A Lady's Guide to Rakes (3 page)

Aunt Viola studied Meredith for a moment, clearly trying to decide whether she was being completely honest.

There was no hiding the scrape on her cheek, but Meredith was not about to let her aunt know that her throbbing back burned like a branding iron. Viola, who always worried overmuch, would see her abed for a week or more. And she had too much to do.

“Do not fret about me, Auntie. It is true, I might have been gravely injured when I fell from the balloon… had this brave gentleman not cushioned my landing with his own body.” She turned her gaze to Lord Lansing and forced a smile.

“Oh, how gallant you are, Lord Lansing!” her Aunt Letitia exclaimed, moving forward to squeeze his forearm. But then, she took note of the man’s earth-marred coat beneath her fingers and grimaced. “I do hope young Meredith did not cause
you
any distress, my lord. I daresay, she is a spirited gel and is always getting up to some mischief or another.”

Meredith softly groaned her displeasure, quieting when her Aunt Viola gave her a hard, covert pinch.

“Why, after all you’ve been through, my lord,” her twig-thin Aunt Viola began, “you must come inside and join us for a restorative.”

“As much as I would enjoy that, madam, I am afraid I have another pressing matter that requires my attention.”

No doubt,
Meredith mused,
pressing a certain French courtesan to a mattress.
Oh, she knew his sort all too well. No matter, Giselle would tell her all about it the next morn.

Lord Lansing pulled a visiting card from a concealed pocket in his dirt-encrusted coat and slipped it into Meredith’s hand.

“Should you have further need of my services, Miss Merriweather, please do not hesitate to send for me.” He flashed her a brilliant, knee-weakening smile.

With a slow nod to her, and a quick one to each of her aunts, Lord Lansing, the rake, bid them all farewell, leaped upon his massive horse and galloped from the square.

Her elderly aunts released pleased sighs.

Aunt Letitia caught Meredith’s shoulder and hobbled along beside her toward the door. “My, he is a handsome devil, isn’t he?”

“Indeed he is,” Meredith murmured. “But then, they always are.”

“Still, I feel I must caution you against forming a connection with the gentleman—for
any
reason—as I have heard rumors that in truth he is
no
gentleman at all.”

Aunt Viola wrapped her thin fingers around Meredith’s upper arm, but as they entered the house and turned into the parlor, it was her sister she addressed. “What a thing to say, Letitia. You must have heard, Lord Lansing has reformed. And you know what the ladies say… A reformed rake makes the very best husband.”

“Nonsense!” Meredith exhaled her breath. “I, for one, do not believe it for a moment.”

Aunt Letitia widened her faded blue eyes, then shook her head at her sister, who winced when she took her meaning.

“Of course, a good, sensible gentleman, like your Mr. Chillton, dear, should always be a lady’s first choice.” A wisp of a giggle slipped through Viola’s lips then. “I only meant that a reformed rake might know how… well… to
please
his wife.”

Aunt Letitia chuckled heartily at that, until she toppled back against the settee beside her sister and gasped for breath.

Finally, as the two elderly ladies quieted, Meredith crossed her arms over her chest and raised her chin proudly.

“That may be, Auntie, but I am afraid no woman will ever know for certain—because there is no such thing as a reformed rake.”

Aunt Letitia lifted her thick white brows. “You seem quite sure of that, my dear.”

“I am.” Meredith gave herself a secret little smile. She crossed the room, withdrew a red leather book of notes from the desk and laid it on the table before her aunts.

Aunt Viola wrinkled her nose. “Dear, I thought when you met Mr. Chillton, you gave up all notions of your guidebook.”

“Yes, Chillton is truly a good and responsible gentleman, and I—I was lucky to make his acquaintance,” Meredith began with a sputter, absolutely shocked that her aunts had so underestimated her dedication to her cause. “But my recent good fortune doesn’t lessen the need to warn other young ladies about the dangers London’s rakes and rogues may present. You cannot have forgotten what Lord Pomeroy did to me.” A tremor vibrated through Meredith the moment she spoke his name, making her feel vulnerable, making her feel weak. How she hated that man and that one horrible moment from her past could hold such dominion over her.

“No, dear, we have not forgotten. Viola and I know that focusing on your guidebook helped you through some very painful, desperate times.”

Then her aunts exchanged “the glance.” Meredith hated “the glance” even more than she hated feeling weak. For it was the same look of pity Society gave her whenever she had the courage to leave the house. This was all the more reason for her to finish the guidebook. Why, if she could spare even one woman the pain of being pitied, of being shunned, then all of her scandalous research would be well worth it.

Aunt Letitia rose and lifted the book of notes from the table. “But you are happy now, dear. You have caught the eye of a most respectable man of business.” Aunt Letitia opened Meredith’s notebook and read the heavily inked title page. “And yet still you are continuing to research
A Lady’s Guide to Rakes.
“

“I am.” Meredith pinned her aunt with the most serious of gazes. “Don’t you understand? I must continue my investigations. Indeed, I must amplify them. For after more than two years of hard work, my guidebook is nearly complete. And with Lord Lansing—the most notorious rake of them all—as my final subject, I intend to finish before the season ends.”

Despite appearing quite attentive, a rake always puts himself and his needs first.

“Jupiter, Lansing, what in blazes happened to you?”

Alexander blinked and focused his eyes on the lanky intruder who stood in the shadows of the foyer of Alexander’s Grosvenor Square town house, sipping brandy.

Ah, Georgie Chambers
… or rather, Lord Riddle since his uncle passed last Michaelmas and made him a viscount. Bloody hard to remember his elevation. Everything was changing too fast these days.

“Georgie, you good-for-nothing nob, what are you doing here drinking my brandy? Duns collectors blocking your door again?” No matter his social standing, he’d always be Georgie to Alexander, bosom friend since their days at Eton, and, until recently, his cohort in sampling the finer things to be had in Town, whether it be brandy, women or a high stakes game of faro.

Georgie laughed. “Hardly. Thought I might try to convince you to stir up a little mayhem this eve, but from the look of things, I see you’ve started without me. You look bloody awful. What in God’s name happened?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Alexander grinned. “So I shan’t.”

Shrugging his dusty blue coat into the awaiting arms of his attentive valet, Alexander followed Georgie into the library and accepted the brandy his friend offered him… from his own tantalus.

“Damn well ruined your cutaway, my man.” Georgie raised his glass and drained every last drop with an audible gulp. “Take a tumble from the great black beast of yours? Or did some lucky lady’s rotter of a husband come home unexpectedly and force you to dive out her bedchamber window?”

Alexander would have laughed if he didn’t ache so. Balancing the balloon brandy glass in one hand, he gently probed his ribs with the other.

Who would have believed a plummeting woman could inflict such damage upon a body? The Merriweather miss wasn’t large. When he lifted her atop his horse, his hands nearly ringed her tiny waist, though she had been a tad heavier than he’d expected.

Then he recalled the sight of those luscious thighs protruding from her bunched skirts as she lay atop him in Hyde Park, and a knowing smile lifted the right edge of his lips.

He wouldn’t have minded feeling
those
legs wrapped around him. Not one bit.

As the wicked thought broached his mind, Alexander glanced up at the ridiculous portrait of his father hanging above the mantel, then huffed a frustrated sigh. His carefree days were over now, weren’t they?

Damn it all.
Damn his father and his highbrow expectations.

As he touched the rim of the glass to his lips, something tickled his finger and he glanced down to see a single strand of flaming hair twisted about his signet ring. He smiled as lie pulled
it
from the gold circlet, remembering those glaring blue eyes peering down at him through tumbling copper locks.

“Ah-ha!” Georgie snatched the hair from his fingers. “I knew it! It
was
a woman.” He dangled the strand before his gray eyes for closer scrutiny. “And a redhead too by the look of this.”

Georgie turned to face Alexander again, his thick ruddy brows migrating toward the bridge of his hawkish nose. “Thought you preferred pale-haired chits, my man.”

“Doesn’t really matter now, does it?” Alexander dropped down into the cushioned wingbacked chair near the hearth, planted his heel in the carpet and studied the dusty toe of his boot. “Have to obey the old man’s dictates these days.”

Georgie exhaled a thin laugh. “Surely he didn’t rule out women. I mean, a man has needs, after all.”

“He might as well have.” Alexander leaned back and swirled the dark amber liquid in his crystal glass. “I am permitted to court a woman of quality for the purpose of marriage.”

“So no more evenings with actresses?”

Alexander shook his head.

Georgie winced. “No more afternoons with neglected wives?”

“And no more mornings with merry widows. It seems I am to be the very portrait of a perfect gentleman.” Alexander lifted his hand resignedly and flicked his fingers in one direction, then another. “Or I lose all of this
cut off
. I cannot have that, I simply cannot. As it is, he’s already reduced my monthly portion to… Well, ‘tis barely enough to keep me clothed.”

“Damn me.” Georgie exhaled his breath. “That’s a bit harsh.”

“Damned article in the
Times
. Who I bed is no one’s business but my own.”

Georgie lifted an eyebrow. “She was the wife of a prominent member of the House of Commons. Caused quite the stir, my man. Even
I
was shocked to read of the incident.”

“Well, so was my father. Then he got it into his head that controlling my funds would control my behavior.” Alexander blew out a long sigh. “And sadly, it seems he was right. I have no alternative but to bend to his wishes, until the old man finally succumbs to one of his dozen or so imaginary ailments and falls over Death’s threshold. Until then”—Alexander cleared his throat, then mockingly raised his glass to the painting of his rotund father atop a great sable warhorse—”Alexander Lamont, noted rake and man-about-town, shall henceforth be known as Lord Lansing, stodgy gentleman.”

“But a well-dressed, stodgy gentleman, me lord,” added a gravelly voice from the passage.

He looked up as his valet, Mr. Herbert, entered the library with a fresh coat.

“Please stand, me lord.”

Alexander eyed the bottle-green coat speculatively. “ ‘Tis not the coat with brass buttons, is it ‘One’ ?”

“One”—so called because this particular Mr. Herbert was the first of three Herbert brothers to join Alexander’s household staff—peered down his thin white and red mottled nose. “No, me lord. ‘Tis a new coat to replace the article ye left behind at the home of a…
friend
early last month.”

“Indeed. Left it with Lady Fawcett, to be precise.” Alexander rose, a bit slowly due to his aching ribs, and shrugged the dark green coat over his broad shoulders.

“Hooked over her bedpost, no doubt. Husband came home unexpectedly, did he?” Georgie’s amused grin appeared above the curve of glass he held to his lips. “I daresay, Lansing, I think I fancy this new coat above all of your others. Just look at it. Must have cost your left stone. I thought you said you were short on funds.”

Alexander straightened his sleeves and admired the elegant simple cut of the fine kerseymere coat. It was a fine coat. The lines perfectly set off the trimness of his waist.

“So perhaps the household manages without meat and sugar this month.” He glanced up at Georgie. “A gentleman does have needs, after all.”

The sun was already high in the sky, beating down upon Meredith’s straw bonnet and heating her covered head like water in a kettle. She grimaced as she circled Hyde Park’s new bronze statue of Achilles for the tenth time in as many minutes.

Perhaps eleven in the morn was a mite early to ask a courtesan to rouse herself for a meeting, especially if the lamentable Lord Lansing had indeed made his way into her bed. But Meredith had not been able to wait any longer to learn if her test of the rake’s base character had been successful. And so, this morning, when the clock struck nine, she’d sent a missive to Portman Square asking Giselle to meet her at this very spot.

———

When the courtesan finally arrived, Meredith glanced up at the position of the sun. Only an hour late—noon.

The women had known each other for three months, but they were not friends. They were business associates of the oddest sort. Their first meeting had not been accidental. Meredith had had the occasion, at one of her aunts’ musicales, to overhear two gentlemen conversing about a French courtesan, new to London, whose charm and grace were irresistible to those of the opposite sex.

Meredith knew at once that an alliance between them could elevate her rake research to an entirely new level. No longer would she need to simply observe a rake at routs or balls. With Giselle as her bait, she could conduct social experiments—put the rake into predetermined situations, then watch his reactions. The idea was brilliant, really.

And so, Meredith quietly learned as much as she could about the courtesan, and called upon Giselle at her home one day with a proposition (and money, of which the courtesan always seemed to be in need) in exchange for her expertise in seducing gentlemen—specifically rogues.

The idea of Meredith’s guidebook, and her money, had greatly intrigued Giselle and a deal was quickly struck.