Once A Rake. Rona SharonЧитать онлайн книгу.
SECRET KISSES
“Who taught you to kiss like this?”
“No one.” Her sultry voice glided over him in a caress. “You…did.”
“You never kissed anyone other than me?” he asked, incredulous but also absurdly pleased. When she shook her head, a rush of masculine satisfaction coursed through him. He occupied his mouth with kissing her lips, her cheek, her delicate jaw…anything but reveal he wanted her for his own. But Isabel could probably see right through him, the little temptress.
“You have not sold your soul to the Devil, have you?” she whispered teasingly.
“No, but he keeps pounding on my door.”
“Stilgoe escorted me to the ball tonight,” she shared with him as he nibbled on her adorable earlobe.
“Does he know you came out here to see me?”
She tipped her head aside, inviting him to kiss the sensitive area beneath her ear. “Sophie and Iris…but they don’t know about you…yet. They promised to explain away my absence.”
The relief he felt was testimony of his black character. A scrupulous gentleman would send her back inside; he would not ignore her perfectly clear and justifiable insinuations and continue to take liberties with her person. Nevertheless, she looked so achingly beautiful in the moonlight, her delicate features expressing rapture, that he couldn’t let her go just yet…
Books by Rona Sharon
MY WICKED PIRATE
ONCE A RAKE
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
ONCE A RAKE
RONA SHARON
ZEBRA BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
For Ari—
the adorable little lion and recent addition to our family.
I love you.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter One
Like to a hermit poor, in place obscure,
I mean to spend my days of endless doubt,
To wail such woes as time cannot recure,
Where none but Love shall ever find me out.
—Sir Walter Raleigh
London, 1817
Isabel Aubrey drew a fortifying breath and climbed the front steps of Lancaster House. The Earl of Ashby’s private residence was situated on Park Lane, the finest street address in Mayfair. For years she had passed by his home, aware he was somewhere on the Continent, risking his life fighting against Napoleon. Then two years ago, soon after Waterloo, he had come back.
Her heart beat wildly as she tapped the brass knocker against the door and waited. A rotund butler answered the door. “Good morning, miss. How may I help you?”
Isabel smiled. “Good morning. I’m here to call on his lordship.”
The butler shook his bald head ruefully. “His lordship doesn’t receive callers, miss. My apologies, and a good day to you.” The door closed softly in her face.
Drat. Isabel stepped back, churning with disappointment. She’d been so preoccupied with tamping her emotions upon coming to see him that it hadn’t occurred to her Ashby might refuse to see her at all. Yet it was not her in particular he refused to see—it was anyone.
“Shouldn’t we return home now, Miss Isabel?” her maid inquired from the sidewalk, where she dutifully kept watch for passersby. Isabel glanced back. Except for a fruit cart, the street was empty. It was yet early for the haut ton to crawl out of its soft beds, but she still had to watch out for the demented early risers who went riding in the park. “We’ll get into a lot of trouble, should anyone spot us on the Gargoyle’s doorstep,” her maid added fretfully, glancing right and left.
“Please don’t call him so, Lucy,” Isabel berated her maid. “His lordship deserves our pity, not our ridicule.” Yet Lucy had a point. If word got around that she’d paid a personal visit to the Gargoyle—when it was a very strict rule that no unmarried lady with magnificent prospects ever called on a gentleman except upon a business or a professional matter—her mother would have a fit, and her elder brother, Viscount Stilgoe, would marry her off to the first single gentleman she waltzed with at Almack’s on Wednesday. She’d exhausted every possible excuse for misconduct when she had turned down five eligible beaux, declaring that none of the fellows would do.
Think! she ordered herself. There had to be a way to approach the earl. Gnawing on her lip, an idea entered her head. It was somewhat bold, but it seemed to be her only recourse. She fumbled in her reticule and took out a pencil and an elegant calling card, which in addition to her name stated her active role as Chairwoman of the Widows, Mothers & Sisters of War Society. She wrote a short message on the back of the card. Before she lost her nerve, she knocked again.
The butler was quick to respond. “Kindly give his lordship my card and ask him to read the line on the back,” she instructed, before he shut the door in her face a second time.
The butler’s kind eyes softened sympathetically. “You are not the first young lady who has come calling, miss. He wouldn’t see any of them. I am sorry.”
Isabel stiffened. “I am not one of his…lady friends. His lordship was my brother’s friend, and his senior officer. He will see me. Please give him my card.”
The butler’s scrutiny shifted between her and the demure maid standing a few steps behind her. He took the card. “I shall inquire.” The door closed again.
Isabel kneaded her hands. What she would never have been able to imagine, even in her worst nightmares, was the formidable Earl of Ashby—Colonel