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

creak than usual with the sudden swell of the ocean, but the vessel soon recovered its peaceful passage. A sailor appeared from the deck below and waved a greeting.

      ‘Fine weather, sir, and the forecast’s good. Should be a quiet landfall, I’m thinking.’

      It had not always been so calm; they had suffered tempests aplenty since leaving Buenos Aires and there had been times when he’d wondered if they would ever make it to land again. But it was tranquil now and he had leisure to think. The grey eyes were expressionless, his dark straight brows furrowed. The meeting with his mother would be painful, he knew, but there would be joy too. To be home again; to feel Cornish air on his skin once more and to awake to the sound of Cornish surf breaking on the rocky cove below Madron Abbey. He saw in his mind’s eye the winding path from the house across the green headland and then the sudden dramatic fall of cliffs tumbling into the wild seas. He’d walked that pathway so many times in memory. In just a few weeks he would be walking it in reality.

      Immediately the ship berthed in Southampton, he would post up to London and ensure that Domino was safely consigned to the care of her aunt. The sooner he could do this, the sooner he could travel on to Madron.

      ‘There you are, Richard. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

      The speaker was a diminutive brunette who barely came up to his chest. She raised a pair of soft brown eyes to his hard grey ones and smiled sweetly. Richard smiled back in response.

      ‘Not quite everywhere, it seems. I’m not exactly invisible.’

      ‘I didn’t expect you to be behind the lifeboats! Were you thinking of leaving the ship without telling me? Or, more like, you were just about to smoke one of those noxious cigars of yours.’

      He looked guilty and she crowed with delight, clapping her hands together and doing a little dance around him.

      ‘You see, I know you so well.’

      He doubted that, but it would hardly be surprising if she thought so. They’d been cooped up together in this small vessel for nigh on a month. When he’d first been asked to escort the Spanish ambassador’s daughter to London, he’d been aghast. His mind was beset with worries over his mother and grief for his father and he had no wish to assume the responsibility of a seventeen-year-old girl.

      But Señor de Silva had been persuasive. Domino had been invited by the English branch of her family to spend a Season in London and then to make the journey on to Spain and her paternal home in Madrid. Alfredo de Silva was insistent that his daughter should experience something of European society.

      ‘Argentina is pioneer country, you know, Richard, not the place for a young girl.’

      ‘She seems to have thrived on life in Buenos Aires,’ Richard protested, trying to escape the fate he saw coming.

      But Señor de Silva was adamant. Domino must be launched on society and not in a rough-and-ready place like Buenos Aires. As a considerable heiress, and charmingly pretty, his daughter could look to the highest for a husband.

      ‘It’s a very long journey for a young girl. There are dangers.’ Richard made a last attempt, but to no avail.

      ‘Yes, yes, I have considered well,’ Señor de Silva reassured him. ‘The time is right—Napoleon is captive and confined on the island of St Helena where he can do no further harm. Domino will be able to travel in safety to England and then on to Spain. And you will be with my darling to protect her on the long journey.’

      And so he’d agreed with reluctance to chaperon the girl aboard ship. He would see her safely on land and delivered to an aunt in Curzon Street, but after that his role would end.

      Domino was speaking again. ‘When we get to London, Richard, will there be many parties and balls?’

      ‘Almost certainly,’ he smiled teasingly. ‘Otherwise why would you leave all your admirers in Buenos Aires and come to London?’

      ‘My father says I must make good use of my time there. I can have fun, but I must make sure that I meet lots of gentlemen too. Eligible gentlemen.’ She rolled the syllables off her tongue and pulled a face.

      ‘That will be for your aunt to decide. She is your chaperon and she’ll tell you who is eligible and who is not.’

      ‘Are you eligible, Richard?’

      ‘For you, no. I’m far too old and a deal too worn.’

      ‘How old are you?’

      ‘Twenty-eight.’

      ‘That’s not old. My father was ten years older than my mother. And I like the way he looked in his wedding pictures. Worldly and experienced.’

      She looked up at him trustfully, the melting brown eyes smiling a clear invitation. He was taken aback. This was one outcome he had not foreseen. He’d no wish to be part of any emerging adolescent fantasy. He knew too well the pain which could accompany the insubstantial dreams of youth.

      The image of a pale-faced girl with a torrent of red curls and glinting green eyes swam suddenly into his vision. He was startled. It was years since he’d thought of Christabel, really thought of her. It must be that he was nearing England, coming home after so many years. She would be settled amid the London society he hated, probably married with a pair of children to her name.

      He didn’t know for sure. His parents, mindful of his feelings, had never kept him informed of her whereabouts or her doings. And he had not wanted to know.

      It had been enough to know that she had betrayed him, and with a man he’d considered one of his closest friends. That moment when he’d realised, known for certain that he’d been blind and a fool, came rushing back to him. The whispers which he’d ignored, the sympathetic looks which he’d refused to see, and then the two of them—Christabel and Joshua—a secret smile on their faces, secret murmurs on their lips, emerging from the darkened terrace into the lighted ballroom, walking side by side, bound together as one. The sharpness of that moment still cut at him. He’d looked around the room and realised that every pair of eyes was fixed on him, wondering what he would do, what he would say. He’d left the ball abruptly, incensed and distraught in equal measure. The next day she’d told him. A little late, he’d thought bitterly, just a little late. Three weeks to their wedding and she was sorry, she loved another.

      Sorry! Sorry for betraying him with a fly-by-night, a professional second-rater who’d pretended friendship only to get closer to his prey. And she, she’d been willing without a second thought to betray people she had professed to love and to expose him to the most shameful tittle-tattle.

      He had drifted into the engagement with Christabel. Their two families had been friends for as long as he could remember and as youngsters they’d been constant companions. It wasn’t difficult to do what their parents had been dreaming of, not difficult to imagine a life lived with each other in the Cornish homeland they shared.

      But in the end it had not felt that way. He had begun the affair in nonchalance and ended in love. He had wanted to marry. He had wanted her: her russet curls tickling his chin as they walked together in the gardens, the sensation of her body moulding to his as they dared to learn the waltz together, the softness of her skin to his touch, the softness of her mouth to his lips when he’d first ventured to kiss her. It had been a revelation. Now standing on this weathered deck, the empty ocean spread before him, her beautiful sensual form seemed to envelop him once more and he felt himself grow warm and hard with longing. He cursed silently. To feel passion after all these years was ridiculous. Surely it was only an image of the past that aroused such feelings, only an image, not reality that still had the power to hurt.

      ‘Are you all right, Richard? You look quite angry.’

      Domino’s eyes held a troubled expression and he pulled himself back abruptly to the present.

      ‘I’m fine,’ he replied easily, ‘I’m not at all angry. But we mustn’t stay on deck any longer—it’s grown far too cold for you.’

      ‘But