Pursued By The Viscount Read online

  Regency Unlaced Novella 4

  Pursued by the Viscount

  By

  Carole Mortimer

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2016 Carole Mortimer

  Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper Designs

  Editor: Linda Ingmanson

  Formatter: Matthew Mortimer

  ISBN: 978-1-910597-27-9 ePub

  ISBN: 978-1-910597-26-2 mobi

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DEDICATIONS

  My Wonderful Family

  Chapter 1

  October 1816

  St. James’s Park, London

  “Are you demanding I must bed you in exchange for having you return the letters I sent to you?” Rachel’s face was pale as she sat tensely on one of the benches overlooking the lake. Despite the coolness of the weather, it was such a tranquil and beautiful spot for her life to have come crashing down about her ears.

  The open air of the park also had the added benefit of dispersing the smell of the strong cologne this gentleman favored. It had been the one thing she had disliked about him when he first began to show an interest in her several months ago.

  Now she disliked everything about him.

  “Absolutely not.” The man gave a scathing laugh, his expression one of pity as he stood beside the bench looking down at her. “Your body is of absolutely no interest to me. It never was,” he added with a sneer.

  Rachel was not the least reassured by his dismissal. Relieved, but certainly not reassured. If not her body, then what did this man want from her? “That was not the impression you gave these past four months.”

  “Impressions can be deceiving.”

  “We made a promise to destroy our letters to each other once we had read them.”

  “I lied,” he dismissed without concern. “I assure you, I have kept each and every damning letter you ever sent me.”

  Rachel felt slightly light-headed, almost as if the horror of this situation was happening to someone else. Possibly because to her, their love affair had been a game. A game in which she flirted with danger—and this man beside her—through their letters to each other.

  A game she had brought to an end when she came back to London to attend the wedding of one of her closest friends. It was her intention to remain in Town for the Little Season following the wedding. As such, she had decided her friendship with this man must end. There was far more possibility of their relationship being discovered now they were both back in London. His answer had been to send a note to her home yesterday requesting the two of them meet this morning in St. James’s Park.

  Rachel had expected pleas and cajoling from him, for him to beg she continue their secret love affair, and instead she now found herself faced with blackmail.

  Even if he had not, as yet, stated the terms of that blackmail.

  “No doubt you were not so clever and obediently destroyed my letters to you?” he taunted.

  Of course she had. It had been part of the excitement of the relationship. Even now, Rachel could remember the thrill that ran through her whenever she received one of his letters. Her blushes when she read of how much he adored and desired her. Her own letters to him had been less passionate, admittedly, but still damning enough to ruin her. To her, it had been nothing more than a vicarious pleasure, a lover she could savor from a safe distance.

  Looking at that lover now, tall and fair haired, with what she had thought were warm hazel eyes, Rachel wondered how she could ever have been so stupid as to have been taken in by his good looks and charm. To have risked everything, her reputation, her future, for the sake of a few months of feeling wanted and appreciated by this young and handsome man.

  She moistened the dryness of her lips with the tip of her tongue before speaking. “Then what do you want from me in exchange for returning my letters?”

  “Exactly what I already have.” His eyes glittered with triumph.

  “Which is?”

  “Your misery and uncertainty, as to if or when I might choose to make those letters public, and so ruin you utterly,” he announced without remorse.

  Society did have that distinction of blaming the woman for such indiscretions as this, whereas the gentleman seemed to walk away unscathed. No doubt this man’s reputation as a rake would be enhanced rather than vilified.

  “Why would you do such a thing?” Rachel could see the dislike in his expression, the hatred he felt toward her now that he was no longer making any effort to hide the emotion.

  He slowly shook his head. “You really have no idea, do you?”

  It was true, Rachel was utterly bewildered as to what she might have done to bring about such strong feelings against her.

  He bent down until his face was only inches from her own. “James was mine.” He spat the words at her.

  James? Her dead husband James?

  “The two of us were in love and lovers long before the two of you married.” He callously confirmed what Rachel had only begun to guess.

  James and—and this man had been lovers?

  Rachel had married Lord James Shaw seven years ago, the day after her eighteenth birthday, and she’d had cause to regret it as soon as two days after her eighteenth birthday.

  James had been thirty years older than her, a handsome and important gentleman in government. A man who gave the impression of confidence and wisdom. Both traits which had appealed to Rachel in her future husband.

  Until she learned on her wedding night the only way James could make love to her was if he beat her first. Not a playful slap or pinch, but the use of his fists and booted feet. After which he had thrown her naked body on the bed, released his member from his pantaloons, and taken her with a savagery that had shocked and traumatized Rachel. That same pattern had continued the following night, and the night after, so that Rachel came to dread each time night fell.

  Even now, that same dread filled her in regard to physical lovemaking. Which was, perhaps, the reason she had been so easily trapped into this passionate correspondence?

  She had never so much as thought… Never guessed…

  She had been so young, so innocent when she married, it had never occurred to her that James behaved the way he did because his sexual inclinations did not lie with a wife but with another man. With the same man who had so easily ensnared her in a tangled net of deceit and passion, and might now be the cause of her complete social ruin.

  She gave a dazed shake of her head. “Why did James ever marry me if that was the case?”

  “Because he needed an heir, of course. You were young and docile enough to fulfill that role,” he sneered. “But James’s love belonged to me. Never doubt that for a moment.” His eyes glittered with malice.

  It all made so much sense to her now. How James had used violence as a means of inciting his physical excitement so that he was able to make love to a woman rather than the man he loved.

  How naïve she had been not to have guessed at least some of this at the time. Instead she had spent years of misery as James’s wife, and all the time there was this man in the background, and the two of them were in love and lovers.

  “I hated you then. I hate you even more now that James is dead,” her tormentor continued harshly. “He was the love of my life, as I was his, and now that he is gone, I begrudge even the little of him you did have.”

  Enough to use the threat of exposing her letters to him as a way in which to hurt her?

  Chapter 2

  One week later

  Brooketon House, London

  “I have some personal…items I need returned to me, and I was told you are the gentleman whom I should ask to take care of this delicate matter for me.”

  Lucien’s eyes narrowed on the slender and fair-haired lady seated on the couch in his elegantly furnished drawing room. For she was undoubtedly a lady, in her dark blue pelisse, blue silk gown, and matching bonnet. Her hands were covered by fine kidskin gloves that were a perfect match in color to the soft cream leather of her walking boots.

  Lady Rachel Shaw.

  The young and beautiful widow of the much older Lord James Shaw, a man who had been a powerful member of the government until his death the previous year. Lord Shaw had been deeply involved in the difficult negotiations in regard to Napoleon’s future incarceration once he had been recaptured following his escape from Elba. The strain had eventually proved too much for the politician, and he had succumbed to a heart seizure.

  That she had been widowed so young, along with the phrases “personal items” and “delicate matter,” was enough to alert Lucien as to the nature of Lady Rachel’s problem.

  Except not many people were aware of his amateur sleuthing, and he no more retrieved love letters for silly women than he rescued stranded kittens from trees.

  Nor would the appeal in those fathomless dark brown eyes hold any sway with him, as he had no doubt they had with so many other gentlemen. One gentleman in particular, if his guess of this woman having been indiscreet in a love affair proved to be correct.

  Like all the gentlemen of the ton, Lucien had long been aware of Lady Rachel Shaw’s exquisite beauty. Those glorious golden tresses that framed a heart-shaped face dominated by those
unexpected dark eyes, her skin as delicate as porcelain. Her figure was a little slender for his own tastes, but pleasing enough nonetheless.

  Oh yes, Lucien was well aware of this woman’s beauty, might even find her desirable. But he would never act upon those feelings.

  Because he also knew her to be a tease and a flirt. Unpleasant traits that reminded him too much of his own mother. Traits, it seemed, which might now have come back to haunt Lady Rachel.

  “Told by whom, might I ask?” he prompted coolly.

  Rachel was already nervous enough at having called unaccompanied upon Lord Lucien Brooke, Viscount Brooketon, having left her maid in the carriage waiting outside. She did not need the added humiliation of hearing the coldness in his tone or knowing herself to be the focus of the derisive glitter in his piercing blue eyes.

  She should not have come here. Nor would she have done so if she did not feel in such desperate need of his assistance.

  If Fliss had not confided how helpful Lord Brooketon had been to her and Winterbourne two months ago.

  Well, she had taken her friend’s advice, was here now, and despite that coldness and derision, Rachel fully intended to put her dilemma to the haughty Brooketon. Before he no doubt instructed his butler to escort her to the door.

  She looked at the viscount through thick lashes. “Your assistance was recommended to me by Lady Felicity Montgomery, the Countess of Winterbourne.” There was no visual change in the viscount’s disdainful expression, and yet Rachel sensed a slight mellowing at her mention of Fliss. “She assured me at her wedding last week that you would at least hear me out.” She deliberately pressed that slight advantage.

  He raised one dark brow. “I do not recall saying otherwise.”

  Rachel shifted uncomfortably. “Coming here to ask for your help was not an easy decision for me to make.”

  “I imagine not,” he allowed.

  Did he have to stand there beside the fireplace looking so superior? The viscount was a man aged in his late thirties, his fashionably styled dark hair perfectly in place. Dark brows were raised above those sapphire-blue eyes, nose long and aquiline between sharply etched cheekbones, mouth sculpted above a square and determined jaw.

  He was also tall and elegant in his dark blue superfine perfectly tailored across his wide shoulders and chest, silver brocade waistcoat flat against his abdomen. Beige pantaloons fitted long and muscular legs above highly polished black Hessians.

  Looking at him, it was not difficult to imagine the superior and disdainful Lord Lucien Brooke, Viscount Brooketon, known simply as Brooke to his close friends, as never having made a single mistake in his perfectly ordered life.

  “Perhaps I should tell you, before you have opportunity to embarrass yourself,” Brooketon spoke briskly at her continued silence, “that I do not retrieve items of embarrassment for impetuous ladies. All of whom should have known better than to have written anything of a personal nature down on paper to their lover in the first place.”

  Rachel felt the color drain from her cheeks. He knew. This arrogantly superior gentleman knew exactly what she had done. Not the details, perhaps—how could anyone, least of all her, have guessed the true purpose of having been deliberately engaged in that indiscreet correspondence? But Brooketon had guessed enough to know she had written letters she should not have, and in doing so compromised not only her own reputation but William’s future.

  “I have a young son.” Rachel cursed herself for the emotional tremble she could hear in her voice, knowing she was on the verge of tears. “His life will also be affected if these letters are made public.”

  “As this man is threatening to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is regrettable,” Brooketon acknowledged. “But perhaps you should have thought of that before rather than after the fact?”

  Rachel knew this man believed her to have been involved in a physical affair. Which she had not. Indeed, she believed James had cured her of ever harboring those sorts of feelings toward any gentleman. Since her wedding night, she had never had any of those feelings toward a man. Any man.

  Which was why writing those letters had seemed so safe. An affair and yet not an affair. The excitement without risk.

  Hah. So much for safe and without risk, when her reputation was now in the hands of a man who hated her for having married the man he loved.

  Oh, she could defend herself by making that information publicly available, but it would only cause even more of a scandal, and not change the fact she was ruined. It would also put her son’s future in further jeopardy if his father’s affair with another man became public knowledge. Rachel needed those letters back so that she could destroy them before any personal attack became possible.

  Which she would not be able to do if she did not confide in Brooketon at least some of her sorry tale. “How well did you know my husband?”

  Dark brows rose. “I do not see the purpose of the question when I have told you I cannot help you.”

  “Nevertheless, I politely ask that you answer me.”

  Lucien’s mouth thinned at her determination to continue this conversation. “I did not know Shaw at all personally, only by reputation.”

  “As?”

  He scowled his irritation. Really, he had wasted enough time on this woman today already. Especially when his sympathies lay completely with this woman’s young son.

  His own parents’ marriage was as mismatched in age as Rachel Shaw’s, and he knew firsthand the chaos that could ensue for the child of such a relationship. Of the humiliation his father still suffered during his wife’s frequent affairs. Lucien no longer allowed his mother’s behavior to touch or concern him, but he had suffered his own embarrassment during his school years, when he realized his friends’ parents were well aware of, and discussed, his mother’s scandalous behavior.

  Lucien’s irritation toward this situation deepened as he was beset by those memories. “I knew your husband to be a well-respected and valued member of the government.”

  A frown creased her creamy brow. “You heard no other…rumors about him. Of his private life?”

  “No, of course not.” Lucien stepped restlessly away from the fireplace, only for his eyes to narrow as he saw the way Rachel Shaw flinched back at the unexpected movement.

  She quickly tried to hide that reaction by making a show of straightening the reticule on her wrist. But Lucien had seen it, and he questioned the reason for it.

  He continued to watch her closely. “Perhaps if you were to appeal to the gentleman to whom you sent the letters…?”

  “The gentleman is no gentleman at all, but the young man who was my husband’s lover, both before we were married and after.”

  Not much succeeded in surprising Lucien, but Lady Rachel’s outburst certainly did. Shaw a sodomite? Surely not? Not that a man’s sexual inclinations were of the least interest to him, whatever they might be, but Lucien found it beyond belief that Lord James Shaw was guilty of his widow’s accusations. There had never been the least hint or the slightest rumor of such a thing. Either before or after Shaw’s death.

  Which implied Lady Rachel might possibly be making this up in order to excuse her own scandalous behavior.

  Lucien eyed her coldly. “I would prefer you not cast aspersions upon the reputation of such a highly regarded gentleman in order to cover up your own inadequacies.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “I believe you just did.”

  Dark eyes looked up at him in appeal. “I assure you, I am telling the truth.”

  “Your accusations against Lord Shaw are incredible enough, but you cannot seriously expect me to believe the man you claim was his lover also recently became your own?” His lips curled back in disgust. “It is almost incestuous!”

  “I had no idea of James’s sexual inclinations. I only learned myself of his relationship with this other gentleman a week ago,” she defended. “It was as much of a shock to me as it is obviously a surprise to you.”