Page 5 of The Secret of My Seduction
He sipped his whisky and pondered it. Was Bathsheba fetching? Because she was the only woman who’d ever offered him such a proposition. She wasn’t a beauty in the usual sense, but therewassomething about her. He knew she could be quiet and unremarkable when she wanted to be, but she had a spine of steel and a mind to match. When she set her sights on something, woe betide the fellow who tried to deny her.
How ironic that she’d set her sights on him. A faint smile curved his mouth at the memory of her blunt request. “She’s not a conventional beauty,” he finally said, “but she’s arresting all the same.”
Reluctantly Angus came back to the table. “Why you?”
Liam bared his teeth in a wide smile. “My devilish charm and irresistible masculinity.”
His brother roared with laughter. “Money! She wants to snare you in the parson’s noose, now that your gossip rag is profitable.”
It was profitable thanks to Bathsheba. HerTales of Lady Xoutsold the newspaper. Even he hadn’t predicted that much appeal in them. But the result was that Bathsheba was making as much as he was, since they split the profits evenly. She wrote them, he published them…and he kept her identity an absolute secret. Her own brother didn’t know she was the author, even though Daniel Crawford did business with Liam at times.
So he simply shrugged at his brother’s goading comment. “Perhaps.”
That seemed to appease Angus. He gave a patronizing smile and held out his glass. “Pour us another, would you? I can’t let you walk away with my money.”
An hour later Liam did walk away, eight guineas richer. Angus had made a variety of halfhearted threats and curses, which always buoyed Liam’s mood even more than winning his brother’s money. Angus departed after muttering once more that Liam was a damned liar, claiming women were chasing him. Liam had held his tongue and made a show of collecting the guineas, going so far as to whistle a jaunty tune as he did so. That, he knew, would bother Angus more than any quarrel ever could.
Still… He didn’t like that Bathsheba was an object of gossip, even if no one knew her name. For a moment he considered reneging on his agreement, but only for a moment. The last thing he wanted to do was let her venture out into London in search of a man to ravish her. He freely admitted it had never occurred to him to seduce her, but now that she’d planted the thought, damned if it hadn’t taken root and pervaded his brain.
And she wanted it to be passionate and wild, to throw her world off kilter and leave her dazzled. What exactly did she expect, he wondered. Liam knew she haunted the public assemblies and pleasure gardens, ostensibly in search of material for her books, but she must have seen quite a bit. The dark groves at Vauxhall had hosted more than their fair share of illicit seduction and hasty coupling.
His mouth curved at the thought. That must be what she anticipated: a frantic bout of thrusting up against a tree, the laughter of other guests audible over the pants and moans of the copulating couple. That was rather how Bathsheba had described the encounter in Hyde Park between her heroine, Lady X, and the notorious rake pursuing her.
So did she picture herself as Lady X, willing and ready for a quick tupping in dangerously public places? Liam thought not. The woman he knew guarded her privacy, and knew how to hold her tongue. She might think she was Lady X, might evenwantto be Lady X, but he knew better.
All his life Liam had delighted in upsetting people’s view of him. His father had wanted him to be a banker, like his brother, and Liam went into newspapers. His mother wanted him to marry one of her friends’ daughters, and he never managed to stay interested in a woman for more than a few months. His brother expected him to fail, or at least come beg for help, and Liam had chosen to live on bread and ale and sleep in his office when his business struggled. And now Bathsheba probably thought he would throw her on a sofa and take her like an animal, quick and to the point.
Well. Now that he pictured doing it, that might happen—eventually. His blood heated at the mental image of Bathsheba on his sofa, back arched and hair undone as he held her hips and drove into her.
But first, he meant to show her how delicate, how deliberate, and how thoroughly delicious his seduction could be.
Chapter Three
Bathsheba was sitting down, ready to work, when Liam’s message arrived.
Mary, the new maid, brought it in. “Just delivered for you, ma’am,” she said eagerly. “It’s from Mr. MacGregor so I brought it straight up.”
Bathsheba took the note she held out. It was so lovely to have servants again, after the long period of poverty, followed by the clandestine printing operation that dominated the house during production ofFifty Ways to Sin. Mary was a bit too interested in everything, but she was young, and she had accepted without question Bathsheba’s instruction that certain messages—from Liam, mostly—must be delivered without Danny being the wiser. As much as Bathsheba might scoff about not needing her younger brother’s protection, the fact remained that he was the head of their household, and if he discovered what she was doing, he would protest.
And if he could see this particular note, he might well call Liam out, Bathsheba thought as she read it.
I have been consumed by thoughts of our research endeavor, Liam wrote. It would devastate me to leave any of your hopes unsatisfied. My most ardent desire is to plumb the depths of your curiosity and show you the sublime bliss of knowledge.
She pressed her lips together. Cheeky scoundrel. She flipped the page over.
A carriage will call for you this evening at eight o’clock. —LM
Her hand shook slightly as she folded the letter and hid it in her writing desk. Tonight. Somehow she had managed not to think too much about what would happen, or how or when. But tonight…
She stared at her paper, blank and clean and waiting. Normally she looked forward to writing, creating exciting and dramatic obstacles for her heroine to face and overcome. She had framed Lady X’s journey as a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress through the dangers and temptations of England, from a fresh-faced groom out exercising his master’s horse to a handsome lord whiling away a day in a quaint little hamlet while his carriage was repaired to the devilish rakes who stalked London’s pleasure gardens. Lady X wasn’t virtuous enough to resist them, but the object of her quest wasn’t salvation—it was true and honest love. If she encountered divine pleasure along the way, so be it.
And tonight Bathsheba’s goal would be just the opposite: pleasure, with a chance at true love being only a faint, wholly unexpected possibility.
She closed the lid of the desk and went to the window. Of course she didn’t expect Liam to fall in love with her, and she was too old for airy dreams of true love anyway. No doubt he would be efficient and ruthless about it, as he was in everything else. She could just picture him rising from bed and asking if she had any questions.
“It’s only business,” she whispered to herself, staring into the brilliant morning sunshine. Only business, for him and for her. She would be poised and collected, ready to observe and learn and attentive only to the physical pleasures. That was all he’d agreed to provide, and that was all she could expect.
Accordingly, when the clock struck eight that evening, she was waiting in the sitting room. She wore her best gown of brown velvet, and carried a notebook and pencil in her reticule so she could make notes of any and all significant details. Liam might only allot her one or two chances to learn what she needed to know, so she mustn’t squander any of it.
