A Regency Earl's Pleasure: The Earl Plays With Fire / Society's Most Scandalous Rake. Isabelle Goddard

his mouth compressed and his face white and set. She had just told him that she could not marry him and was offering his ring back. She could not marry him because she was in love with Joshua. And Joshua just happened to be one of Richard’s closest friends. What a wretched business that had been. She and Richard had drifted into an engagement, more to please their parents than from any passionate attachment, and Joshua was the result. The family estates bordered each other and she’d known Richard all her life. It felt natural to be planning to spend the rest of it together. But her visit to London to buy bride clothes had vouchsafed a different perspective: Cornwall and their shared childhood vanished in a sea mist. Instead there was a thrilling round of parties, balls, picnics, assemblies and, at the end of it, Joshua. No, she couldn’t marry Richard. She was too young and too passionate and friendship was not enough.

      ‘Miss Tallis, please accept my sincerest apologies for arriving so late.’

      A well-dressed man in a puce tailcoat and fawn pantaloons stood before her. He took her shapely hand in his, kissing it with elaborate courtesy, and bowed politely to Lady Tallis, who had broken off her conversation with a chance-met companion just long enough to smile benignly at the man she hoped would become her son-in-law.

      Sir Julian Edgerton’s pleasant face wore a rueful smile. ‘I fear the Committee took longer than expected. There is always such a deal to do for the Pimlico Widows and Orphans. I hope you’ll forgive me.’

      ‘Naturally, Sir Julian, how could I not? You lead a truly benevolent life!’ Christabel’s musical voice held the suspicion of a laugh, but her face was lit with the gentlest of smiles.

      ‘Now that I am here, may I get you some refreshment?’

      ‘What a good idea! It’s so very hot in this room. Lemonade, perhaps?’

      ‘It will be my pleasure,’ he said gallantly, ‘and when we are once more comfortable, would you care to make a quick tour of the paintings with me? I am anxious to hear your views. You have such a refined sensibility.’

      She sighed inwardly, but nodded assent while her mother beamed encouragement. She knew Lady Harriet was counting on Sir Julian’s proposal. At nearly twenty-five Christabel was already perilously close to being on the shelf and she could no longer delay the decision to marry. Sir Julian might not be the most exciting man of her acquaintance, but he was solid and dependable and would make a restful husband.

      More than that, he would be an adoring one. And she could trust him. After the bruising experience of her girlhood, such a man was surely worth any amount of excitement.

      If she made this marriage, it might help repair some of the destruction she’d wreaked all those years ago. Her parents had loved Richard as a son and his dismissal had hit them very hard. As for Richard, she was sure he’d remained heart whole. He’d never loved her with the passion she had craved. Instead he’d been angry and humiliated. It was the gossip he had loathed, being on everyone’s tongue, the jilted suitor. Within a sennight he’d escaped England and was on a boat to Argentina. Lord Veryan had told the world it was needful that his son administer the family’s growing estates in South America, but the world had known the real reason for Richard’s sudden departure. So he’d escaped, but she’d paid the price for her indiscretion. Jilting a man three weeks before the wedding was the height of bad ton and scurrilous gossip had swirled around her head for months. It was difficult to recall six years later just how vulnerable she’d felt. Today she was an acknowledged leader of fashion, an ice-cold beauty who’d remained impregnable despite countless suitors. But then she’d been a raw, passionate girl, in the throes of a thrilling infatuation, and unable to dissemble.

      ‘I’m afraid the lemonade is as warm as the salon.’ Sir Julian had emerged from the crush and was at her elbow, proffering the glass he’d procured with some difficulty.

      For a moment she looked blindly up at him. Past distresses were crowding in on her and, for the second time that morning, she looked for escape. She needed distraction, needed to be on the move.

      ‘I think I would prefer to view the pictures after all, Sir Julian.’

      She rose from her seat as she spoke and, smoothing the creases from her amber silk walking dress, took her suitor’s arm. They began slowly to stroll around the gallery. As always her elegant figure drew glances of frank admiration from those she passed and Sir Julian, feeling pride in his possession, held her arm even more tightly. While they walked, he spoke sensibly about the paintings they inspected and she tried hard to conjure interest in his carefully considered opinions. He was a good man, she told herself severely, and she must not hanker for more. That way lay disaster. She had learned that lesson well. It had taken little time to discover that Richard was worth twenty times the man who’d displaced him. The relationship with Joshua had petered out, destroyed by her guilt and his inevitable betrayal.

      ‘I must say that I find these colours a little too forceful. They jangle the nerves rather than soothe.’

      Sir Julian was standing before a group of canvases whose landscapes pulsated with lurid crimsons and golds, an anarchic depiction of the natural world.

      ‘What do you think, Miss Tallis—am I being old fashioned?’

      ‘Not old fashioned precisely, Sir Julian, but perhaps a little traditional? One needs to open one’s mind to different possibilities,’ she hazarded, thinking that just one of the pictures on her bedroom wall would be enough to keep her awake at night.

      ‘As always you are right. I will look with your eyes and endeavour to see these canvases anew.’

      Why did he always have to agree with her? Richard would have mocked her pretensions, laughed openly at her and they would have ended sharing the joke together. But Richard’s companionship was long gone. How strange to think that he would soon be in England, but this time returning as the new Earl Veryan. It was three months since Lord Veryan’s life had been brutally cut short by a riding accident. Richard would have left for home the minute he’d received the dreadful news, but a long and treacherous journey meant his father had been buried while he was still on the high seas. At the funeral Lady Veryan had been beyond grief; it was certain to be a very sad homecoming for her son. Her escort continued to talk, but Christabel’s thoughts were elsewhere, straying inevitably towards a lone man adrift on a distant ocean. With a great effort she forced herself to return to Sir Julian and his enthusiastic recital; the small successes of Pimlico’s deserving poor had never seemed less riveting.

      A few hundred miles away, the new Earl Veryan gazed blankly over the sea as it threaded itself swiftly past the ship. He was deep in thought and not all of it was pleasant. The last image of his father played through his mind, the stocky figure waving from the dockside, a bright red handkerchief in his hand, growing smaller and smaller as the ship made its way to the open sea. He had been away from England for too long; he had not been there for his father when he needed him. Now at last he was returning home, but to an unknown life. The Great Hall would no longer echo to Lord Veryan’s greeting and the task of administering a large estate was now his. He knew himself well capable, but he was sorry to be leaving Argentina behind. The country had been good to him. A rugged outdoor life had taught him authority and decisiveness. It had honed him physically and created an inner strength he’d not known he possessed. And life there had not been all hard work. The social round was lively and largely free of the stifling conventions of London society, and the tall, handsome Englishman was a popular guest. There had been music and laughter and plenty of beautiful women happy to engage in a light flirtation or more. He’d enjoyed their favours freely and indifferently, determined to consign love to the vault of history and simply enjoy the physical pleasures of the moment. It had become a way of life for him, demanding little emotion and no commitment.

      The moon cut a path across the surface of the small waves so bright that it made him blink. His eyes focused on the expanse of ocean, at the different shades of silver and black stretching to the horizon, then to the lanterns which hung above him, swinging comfortingly to the rhythm of the ship. The crew were engaged elsewhere and he had the deck to himself. He wondered if he dared to smoke a cigar, a disastrous habit he’d contracted in Argentina, but decided that he’d better keep that delight