Shameless

Shameless

T
HE
B
ANNING
S
ISTERS
T
RILOGY

Shameless

Irresistible

Scandalous

O
THER
T
ITLES BY
K
AREN
R
OBARDS

Shattered

Pursuit

Guilty

Obsession

Vanished

Superstition

Bait

Beachcomber

Whispers at Midnight

To Trust a Stranger

Paradise County

Ghost Moon

The Midnight Hour

The Senator’s Wife

Heartbreaker

Hunter’s Moon

Walking After Midnight

Maggy’s Child

One Summer

Nobody’s Angel

This Side of Heaven

Dark of the Moon

KAREN ROBARDS

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

Copyright © 2010 by Karen Robards

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition April 2010

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.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robards, Karen.
     Shameless / Karen Robards.—1st Gallery Books hardcover ed.
        p. cm.—(Banning sisters ; 3)
     1. Sisters—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.O196S53 2010
813’.54—dc22
                                                       2009033185

ISBN 978-0-7434-1061-8
ISBN 978-1-4391-9928-2 (ebook)

This book is, as always, dedicated to my husband, Doug, and my three sons,
Peter, Chris, and Jack, with lots and lots of love. It is also meant as a thankyou
to those of my readers who enjoyed
Scandalous
and
Irresistible,
and have been waiting for Beth’s story. Enjoy
.

April 1817

I
T WAS
, L
ADY
E
LIZABETH
B
ANNING
thought ruefully as she looked up into the reddening face of her latest fiancé, all the fault of her damnable temper. Again.

“Are you telling me that you’re
jilting
me?” William demanded incredulously. The Earl of Rosen was of average height, with a slightly stocky build that Beth suspected would, in middle age, run sadly to fat. But just now, at age twenty-six, his square jaw, regular features, speaking blue eyes, and thick fair hair worn à la Brutus were enough to ensure that he was held to be a very handsome man by those of the fairer sex—and which of them were not?—interested in such things. Of course, that assessment was undoubtedly helped along by the fact that he was also possessed of an income of something in the nature of twenty thousand pounds a year.

Which she was, regrettably, in the process of whistling down the wind.

“I am not jilting you. I am telling you that I feel we should not suit.”

Standing in front of one of the pair of tall windows, thickly curtained in claret velvet, that adorned the far wall of the small, book-lined library of Richmond House—the palatial London home of her brother-in-law the Duke of Richmond—with William less than an arm’s length away, Beth was conscious of a draft curling around her shoulders. They were left bare by the fashionable décolletage of her slim, high-waisted frock of gleaming gold silk, its color chosen with care to set off her fiery curls. Really, the room seemed surprisingly cold despite the fact that a fire crackled in the hearth in deference to the crisp temperatures of the early April night. Instead of shivering, though, she folded her arms over her chest, lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and held William’s increasingly incensed gaze without flinching. Conversations of this sort were never easy, as she had learned from way too much experience. Still, it had to be done, and she had already put it off too long.

“You cannot be serious. My
mother
is here.” William was practically quivering with outrage. His mother, Lady Rosen, was one of the ton’s highest sticklers, and over the course of the last two Seasons had made no secret of her opinion that Beth was
fast
. Beth had little doubt that William’s announcement that he meant to marry her had brought floods of tears and recriminations down upon his head.

“I am really very sorry.” Beth looked up at him remorsefully. The idea that he had stood up to his formidable mother for her made her feel even guiltier. She
was
sorry. Their engagement, which at the moment was known only to their immediate families, was of a little more than a week’s duration, and she had regretted it within hours of accepting his offer. She should have told him so immediately, of course. But he was
such
an eligible
parti,
while she, at twenty-one and embarked on her third Season, was no longer in the first blush of youth and well past the age at which most of her contemporaries married. Having brought William up to scratch—mostly, she admitted to herself, to spite his acid-tongued sister—she had thought, hoped, wished that if she tried very hard this time, things might be different.

They were not. She had tried her best, and still her stubborn heart
refused to cooperate. She liked William well enough. She did not, however, love him, and she knew now she never would.

She could not marry him.

Had she not, three weeks ago, overheard Lady Dreyer, William’s high-in-the-instep older sister, insisting to Princess Lieven, the most top-lofty of the Almack’s patronesses, that no matter how much he dangled after her William would never be so foolish as to make Lady Elizabeth Banning, with her shocking reputation and scandal-plagued bloodline, an offer, she would never have accepted him in the first place.

But she had overheard, and the die was cast. The remark had both hurt and infuriated her, and when William, with, admittedly, some considerable encouragement on her part, did indeed come up to scratch, she had accepted him on the spot. Suspecting even then that she would live to regret it, she had added the proviso that they tell no one outside their immediate families until her brother-in-law the Duke, who stood in place of her guardian since both her parents were dead, should come up from the country, from whence he had arrived, most unexpectedly, earlier that evening. Still, whispers of an engagement had run like wildfire around the ton, so much so that Beth had actually found herself in the absurd position of seriously considering marrying the man simply to keep the gossips from saying she was playing fast and loose with yet another gentleman’s affections.

Fortunately, she was not yet as foolish as that.

“I spoke to your brother-in-law not an hour since.” William was breathing hard and his hands had closed into fists at his sides. “I told him then that I hoped to be able to announce the engagement at midnight tonight, and he made no objection.”

“Which is why I am telling you now,” Beth said. Her older sister Claire, Duchess of Richmond, had told her of William’s conversation with her husband, which was why Beth was giving William his congé in the middle of Claire’s ball. The timing was less than ideal, Beth knew, and she blamed herself for delaying until circumstances forced her hand. William was angry, as he had every right to be. She, on the other hand, would remain cool and composed. With that laudable
objective in mind, her tone was eminently reasonable, and she laid a placating hand on his forearm as she spoke. The sleeve of his bottle green satin coat, which he wore with a pale yellow waistcoat and white inexpressibles, felt smooth beneath her fingers, but the tension of the limb beneath spoke to how very far from being placated he actually was.
“Before
the announcement is made. That way, neither of us need suffer the slightest degree of embarrassment.”

“Embarrassment
. . .
”
William’s eyes bulged and his face went from puce to purple. “My God, they are already betting on it in the clubs. At White’s, the odds are five to one against me getting you to the altar and ten to one against you actually going through with the ceremony and becoming my wife.”