Scandalous Miss Brightwells [Book 1-4]

Fanny, sitting between her sister and Lord Quamby, looked up with a smile as she heard footsteps just outside the saloon.

“Lord Fenton, my Lord,” announced Lord Quamby’s stately butler from the double doors where his employer was entertaining his future in-laws. With a disdainful sniff he added, “And your nephew, Mr Bramley.”

“What a pleasant surprise. Come to pay your respects to the happy pair, no doubt.” Lord Quamby patted Fanny’s hand, which rested on her primrose silk skirts, before introducing the rest of the party. “Indeed, we are all here to celebrate—joyful mamas and siblings, too.” He winked at Antoinette, who cast Bramley a coy but knowing look from beneath lowered lashes.

Fanny ran her eyes over Fenton, hoping the effects of her thundering heart were not visible through the fine fabric of her bodice. She was well satisfied by the wild look in his eye. His neck cloth was in disarray and there was a cut on his cheek. Bramley bore evidence of a bloody nose.

Wonderful, she thought without sarcasm, and her heart swelled. They’d been engaged in fisticuffs.

She’d assumed Fenton would be shocked by the news of her impending nuptials but it appeared that his reaction had surpassed that. So she was more than amenable to his suggestion when he growled, ignoring everyone else in the room, “I’d like to speak to Miss Brightwell. Alone.”

Fanny squeezed Lord Quamby’s shoulder as she rose, responding to her mother’s warning look with a bright, “Lord Fenton and I will take a turn about the room while the rest of you continue. Order up the wedding breakfast as you wish, but don’t plan the wedding tour without me. I've a particular desire to see Venice.”

The saloon was a palatial expanse divided into various seating and entertaining arrangements. It was to the large bay window at the far end, with bench seating around its sides, an area partly obscured by a gold velvet tasselled curtain, that Fenton led her.

“What is the meaning of this?” His voice was low and demanding. Fanny could hear the tension. The extent of his obvious suffering made her heart thunder even harder with excited longing and breathless anticipation.

Gripping her by the shoulder, Fenton swung her out of sight behind the curtain.

“My dear Fenton, we must be discreet,” Fanny objected mildly, revelling in the look of wounded pride on her beloved’s face. The agitation with which he raked his hand through his sooty, tousled curls was heart-warming.

“You’re playing with fire, don’t you know?” He shook his head, as if the situation was surreal. Which, of course, it was. “You’ve pledged yourself to me, Fanny. You gave yourself to me and now…” He began to pace back and forth in front of the window, his breathing laboured as he struggled for words. Swinging round, he glared at her. “If Lord Quamby were to discover what you were doing—” He swallowed and closed his eyes briefly as if the memory were too much to revisit. “What you were doing with me just hours, it would appear, before you accepted his suit, you and your family would be unable to hold your heads up in this town.”

“But Fenton, dearest—” She broke off and tilted her head, “I can call you Fenton, can’t I, if I’m to be your mistress? No, please, hear me out—it’s because I told dear Lord Quamby what we’d been doing that he asked me to marry him.”

“What!?”

Reaching up on tiptoe, she pressed one finger to his lips, “Hush, Fenton, you sound as if you’re about to lose your temper.” It was hard to keep up the charade. Her sense of vindication fully equalled her joy at this confirmation of his true feelings for her. “And please don’t interrupt. Lord Quamby knew I’d lost my heart to you. He understood my devastation when you offered to make me your mistress rather than your wife. That was when he suggested that, as it would please his mama enormously if he took a wife—”

Seizing her by both elbows he pushed her backwards so that she landed with a thud on the bench seat.

Pinioned beneath his bulk of muscle, Fanny’s excitement increased as he loomed over her, his eyes roiling with passion. His chest pressed against her breasts. She could feel the hard bulk

of his manly swelling further down, too, and her own body responded with a rush of warmth to her lower belly. She wanted to rip off his clothes and make love to him, right there in the alcove. She saw he was tormented by a similar longing.

With his face barely an inch from hers, he ground out, “Living here, in Mayfair, with a carriage of your own, no doubt?”

Fanny had never seen such tortured workings in a man’s expression. She was delighted. “Yes. I thought I’d order one in cerulean blue with two footmen wearing—”

“So when you visited me at my town house you’d already accepted him?”

“Of course, otherwise I’d have gratefully accepted your generous offer of accommodation on the spot rather than dissembling.” Stifling the urge to kiss away his scowl, she wriggled out from under him, smiling serenely as she smoothed her skirts. “I was secretly betrothed to Lord Slyther, only I couldn’t bear the idea of marriage to him after I met you. So in the hopes of receiving an honourable offer from you I delayed the marriage.” She sighed. “Then he died just hours before our nuptials. You can’t imagine how relieved I was— still thinking you cared enough for me to make me your wife.”

She glared at him before resuming with another smile. “Now, of course, I have the best of both worlds. I shall be a duchess rather than a viscountess and Lord Quamby, who is very generous, says you and I can be together as much as we wish—provided we are discreet. You shall be my cicisbeo, Fenton darling.”

Sweeping aside the curtain she took his arm. “The others will be wondering where we are,” she added, as she pulled him out of hiding, proceeding into the room with as much decorum as if they were at a state ball. “How proud you will be, Fenton, when your son becomes an earl instead of a mere viscount.”

Twenty minutes later, Fenton threw open the doors to his mother’s sunny morning room and strode across the green and gold Aubusson carpet.

His mood was grim but all was not yet lost. Not if Fanny truly loved him—though, Lord knew, she’d done a mighty fine job of humiliating him.

Lacerated he’d been, yet it had done nothing to dampen his desire. Hope flickered uncertainly in his breast.

“I need the Fenton diamonds, Mother.”

“Right now, darling?” Arching her plucked eyebrows, Lady Fenton glanced up from her book.

“Yes, right now, Mama.” He was in no mood for going through the motions of playing the dutiful son. She knew he could want them for only one thing.