied, unidentified women turning up on his doorstep.

But the tall, austere old man, more like St. Peter than a family retainer, had stared down his nose in disapproval as he admitted her into the black-and-white-tiled hall. And he’d taken a discouragingly long time to return with news that his lordship awaited her.

She hadn’t given her name, just said she was “a lady” calling on business with the master. She supposed “business” described her mission as well as any other word.

Surreptitiously, Diana straightened a backbone already stiffer than a ramrod and forced herself to breathe the hot fug that substituted for air. She felt light-headed with the heat, with trepidation, with suspense. Everything she wanted hinged on the next few seconds. She couldn’t let Lord Ashcroft guess how badly she needed him.

Through her veils, she watched him tilt his head as if acknowledging a point in a debate. Or first blood in a fencing match.

“An interesting proposition.”

She licked dry lips, thanking heaven he wouldn’t detect yet another sign she wasn’t as composed as sh

e struggled to appear. “I see no point in coy games.”

“Clearly.” Was that a hint of irony?

She braced herself against a crippling mixture of shame and embarrassment. She’d sworn to do this. Nothing would stop her. Nothing. When she weighed this moment and the moments inevitably to come against the promised reward, her present discomfort didn’t signify.

“Are you a bawd?”

He asked the question casually, as if it made little difference. She was sure it didn’t. She’d heard he bedded anything in skirts, lady, professional, milkmaid. Still, heat prickled her face. Once again, she was grateful for the gauzy gray veiling.

“No.”

In spite of her efforts, the denial frayed with resentment. She couldn’t read his reactions with great accuracy, but something told her the sharp response piqued his curiosity in a way nothing else had.

“And yet…” His quiet voice held a trace of derision that, illogically, angered her.

Of course, he suspected she was a professional touting for trade. What else could he think when she arrived uninvited and proposed herself as a candidate for his squalid attentions?

Get used to it, she told herself grimly. She’d just set out on this particular path to perdition. Before she reached her destination, she had mountains and chasms and deserts to negotiate. It was too late to turn missish, even if humiliation curdled like sour milk in her belly.

When she didn’t reply, he went on, still studying her over his braced hands. “Why choose me for this honor? I hesitate to say singular.”

She registered the insult. It puzzled more than angered. He was a legendary voluptuary. Women must accost him constantly. He certainly accosted them. What right had he to claim the high moral ground?

She raised her chin and shot him a glare he wouldn’t see. In her bedchamber, when she’d dressed for this encounter, she’d recognized her mission would be difficult. Here, faced with a polite, recalcitrant gentleman who wasn’t acting at all like the rapacious rake of renown, it began to seem impossible.

Anger had one useful effect. It lent her spirit to continue, to launch into the story she’d prepared should this roué bother to ask why she offered herself. “I am a country widow.”

He gave another of those terse nods. “My commiserations.”