Her Beguiling Butler

Her Beguiling Butler

By

Cerise Deland

Delightful Doings in Dudley Crescent Book 1

HER BEGUILING BUTLER

Every woman needs a man to serve her!

A lady shouldn’t desire her butler. But what’s a woman to do when the man fascinates her? She must taste him…or dismiss him.

And how does a man kill his scandalous desire to kiss his charming employer? Especially when he must protect her from an unknown villain…as well as his dastardly need to possess her.

Copyright © 2015 by
Cerise DeLand

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

www.cerisedeland.com

Published by W. J. Power

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Cover Art by
www.EstrellaCoverArt.com

Photographic Credit
http://www.periodimages.com

Formatting by Wizards in Publishing

Her Beguiling Butler,
Delightful Doings in Dudley Crescent, Book 1
/Cerise DeLand
.

ISBN: 978-0-9908943-0-8

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to my darling daughter Ann, my husband Steve

and my great friend, Desiree Holt!

Dudley Crescent, London, England

Dudley Crescent is a verdant parcel of land in London, granted by King Charles II to a man who was one of his staunchest supporters. With gold he’d stolen as a highwayman during Charles’s exile on the Continent, the Earl of Dudley put his ill-gotten gains to good use and built the finest town homes in the capital. Renting the land in perpetuity to certain Royalist friends quadrupled his fortune.

Today, those who live in houses surrounding the park are among the most prominent, wealthy and influential lords and ladies in the kingdom. They are accomplished, refined and respected.

Yet, many are lonely…and discover quite scandalously that they care deeply for a person in their employ!

* * *

Her Beguiling Butler

The lovely widow at Number Ten Dudley Crescent hopes to lead a merry life without any husband to replace the elderly one she recently buried. Yet Lady Ranford finds herself in a pickle. Her new butler, Finnley, is not only the most obstinate man she’s ever met, but also an enigma.

She’s never been lured to naughtiness with a man. Heaven knows, she certainly shouldn’t fantasize about the tall, dark, scowling creature who runs her household like his finely tuned pocket watch.

But she can’t help herself. She needs to taste him—or dismiss him.

Finnley, poor fellow, has a few risqué dreams of his own about how he’d like to handle the delectable widow. Alone in his rooms, he tries to deny how her humor riddles his mind and how her beauty steals his breath away.

None of his solutions are proper.

All of his desires are quite…
dear me
…scandalous.

But what’s a butler to do when the very life of his beloved employer is at stake? And he cannot control his need to protect her and…
ahem
…bed her?

January 17, 1820

No. 10 Dudley Crescent

London

“Finnley, please,” Alicia addressed her butler with a shaking hand to her brow. “I am perfectly fine. Really I am.”

The towering creature had her by the forearm, half carrying, half dragging her toward the foyer bench. Slamming the front door to her townhouse, too. “You fell on the doorstep, my lady.”

“The ice,” she explained, gasping, her hand to her chest where something inside hurt badly.

“I told Grimes to melt the ice and sweep it all away. I shall dismiss him,” her Goliath told her.

“No, don’t!” she begged him because she liked the young footman. But she was gazing at her butler’s fabulous face and so she tripped on the edge of the carpet.

“Madam!” He caught her.

“Oh, Finnley!” Alicia gasped as the giant swept her up into the power of his arms.

Was she inclined to trip on ice? And carpets? Last week, she’d inadvertently stepped on broken glass in the upstairs hall outside the door to her bedroom suite. She’d asked the maids about how the vase broke but no one claimed knowledge. “Honestly,
Finnley. No need for this. I
am
fine.”

She was not. Not at all. Her knees hurt like the devil and the balls of her hands smarted. And being held like a bit of china by this man who’d begun work only last month was unsettling. Unnerving.
Endearing.

“No, madam, you are not fine,” her man shot back as he plunked her in the oversized wooden seat which was where he usually sat while waiting to receive or dismiss her guests. Reaching up, he pulled the bell. “I’ll get a maid. You look like the very devil.”

“Really, Finnley.” She had enough sense in her to chastise him for his blue language, even if she secretly admired his forthrightness—and his scrumptious mouth. “I only need to sit here a minute and catch my breath.”

He scowled at her as he went to his knees before her. Those pale blue eyes, the color of a clear June sky, locked on her own. “If you are well, my lady, why do you clutch one hand to your bosom?”

“My chest hurts, Finnley,” she told him on a whisper. At least she hadn’t succumbed to the sob that filled her throat. To cry before him—this creature who seemed so impervious to weather or emotions—would be demeaning.

Alarm flashed in his cool countenance. He took her hands from her chest. “Where?”

“Right—“ She pointed to a spot beneath her right breast, enough toward her breast bone that she didn’t blush when she indicated its location. “Here.”

He looked down and considered the swell of her bosom in her red redingote. “Sit back.”

She loved the way he dwelled on her overly generous curves. “What?”

He pushed her to the rear of the seat, her derriere sliding along the polished wood. “Let’s remove your coat.”

She pushed his hands away from the frog closures at her throat. The heat of his big hands was enough to unsettle her, rouse her, make her breasts…
honestly!…
tingle. “I can do this.”

But she fumbled. And frowned.

He pushed her hands to her lap. “Don’t be a ninny.”

She snapped her gaze on his.

“I apologize,” he said with the first humor she’d seen gracing those lips. “Let me do this, madam.”

She sighed and fell back against the hard wood. The firm mahogany countered the rising desire that shot from her belly upward. Swallowing hard, she shut her eyes and scolded herself for this outlandish attraction she bore her new butler.
Madness at first sight, it was.
She sighed at her foolishness to desire a man she barely knew and a servant at that!

She jostled as he undid her coat and spread the wool wide across her shoulders.

“Let me help you off with this,” he said, so solicitously that it brought frustrated tears to her eyes. Her departed husband, a scoundrel whom she assumed would never rest anywhere in peace, had never assisted her in removing her clothes. Unless he had wished to have her naked. But that had been for only a few minutes while he did his duty by her and departed for his own suite.

“Of course,” she said, relishing the service of this man whom she’d hired last month on good references from the Earl of Newport. She’d never met Newport though her husband had known the earl and liked him. That aside, to be quite honest, she hired Finnley for other qualities that recommended him to her.

She smiled to herself and admired the butler’s ministrations while he tugged her coat from her arms and gently urged it over her fingertips.

No, she had not hired Wallace Finnley for the fine words Newport had written about him. Frankly, rebelliously, deliberately, she’d hired him for his brash looks. Not quite handsome, he was a collection of first-rate attributes that made her mouth water. The coal black hair. The cold blue eyes. The jaw that defied one and all to argue with him. The height, towering. The breadth, oh so comforting. The very sight of him each morning in his fitted black uniform made her catch her breath and hold it until her heartbeat resumed normal rhythms.

Which now it definitely did not.

Finnley
remained much too close. And his eyes roamed the front of her.
Yes.

He considered her bodice where she was certain her chest heaved. Her cleavage where her overlarge bosom displayed a deep divide. Where her flesh hardened at his appraisal and her nipples peaked and pushed at her chemise.

And chafed her.

She cleared her throat.

“Let me test to learn if you’ve broken a rib.”

“Test?”

“Yes.” His icy gaze froze her own. “We can call a physician if you like and he—“

“No. I detest doctors.” She’d had enough of the charlatans when her husband took ill more than a year ago and died within the month.

“Fine. I can determine if you’re hurt badly. Sit forward. Arms up a bit like this.” He raised his own in demonstration.

She imitated him.

He put his hands to her waist. They were so big, so hot, his fingers so damn long that she swore he could span her entire waistline. But the delicious warmth of his touch set her swooning…and she caught herself. Smiling at him, she winced when he pressed on either side of her ribcage. “Does that hurt?”

How could it when his strength rippled through her?
“No.”

He slid his hands higher at her sides. “This?”

She shook her head and licked her lips
. Oh, my.
His thumbs rested beneath the wealth of her breasts. And her lower body flooded with a surging tide that had her blinking like a flustered debutante.

“Does it?”

“What?”

“Hurt?”

“No, no.”

His hands drifted higher and he pushed against the sides of her breasts so that they thrust forward like two ripe melons against the bodice of her gown. “This?”

“That?” She squeaked at him.

He glanced down, his thumbs a bare half inch from her nipples. His pressure was firm, but gentle.

Her heartbeat was fast, but insistent. Her mind went blank and then, her gaze met his.

“That doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asked, his bass voice, usually of such bold timbre that she could hear him in the hall, on the stairs or greeting her callers. But now his voice held only a fraction of its own resonance.

She considered his mouth. His wide, sculpted lips that spoke of order and precision.

“No,” she told him with as much normality as she could summon. “There is no pain.”
But something else…

She put a hand to his and squeezed it. His skin was supple, hot and—

He dropped his hands.

She sagged. Her interlude was ended.

“You’ve not broken a rib. Thank God.”

“How do you know?” She searched his face.

“If you had, you would have screamed when I pressed your brea— your chest just now. You’ve badly bruised yourself in your fall.”

“Good to know. But…how do you know that?”

He shrugged. “My father’s butler was a medical man. Not trained. But helpful to the tenants in our village.”

She tipped her head, curious at his words. Often when he spoke, he seemed to be obtuse, his phrases veiled as if he were other than he was.
Why did she think that?

“Here’s the maid,” he said to her as if she needed a reminder of where they were and what they were about. “Mabel, do go to the cellar and fetch us a bucket of ice. A few towels. Long strips of cloth to make bandage rolls.”

“Finnley,” Alicia said, her voice strange even to herself. “I don’t need ice.”

“You will. I saw you fall, my lady. If I hadn’t caught you, you would have hit your face. Broken your nose. Your teeth. Don’t be polite with me. I know that your knees must be bruised.”

“Do you think so?” she asked him in a daze. Was it the nearness of him or her injuries that fogged her brain? To break the spell, she wiggled, and yes,
dammit
, her knees did pain her. Her shins. Her arms, too.

“Allow me, madam.”

The next second, her butler of one month, this veritable mountain of a delicious man, had pushed up her skirts. They draped, bunched up like limp lettuce, over her thighs and her bare knees were quite throbbingly black and blue and very, very large.