The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

He watched Helen and Alexandra walk away from him, down the corridor to the ballroom.

She wasn’t a young, untried girl of eighteen either, newly released from the schoolroom to prey upon the hapless bachelors of London. No, she had been released a goodly number of years ago, which meant she was well married and knew exactly what was what—and that was surely an utterly excellent thing.

He had always preferred married women. What man didn’t? They were safe. They wanted what he wanted—a bit of excitement, a bit of warmth, a new companion to add spice and passion. They didn’t usually whine or carp when he was ready to move on. He did not have to worry about their husbands, most of whom were his friends and who bedded other friends’ wives just as he did. Many men and women were not discreet, and that sometimes stretched civilized manners to the limit. Lord Beecham, however, never spoke of his conquests. There wasn’t any need to even if he had been inclined to bray and brag. For some reason, he could not escape the gossips, no matter how silent he remained.

He tossed down the rest of his champagne as the two women disappeared from his view back into the ballroom.

He rubbed his hands together.

Helen was a very big girl. He spread his fingers out. He thought of her breasts. Were his hands big enough for her? Oh, yes, he thought, his hands would make do quite nicely. He looked at his hands, pictured her breasts, and knew that if he had been speaking just then, he would doubtless have been stuttering.

Why were they talking about discipline? His flesh rippled. He pictured Helen on her back, her white arms pulled above her head, her wrists tied with two of his softest cravats to the posts at the head of his bed.

A woman who was well versed in the art of discipline? She had read everything ever written about it? Had she also employed everything she had learned? Had it all been employed upon her? It was a heady thought, one that made him swallow a bit convulsively.

When he reached the ballroom he looked and looked, but the big girl was gone.

He wasn’t worried. He would simply call upon Alexandra and, with his exquisite finesse, discover Helen’s address and the name of her husband.

He hoped Alexandra would cooperate. He had stopped trying to seduce her at least six years ago, when one evening in the midst of one of his more effective offerings she laughed at him. It had wounded him greatly. He was a renowned lover—at least that was what the gossips were always saying.

But in the end, he quite liked Alexandra Sherbrooke, despite her appalling preference for only her husband in her bed. He liked her husband as well, all the more so once Douglas determined he wouldn’t have to kill him for trying to seduce his wife. It was nothing more than attempted poaching, and that, Douglas had told him some years before, he would let slide. Thank the heavens that there were not all that many couples like the Sherbrookes in London.

Exactly what did the big girl know about discipline? Like Alexandra, he wanted specifics. He couldn’t wait to find out. Other than her far-flung reading, had her husband taught her? Or a lover?

Lord Beecham wanted her in his bed, and he wanted her there very soon. He would be a lover who would teach her something altogether new about discipline. He would take his fill of her and when they eventually parted, she would never forget him. Whenever she spoke of discipline after her time with him, she would remember him, and smile.

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation even as he wondered if her hair was long enough to fall over her shoulders and curl lazily around her breasts.

Lord Beecham was a man with a very detailed imagination. He saw her beneath him, all of her, stretched out, smiling up at him, and her hands were busy, very busy. He was forced once again to swallow. He would bed her soon. Very soon.

Tomorrow night would fit nicely into his schedule.

His fingers clenched at the emerging picture in his mind, a very big picture.

So much white canvas.

2

Sherbrooke Town House

London 1811

May 15

Less than twelve hours

after the Sanderling ball

ALEXANDRA SHERBROOKE, Countess of Northcliffe, shook out her dark-green silk skirts and rose. Mankin, the Sherbrooke town house butler for the past eighteen years, was, she saw, growing more and more stooped by the year, but it was not because he worked too hard or that his shoulders were rounding with age. No, Mankin wanted to show off his head in all its perfectly round, glittering bald glory. He polished his head. She had seen him doing it once when she’d happened to peer around the corner into the butler’s pantry; he’d been using some of Mrs. Hibble’s homemade wax. Today, as usual, he had achieved a high shine.

“Lord Beecham, my lady,” Mankin said from the doorway of the first-floor drawing room. He bowed low, bending his head until the very top was in her line of vision. She was nearly blinded.

“Hello, Spenser.” She walked to him, her hands out, smiling. She quite liked Spenser Heatherington, much to Douglas’s annoyance. “Please tell me that you are here to murmur sweet nonsense into my ears. I do miss that, you know. You just stopped doing it.”

He gave her a smooth, charming smile, with just enough white teeth to add a little wickedness. “You laughed at me, Alexandra. How can a man murmur love words when the lady laughs all perky and amused in his face? One’s manhood can’t survive such a tactic.”

“I had forgotten that. Well, that wasn’t well done of me. Yes, you must begin again. It always made Douglas red-faced when I told him what you said to me. Ah, but it also made him become ever so attentive. He had to prove, of course, that he could murmur nonsense better than you could. It still riles him no end that I call you by your first name.”