Scandalous Miss Brightwells [Book 1-4]

She shuddered. If anyone at all were ever to find out.

Yet how would they and what was her crime—if it could ever be laid at her door? In all her nineteen years Fanny had always played the dutiful daughter, ever mindful of the faith invested in her by the rest of the family to do whatever she could to salvage their sinking fortunes.

Even if that meant sacrificing herself.

She gave herself a figurative—and physical—shake, turning to find her companion studying her, an interested twist to his mouth, a curl of dark hair falling across his forehead.

Byron. That’s who he looked like. Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Just what attracted her in a man, if only because it was the antithesis of the man she’d inevitably marry.

“How disappointing. Not a fair Cyprian? So if I offered you five shillings for a quick tumble you’d turn me down?”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly before her suppressed anticipation was swept away by outrage. “How dare you!” Any cautious, properly brought-up young lady would have considered the indignity of Alverley’s let-down infinitely preferable to a horribly compromising situation with a stranger. She was a fool!

Fanny scrambled to her feet, causing the small vessel to rock perilously and the riverman to round on them with an angry curse.

“Careful, or you’ll drown us all.” With another lazy smile her rescuer—or was he to be her ravisher, after all, by the time he was done with her?—tugged at her hand. Clumsily, she landed across his lap, her head thumping against his chest. So hard and broad. So unlike Alverley’s.

Arms like steel bands encircled her upper body and knees as he held her tucked against him like a baby.

Fanny realised she had behaved like a baby. He’d been teasing her. She pretended to be so worldly but in truth she knew nothing of men—nothing, at least, of handsome men possessed of confidence and humour. Men who could offer her what she wanted—a pocket book that would please her mama, a title her sister and brother could trade upon and…

Wistful longing for the seemingly unobtainable stayed her struggles as she stared up at him and his face fractured in her imagination before reassembling into the incarnation of all she could desire and more—a man who promised excitement and adventure at the very least.

“Many people lose their nerve on the water”—his eyes glinted mere inches above her face with wicked pleasure—“and, while I’ve neglected to bring along my burnt feathers, a kiss works wonders for warding off the vapours.”

Oh, she was tempted, but was this one more miscalculation?

However, a demeaning struggle that might pitch them all into the Thames seemed an extreme reaction, Fanny decided, when this man’s close proximity was the antithesis of distasteful.

Yes, the antithesis, she confirmed, her bones going soft as his long, elegant fingers caressed her hair, her throat and shoulders with surprising gentleness, for he had shifted her so her head rested in his lap. She gazed up at his face, with all the glory of the starlit sky behind him, closing her eyes as her companion contoured her décolletage with gentle fingertips, causing her mind to spin with wicked, sensuous thoughts.

She would never accept Lord Slyther. Like a patient toad, he was waiting to crawl back out of the wings to repeat his offer of three months ago, revelling in the knowledge that Fanny was cornered.

When the stranger’s hand brushed across her breast, she caught her breath.

“The unworldly virgin is out for adventure,” her pirate lover murmured, lowering his head to whisper in her ear, “and, if I’m not to be accused of nefarious deeds, I think our encounter should end here.”

The desolation of his withdrawal caused her to open her eyes and cry out incautiously, “My companion earlier this evening kissed me and it was horrible.” Why had she said that? Fanny was never incautious.

In the moonlight his look was enquiring. “If I kiss you, I can’t promise it won’t be just as horrible.”

Longing and desire tore at her like a creature suddenly come to life within her. She reached up and stroked the plane of his cheek, contouring his high cheekbones before resting her forefinger tentatively upon his lower lip. With a glint in his eye, he bit down gently and hot, lustful longing speared through her.

She tried to breathe evenly. “I’m prepared to take that risk.”

“In that case, my bold ingénue…” He brought his mouth down to hers, murmuring against her lips, “Let me show you one of the things for which I am renowned.”

He began gently, brushing his lips against her cheek, nose and lips with featherlight touches that seemed to promise more than they delivered.

She wanted more. What harm could come from a kiss with no one the wiser? Tomorrow she would deport herself like a lady and venture forth to do her mother’s bidding. She would find herself the husband her mother demanded.

Lord Slyther… Just the thought of him made her shudder. No, she would not think of him.

She sucked in the scent of the man who held her—fresh sweat and sandalwood— revelling in the wonderfully suffocating proximity of his body against hers.

Oh, sweet heaven…that’s exactly where she was. Heaven, in the arms of a man who had brought her to life—for excitement had never before fizzed through her veins like this.

The gentle lapping of the water and the splash of the oars reminded her that their journey would soon be at an end. So would her sensory adventure—a brief flash of pleasure in an otherwise dried-up existence.