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Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Jane Lark… (#litres_trial_promo)
Jane Lark (#litres_trial_promo)
About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#u429042dc-772a-5a89-a679-754a8c3f011a)
It was a renowned truth, that any world-worn rogue, without a feather to fly with, must be on the hunt for a wife, or rather her dowry. As the parody of Miss Austen’s verse, from her charming little novel about country life, ran through Drew’s head, a sound of mocking humour rumbled through his chest and he leaned a shoulder against the false pillar in the Earl of Derwent’s ballroom watching town life.
The pillar was wooden, painted to look like marble. Like everyone in this damned room, it was a farce. A shallow image. A performance… Nothing here was what it seemed. Society lived a damned lie and he had lived it for a lifetime.
He was a bastard, sold by his mother to her husband as worth the risk of giving her naturally born son his family’s name to keep up the façade and to save the reputation of the Framlington title.
Damn the title…Damn the bloody name… Drew had no interest in either.
He was bored of this. Bored of pretence. Bored of the games these people and he played. Bored of the face he displayed to the world and bored of the man who suffered all this behind a closed door.
He wished to escape it. He had a plan. Of course plans required money. But his plan covered that. He was seeking a well-dowered young woman to take as his wife, and therefore earn himself an instant fortune. A fortune which he would use to pack up his bags and retire to a quiet life, away from town, away from this… Perhaps he would experience life then just as Miss Austen wrote it. Or was ‘Country Life’ an equal façade? Never mind wherever he went, he would not live behind a façade. He’d had his fill of charades.
“Have you seen Marlow’s daughter?” Mark leaned to Drew’s ear. “She would be a prize.”
Drew looked at his friend and lifted his shoulder away from the pillar, straightening up. “I have.”
“She looks remarkable.”
“She does indeed.” He’d been watching her. She was on his list of potential wives.
“Are you intending to try her?”
“I would be a fool if I did not. Look at her…” Yet the she in question, Miss Mary Marlow, was as far above his reach as the sun. The step-sister of a duke – with a bastard… It was not a match that would be desired by the sweet young miss’s mama and papa.
Yet Miss Marlow was the most appealing to the eye and Drew had been awaiting his moment to explore his opportunity with her. The time had come. He’d not been standing here for his pleasure. He’d been standing here waiting for Miss Marlow to complete her dance.
“Then what are you waiting on.” Mark laughed, spotting the same opportunity.
Not a thing. Drew glanced over his shoulder and gave his friend a wicked smile before turning to walk about the edge of the room.
Miss Marlow was in a set close to him and the dance was drawing to its conclusion. Drew positioned himself so that when it ended her back was turned him. She stood three feet away; he could feel her exuberance even though he could not see her face or her smile. Yet he knew she was smiling, she’d smiled throughout every dance tonight.
Mary Marlow was in her first season, newly launched upon the marriage market, and he was here to trade. But what his friends did not know was that as much as he desired her money, he desired innocence. His heart and mind were jaded and bitter. He longed for the refreshing invigoration of innocence. God knew, he’d never been given the blessing of innocence in his life; he’d been born into the world of sin. Born of sin and raised in sin.
Miss Marlow’s partner lifted her hand to his lips and bowed.
Drew stepped forward. “Miss Marlow.” He said her name as though they’d been introduced and he had a right to use it, speaking before the man had chance to offer to lead her back to her mother.
She looked at him, her expression confused, but then she smiled, and it was as though the sun rose in the room which was already illuminated by several hundred candles in the chandeliers.
Her smile said, “I am not sure I know you, sir.” Yet a young woman like her would never be rude enough to ask.
When her companion let her go, Drew captured her hand, as if he had a right to that too. He felt as though he did. She had become his favourite choice as a bride the minute she’d smiled at him and not turned away. “May I have the next dance?”
He did not push things too far, he did not kiss her hand, yet he let his gloved fingers slide up her wrist a little to touch her skin, as if the gesture was accidental. She lowered into a sweet perfectly correct curtsy and looked up an instant before she rose.
Beautiful.
Her eyes were an unusual blue, an extremely pale rim of colour surrounding the dark pupils that looked at him in question. “Who are you? Do I actually know you, sir?” Too polite to ask those questions she simply continued to pretend they had been introduced. They had not.
If he could have picked a tune it would have been the waltz, but the first waltz was not until later and he had no wish to lose the chance of the distance from her family. They were at the far end of the ballroom, in their usual pack. The Pembrokes. Although Pembroke was not the name the family went by as a whole, the old Duke had had four girls, and they’d all married exceptionally well, apart from Mary’s mother, who had at first married a soldier, who’d died, and then settled on the second son of an earl. But the son from her first marriage had inherited the title and given Miss Marlow a very attractive dowry, and so Mary was simply a Miss and yet a powerful match as a duke’s sister, and innocent.
“I believe you should stand here, and I there…” Drew said to her look of confusion.
There was another quick smile, which was far more fleeting than the first. She was perhaps realising she had made an error. He smiled to ease her concern. “I shall admit we have not been introduced. You must forgive me for taking the liberty of breaking the rules, Miss Marlow.” The music commenced.
He stepped forward and took her hand in the format of the dance, then completed a shoulder to shoulder turn.
“I should walk away immediately.”
“Indeed you should. But is it such a sin for a man to find you so utterly beautiful he cannot wait even another moment, or at worse another dance, to find some party who might introduce him?”
“That is the course of a gentleman.”
“It is indeed.” He leaned to her. “There you have me; perhaps I am not a gentleman…” He said it in a voice to tease her, the voice he knew earned him a little more money from the women who asked for his favour. Her head turned instantly, but then her gaze dropped to the lopsided rogue’s smile he threw at her and she laughed.
“You are a gentleman. You would not be here if you were not.”
So innocent… so blind. Such a novelty.
What he would give for that blindness.
“So are you enjoying your season, Miss Marlow?”
Her answering smile was softened then. “Yes. I have had to wait patiently, because we’ve been in mourning for my grandsire, but I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to finally be out. My cousins, who are older, have been full of stories and made me long for this. Now finally I have my moment.”
Yes, she did. “Tell me how it compares to the things you must have dreamed…” As they talked their steps followed the intricate country dance, but the blessing of it was, he had by chance chosen a country dance that did not separate them.
“It does not compare, I could not have imagined this…”
“You lie, surely you knew you would be in a room full of young men making fools of themselves for young women, and old men being bores, and young women who giggle at the slightest word.” and older women… like his mother… he did not even wish to think of them.
“So you think I giggle like an idiot.” There was a little annoyance in her voice.
As they made another turn he took the opportunity to press his palm against her side, below her breasts. Her body slid across his fingers as she followed the pattern of the dance. He only touched her for an instant, as if it was to stop her stumbling, yet her whole body jolted.
“Forgive me. I thought you’d missed a step.”
“You thought—”
“No I did not.” He leaned to her ear as he stepped forward. Her hair brushed his cheek. “I simply wish this were a waltz and I had the opportunity to hold you.”
He stepped back. There was a sparkle in her dark pupils, and he saw her heartbeat flickering beneath her skin at the base of her neck.
The woman was charming.
“Yet it is not a waltz, and so you should refrain…”
Finally he was challenged, her pause awaited his name. It had taken her long enough. “Lord Framlington.”
As they walked around the back of the couple beside them she looked as though she searched her memory for his name, yet when they came into the middle of a ring of six there was no light of recognition in her eyes. The Duke of Pembroke had not mentioned his name to her then.
“I like you, Miss Marlow. You are pretty and sensible,” he said, as they came back together – and innocent and wealthy.
“I cannot say I like you in return, I do not know you.”
He smiled at her little jab. “Know you or not, I like and admire you.” It was true, the girl was claiming his entire interest the more the dance progressed. She was perfect.
“Indeed.” She laughed, a light, jolly sound, not a forced jubilant creation developed to draw attention.
The girl was doing something to his soul, he felt as though he was bathing in her innocence, baptised in it, his sins washed away. “It is no jest, and no falsity, you are charming. A man would be a fool if he did not see it.”
“So you are telling me you are no fool.”
“I have never been a fool, Miss Marlow.” Another step forward brought them together. “I am interested in you.” He whispered it into her ear.
Her head pulled back. “Interested…”
He let his lips tilt into a smile. “Yes. Very. Immensely. As I said I like you.”
“My Lord, you may speak as though you know me, but you do not.”
“Such a sensible head, you only interest me more…”
Damn it, there was probably only a dozen steps left and beyond those dancing Drew saw her father in a discussion with her brother, Pembroke. The Duke must have recently arrived. They both glanced across the room.
Drew looked at Miss Marlow, his time with the beauty was at an end. “I am the son of a Marquis…” In theory, and yet if he was to sell himself he must sell his best side. “You may hear bad things of me, but disregard them. Judge me by the man you see. Admittedly I am not like the young men I see you dancing with—”
“You have been watching me.”
“Did I not already say that I admire you? Why would I not watch you to learn more about you and be sure what I think is true?”
“What do you think?”
“That I shall be a very lucky” and wealthy, “man, if I were to win you… You are a beauty.” He would guess if she looked about this room she would only see the light, the flowers, the beautiful dresses and people’s smiles. Like looking at that damned wooden pillar, unless you touched it, or tapped it, unless you knew, you would not know the lie beneath the paint.
Damn it, if he chose to marry her he would lock her up to protect her innocence.
The music ceased; her fingers were in his as the dance was completed. She would have pulled them free but he refused to let go.
She lowered in a curtsy.
Half the room would be laughing behind their smiles as they watched his game play, thinking the poor woman the fool he’d just told her he never was. He did not wish her thought a fool either, though.
As she rose, she smiled.
Her eyes said she liked him, even if she had not said it with her lips.
She’d taken him at his word, and she was judging him by what she saw, not by the history that had woven around him like a web for years… Rogue… Rake… Bastard… Unwanted son… Unwanted entirely…
“My father,” she breathed as her hand slipped from his. He felt the loss like something had been taken from him.
“Remember me as I am.”
She gave him another tentative smile and then her fingers gripped her dress to lift it away from her feet and she turned towards her father.
Drew watched her cross the floor then join her family. Her father leant to her ear and spoke hurriedly. She glanced back. Drew smiled. She smiled in return but it quivered with uncertainty. She knew now. Her father had just told her.
Do not dance with that rogue…
Damn the man, and damn these people. Drew turned away, to return to his friends, to return to his life, but he had ambitions, and now his ambitions leaned heavily towards Miss Mary Marlow, though winning the girl would be a challenge, there was no denying that.
“Drew, come to my room tonight…” for God’s sake, he had just bathed in innocence and now he was dirty again. He’d lied when he’d said he was unwanted entirely, one element of society welcomed him willingly. Women of his mother’s ilk.
Her removed Lady Worton’s hand from the front of his trousers, pressing his thumb into her palm so she would yield her grip on his crotch. “I am afraid I am not inclined, Bets. Find another toy tonight.”
He did not wait to hear the woman’s reply. He was so damned bored of his life. He’d fallen into it, never chosen it. Been damned well born into, like a whore into a brothel, and for years he’d enjoyed the sex, and the money and gifts the women gave him, but there had come a point he wished to be able to do as he chose – be free to live as he chose – and the only way to achieve it was to marry money.
“Drew!” Another of his friends, Peter, lifted a hand. Drew did have some people he appreciated.
“Peter. You are late. Where have you been?”
“I have been…” As Drew listened to his friend, he turned to face the room.
Miss Marlow was not dancing the next, she stood with her father receiving a scalding by all appearances, while her brother was with a woman in a knot of the family who crowded around them.
Drew looked at Peter. “Who is that with Pembroke?” The Pembroke women, including Miss Marlow, were all dark haired, it was one of the strongest characteristics of their beauty; jet black hair and pale skin and then pale blue eyes about onyx pupils, but this woman was blonde.
“Pembroke’s bride. I came in just before them. He’s taken a wife.”
Good Lord. That was a lark. No one would have expected the man to marry for years. He was not like his sister, his heart was made from stone, and he was no more innocent than Drew. They had travelled in the same circles on the grand tour. Pembroke had been one of the women’s toys too. But he’d walked away from it years ago. Yet he’d been tarnished by it even then.
“Why?” Peter gripped Drew’s shoulder.
“Oh for no reason, I simply wondered.”
“I thought you were interested in the sister, you will hardly have a chance there if you pitch for the man’s wife.”
