A Season of Seduction (2 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

With deepest gratitude to my agent, Barbara Poelle, and my editor, Selina McLemore. Thanks so much for your belief in me.

Chapter One

London

November 3, 1827

T
onight I will be his.

Becky closed her eyes as her maid, Josie, sprinkled rosewater on her hair, and a shudder spiraled up her spine.
Jack Fulton
. The dashing sailor who’d recently returned to London after many years at sea. Tonight would be the first time she’d touched a man intimately in four years. Tonight, she would give herself to him, wholly and completely.

She’d been acquainted with Jack for a month now, but she knew little of his true nature, and he knew little of hers. When they were together, they conversed easily about the past and the present, but they lived in the moment and never dug beyond the surface.

She preferred it that way. Nevertheless, there was something about him that made her yearn to burrow beyond his hardened shell and discover what lay beneath that rugged, handsome surface.

She shook herself a little to toss away the thought. Josie’s round face scrunched in disapproval as a tendril of hair dislodged from Becky’s coiffure, and the maid gave a long-suffering sigh before she went back to smoothing her mistress’s hair.

Becky opened her eyes and stared into her friend Cecelia’s dressing room mirror. It was hypocritical of her to want to learn more about Jack Fulton. She certainly didn’t want him delving into
her
soul. She’d locked herself up tight long ago and never intended to reveal herself again. Not even to a lover. As long as she kept her heart safely guarded, tonight would set her free. Jack couldn’t hurt her—she wouldn’t allow that to happen. He
could
, however, release her from the lonely prison that had held her captive for years. He could make her feel alive again.

“You’re thinking about something, Becky. I see it in your face.”

Becky met her friend’s gaze in the mirror. Cecelia, Lady Devore, clasped her hands behind her back. She stood in the center of the room, one of her guest bedchambers. Her white satin dress with its high collar and broad belt of embroidered crimson emphasized the slightness of her build, and the sweep of her chocolate-colored hair accentuated her elegant swan’s neck and pointed chin.

Earlier this evening, Cecelia had fetched Becky from her brother’s house on the pretense of taking her to the opera. But there would be no opera for Becky tonight. Instead, Cecelia would deposit Becky at a respectable hotel where she intended to have a not-so-respectable tryst with a seafaring rogue who possessed a hint of the gentleman. Or was it that he was a gentleman with a hint of the rogue?

There was no denying that Jack Fulton came from respectable stock—his father was one of the king’s privy councilors, his eldest brother possessed parliamentary ambitions, and his middle brother was a captain in His Majesty’s Navy. Jack wasn’t at the pinnacle of the aristocracy, like Becky’s family or even Cecelia’s, but his bloodlines were quite dignified, indeed.

One look at him, though, and anyone could detect that there was something enticingly disreputable about him. An air of danger—of roguishness—that made Becky’s pulse flutter and her limbs turn to mush. His looks appealed to her in a startling way. She was more familiar with the sleek, pale, soft bucks of the London
ton
, but Jack was suntanned, with a permanent crease between his eyebrows and lines fanning from the edges of his eyes that deepened when he smiled. His hair and sideburns were trimmed short and were a color of brown just a shade lighter than his eyes. His lips were light pink, and they had a wicked curve to them that matched the glint in his eyes. Together, those eyes and lips had featured in her erotic dreams for the past month.

Cecelia cleared her throat softly, jerking Becky from those scandalous thoughts.

“Yes…” Becky admitted slowly. “I
am
thinking about something.”

Cecelia’s dark eyes gleamed with understanding. Still, she wanted Becky to voice it. “Tell.”

Becky glanced at her maid and dismissed her with a small movement of her hand. In complete silence but with a mulish pucker to her mouth, Josie corked the bottle of rosewater, set it on the table, curtsied, and went away.

When the door clicked shut, Becky said, “I think tonight is the night.”

“Do you?” Cecelia’s voice was soft. Satin rustled as she glided over the carpet, closer to the dressing table. “You’ve grown fond of our Mr. Fulton, haven’t you?”

Resting her crooked arm on the shining oak surface of the dressing table, Becky wiggled her fingers. The last two fingers on her left hand tingled often, but she’d learned to take comfort from the sensation. The tingling was a part of her, like her bent, badly healed arm. It reminded her of a time in her life she’d do well not to forget.

“It’s not that I’ve grown fond of him, per se. I’ve grown fond of… parts of him.”

“Ah.” Cecelia’s lips tilted with mischief. “Parts you wish to become more intimately acquainted with.”

Becky’s cheeks heated, and she shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Well, yes, I suppose you could put it that way.”

Cecelia’s renowned bluntness extended to matters most people kept to themselves. This was one attribute of her friend that had originally drawn Becky when they’d met during the Season earlier this year. She found Cecelia’s matter-of-fact approach to mankind’s baser nature both refreshing and shocking.

When London society had left en masse after the Season ended, Becky’s family had remained. Cecelia had stayed in London, too, citing an utter loathing of country life. With most of society gone, Cecelia and Becky had turned to each other for company almost daily. Even now, however, despite their months of friendship, Becky still blushed often in the other woman’s presence.

Cecelia’s brow smoothed, and her lips softened into an expression of compassion. She laid an elegant, long-fingered hand on Becky’s shoulder. “I am pleased for you. It has been so long.”

Four years had passed since Becky had last lain with a man. She’d been so eager with her husband—eager to learn and eager to please. She had reveled in every touch they’d shared. Until things had turned sour.

“Too long,” Cecelia added.

Becky blew out a breath and gave her friend an exasperated look. “Indeed, you are quite spoiled, Cecelia. Most widows never touch another man after their husbands die.”

Cecelia, whose natural demeanor was one of haughty aristocracy, managed to appear even haughtier. Her thin, dark eyebrows arched into peaks. “Well, that is their loss. I lost my husband the same year you lost yours, and as you know, many men have warmed my bed since.” She shrugged. “I shall offer no apologies for it. I love men.”

Becky twisted her lips. “Really? I wouldn’t say so. As a whole, I’d say you take a rather cynical approach to the male sex.”

Cecelia laughed lightly and patted Becky’s shoulder. “Of course you are right. I daresay men are most appealing when they’re in my bed naked and occupying their mouths with pursuits other than talking.”

Tiny hairs danced on end at the back of Becky’s neck, and she wrenched her gaze away from her friend. When they’d last met, Jack had kissed her. The erotic touch of his lips had sent electric bolts shooting through her body, reminding her that no matter how long she kept it confined, her innate passion would never disappear.

“You’re ready, Becky.” Cecelia gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

“I’m not certain.”

“I know it is what you want. And I know that whatever should happen between you and Mr. Fulton tonight, you’re well equipped for it.”

In the past few months, Cecelia had drawn Becky outside the tight confines of her loving but protective family. Late one night after a few glasses of claret, Becky confessed her secret desires to her friend, and Cecelia had taken it upon herself to candidly teach her all about how a widow should properly manage an affair—from the seduction to the culmination to what must take place afterward.

She was as ready as she’d ever be.

“I feel so heartless.” Staring into the mirror at Cecelia, she ran a fingertip along the smooth neckline of her white muslin overdress. She’d worn a heavy silk opera dress to Cecelia’s house, but that dress now hung in the oak-paneled wardrobe across from the dressing table. She intended to remove the overdress before she went to him tonight. The translucent gown underneath would make her intentions clear. “Somehow it feels wrong—immoral—to approach such intimate topics so carelessly.”

Cecelia shook her head firmly and clasped her hands behind her back. “You mustn’t feel that way. I believe this is one of the weaknesses of our sex—we become so overwrought in matters of carnal love that we are unable to see them for what they are.”

Becky frowned up at her friend in the mirror. “And what are they?”

“Simple fleshly pursuits. Completely separate from matters of the heart.”

“Surely there must be an overlap between matters of the flesh and matters of the heart.”

“Sometimes there is,” Cecelia admitted. “But that is generally not the case. It is a rare specimen of a man who allows his carnal desires to trickle under his skin in such a manner.” Smiling, she waved her hand. “Yes, yes, I know your brother is one of them. But one need only survey the men of our class to prove my hypothesis.”

Becky returned her friend’s smile, then rose from the dressing table. She was ready. Trustworthy Josie, despite her impertinence, remained ever tight-lipped about her mistress’s affairs and would remain here until Becky returned in the morning. Cecelia would accompany her to the hotel, leave her to her privacy with Jack, and return for her at two o’clock.

“No doubt you are right.” Becky straightened her spine. “Never fear, Cecelia, I will remember everything you have taught me. My heart will remain uninvolved. Whatever becomes of the time I spend with Mr. Fulton, I shall possess fond memories of all that we will share.”

Cecelia took her hand and squeezed it, smiling at her.

Becky hoped she was telling the truth. She
wanted
to be telling the truth. Yet she was terrified, for though she would try with all her might to heed her friend’s warnings, she feared Jack Fulton had already melted away a piece of her armor and had begun to burrow beneath it.

Drawing on the gloves the butler had just handed him, Jack glanced at the Earl of Stratford. “Everything in place?”

Stratford nodded, then cocked a blond brow. “I feel it imperative to ask you one final time: Are you certain about this course? I am not personally acquainted with the woman, but her family is formidable. If they were to discover that you planned it—”

Jack raised his hand. “Easy, man. No one else knows. No one will ever know.”

Stratford was the only man in London he trusted with his plan. Jack had returned three months ago after a twelve-year absence from England to discover most of his childhood acquaintances had matured into weak, foppish creatures. He’d met the earl one night at a tavern on the Strand and discovered he was neither.

In the past weeks, Jack had learned a little of the man’s past. Like Jack, the earl had suffered a great loss. That experience had done much to form the man he was today. He was well known as a profligate rake, immoral and debauched. He was the kind of man the mamas of the
ton
cautioned their innocent daughters against.

Despite the abundant warnings against him, however, with his devil-may-care indifference, his stylish good looks, his sandy blond hair several shades lighter than Jack’s, and his pugilist’s build, Stratford managed to lure every female that came within his proximity. The earl managed his reputation with a devilish glint in his blue eyes and a carefree smile. If Jack hadn’t been accustomed to such feelings himself, he never would have recognized the bone-deep misery and weariness within his friend.