The Girl Who Seduced an Earl--Book 1, page 1
The Girl Who Seduced an Earl
Book 1
Sharon Page
“Strong, character-driven romance...touching and emotional...extremely sensual and erotic.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Sin
“Witty, wicked and wonderful...”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on A Gentleman Seduced
“Sharon Page is a lady to watch out for. Her writing style is sharp, sexy and will seduce you from the first page.”
—Just Erotic Romance Reviews
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. Incidents, names, characters, and places are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Edith E. Bruce
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author (excepting short quotes for use in reviews).
ISBN: 978-0-9947611-2-5
COVER ILLUSTRATION: Crocodesigns
Cover quote from Just Erotic Romance Reviews (J.E.R.R.)
www.SharonPage.com
Excerpt from The Girl Who Seduced an Earl - Book 2 copyright © 2018 by Edith E. Bruce. ISBN 978-0-9947611-3-2
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
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
The Girl Who Seduced An Earl continues in Book 2
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Chapter One
LONDON
April, 1818
Nothing irritated twenty-four-year-old Dorian Waverley, the Earl of Haydon, like spending a king’s ransom to organize an orgy, then leaving the event unsatisfied.
Despite being alone, without servants or protection, he sauntered down King Street, swinging his walking stick. Though he had downed a half-bottle of brandy, his gait was even and smooth, revealing no unsteadiness. While he appeared nonchalant and careless, he flicked his gaze constantly over narrow, dark alleys that could easily hide a thief.
It would be a pleasure to be targeted for robbery. He sorely needed something to drive his fists into, something to work off his frustration. That was what the orgy was supposed to do.
Tonight’s event had cost him two thousand pounds and involved six of the most voluptuous and skilled courtesans in London’s most notorious and expensive brothel. He had been the only male participant. He’d had a dozen lush, alluring breasts at his disposal. Six pretty mouths and six cunning minds well able to invent the most seductive positions to entice a man.
But he’d been...as insane as it seemed, he’d been bored. Too bored to carry out any of those positions. Too disinterested to do anything but down his brandy, pay the bill, and leave.
Hades, what was wrong with him?
Admittedly, pleasure was not the only thing he had to keep his memories at bay. Gaming and drinking worked also.
Gaming had the added reward of irritating his father. But so did the vast amounts of money he spent at brothels. Drinking didn’t do much for him except give him a pounding head and ruin good boots when he cast up his accounts.
There was no point in going home now, even if it was close to two o’clock in the morning. Without sex to exhaust him, he had no hope of a dreamless sleep.
He turned off on a narrow lane. At No. 10, Dorian mounted the steps, rapped on the door. A small panel slid away from a square iron grille set in the thick oak. The doorman’s face appeared. A round, blue, blood-shot eye peered suspiciously at him, then the servant swiftly stepped back, yanked open the door, and sketched a deep bow. “Good evening, milord.”
“Good evening, Montjoy.” To the muscular doorman, Dorian handed over his walking stick and hat. “Who is here this evening? I’ve come to annoy my father with more staggering losses.”
Montjoy let a flicker of a smile show before returning to stone-faced servant. “Mr. Tate, Sir Augustus Neville, and Lord Wrenshire, milord. They’d ’elp ye, I wager.”
“Indeed. They’ve accommodated me before.”
Montjoy bowed, and Dorian headed into the smoke-filled card room. If he wanted, he could easily win tonight. But his losses and his mounting debts made blood vessels throb in his father’s temples.
His father’s abuse had tormented his mother until she had ultimately taken her own life. In return, he tormented his father.
For the next few hours until dawn, he would lounge at a card table, throwing down the wrong cards and scratching out vowels promising to pay thousands of pounds. But he didn’t feel the usual bitter anticipation. Weariness dragged at him. He felt as unsatisfied about this form of revenge as he had in the brothel’s bedroom.
Dorian scanned the tables. Out of the shadows, the Earl of Lytton materialized, walking toward him. His friend Lytton dressed like Dorian’s father—with more care and precision than Brummell. Dorian wore a long dusty leather coat and he hadn’t bothered to retie his cravat after leaving the ill-fated orgy. His shirt collar hung open and his trousers looked as though he’d slept in them for a week. He kept his pale blond hair longish in the front and it dangled over his eyes. Women loved that, he’d discovered.
His friend lifted one black eyebrow. “The usual tonight, Haydon? Or do you want me to attempt to win?”
Dorian grinned. “The usual.” Lytton generally partnered him at whist. But since Dorian deliberately lost, he made the flamboyant wagers and paid the debts.
Lytton shrugged, raked back his coal-black hair, and said, below his breath, “One of these nights I will be able to outplay your deliberate attempts to throw the game.”
“I doubt it.” Dorian nodded to a table where Sir Augustus Neville and Lord Wrenshire waited for opponents. “Shall I offer to play Wrenshire for the thousand he won off me last night?”
Without waiting for an answer, he went. A servant followed him into the gloom. Balanced on the footman’s silver salver were Dorian’s customary bottle of port and a tumbler.
Taking the glass, Dorian filled it with liquor, pulled out one of the two empty chairs, and finished the drink before his arse hit the seat. Lytton sat across from him, grimacing. Wrenshire began to deal.
Normally it was easy to deliberately lose.
But there was something wrong tonight.
The diamonds and the hearts on his cards kept changing in front of his bleary gaze into droplets of scarlet blood. Dorian’s gut tightened. His heart started to pound.
He’d heard of men who drank so much they eventually saw demons in the shadows or believed spiders crawled over their bodies. Maybe he had finally—as his father had constantly berated he would—pickled his brain.
Lytton called the suit and threw down a card. Others followed. But Dorian couldn’t see them. Instead he could see his mother’s blank eyes. The dead eyes he had looked into when he’d been five years of age. Christ. He tried another drink. Then another. Liquor burned down his throat again and again, but...but hell, he couldn’t push the memories back.
It had never been like this. Normally he could escape—
“Blast.” Cards hit the table. Sir Augustus leaned back in his chair, running a hand through thinning blond hair. “That’s the third hand you’ve won, Haydon. A dashed unusual stroke of luck you are having tonight.”
Dorian blinked and took a good look at the cards played in the last trick. He wasn’t paying attention. He forgot to play his cards badly.
Maybe what he needed was to be drunker. But as he signaled the waiter for another bottle, the whole room wavered like curtains in the wind. He couldn’t even see straight.
This should be drunk enough. Why wasn’t it working? Why was the liquor making the memories flood faster and with more detail? The more he tried to forget, the more distinctly he heard the echo of his mother’s sobbing, the explosion of the shot—
Across the table from him, Lytton drew in a sharp breath. “Good Christ.”
A distraction. Desperate for anything, for any escape, Dorian glanced behind him, expecting to see something mildly intriguing—a bosomy courtesan in a low-cut gown, perhaps. Instead he saw himself...no, an older version of himself. Harsh, cold, arrogant. He saw that face every morning in his mirror. It was a damn cruel twist of fate that he looked exactly like his father, who now strode toward him. The only difference: his hair was white-blond, his father’s was now silver.
Games stopped. Even men with thousands of pounds on the line looked up as the duke stalked past.
Dorian finished his port by lifting the bottle to his lips. He’d been itching for a fight. Here was one coming right to him.
He never hit his father. But he enjoyed bringing his father to the point of hitting h im.
The duke stopped by his chair, his face already flushing the dull red of rage. “What in blazes are you doing here, Haydon? No more gaming. I forbade it. I believe I made that very clear.”
Despite his anger, the duke kept his voice at the level of a quiet murmur. Wouldn’t want to air the family linen.
Dorian leaned back in his chair and grinned. Ten years ago, when he’d turned fourteen, he’d practiced insolent grins in his looking glass until he’d learned the perfect one to make his father’s neck go scarlet. “I don’t give a bloody damn what you said.”
“You are an irresponsible idiot, my boy.”
Dorian jumped to his feet so fast his father became a blur. At the sudden movement, his gut churned. Amazing how quickly bile could rush up one’s throat but he fought for control. He wouldn’t be sick, wouldn’t show any weakness to the duke. “Given what you are, I don’t give a damn what you think of me.”
Eyes that looked like his narrowed. “And what am I, Haydon?”
His father had called him by his courtesy title ever since he’d been born. He looked down—he now stood several inches taller than his father. It was a far cry from when he had been a small, frightened boy. Never would he flinch in front of his father again. Fear was for children. The only thing he feared now was that he might lose control and actually break his father’s neck. “A sadist. A monster. You drove her to—”
“Stop this, Haydon.” The duke’s tones were soft and ice-cold in the sudden quiet that had descended on the gaming hell. “She did not take her own life. I am not the villain—”
“You are.” Dorian heard his voice bark through the unnatural stillness. All his father cared about was making him shut up. He abruptly turned away. Nothing irritated his father more than having his son turn his back. “I intend to keep losing money as long as I get the satisfaction of driving you mad.”
A hand landed on his shoulder.
Instinct kicked in and Dorian spun, grasping the wrist. He could snap it, though he wouldn’t, but he hoped his father wouldn’t know for certain what he would do.
Then he met a worried gaze and jerked his hand back. It wasn’t his father who had touched him. It was Lytton. Lines of concern crossed his friend’s forehead. “This is not the place, Haydon. Let’s have another drink.”
Not the place. He and his father had never come so close to airing the truth in public. Dorian had kept quiet all his life. Out of the breeding drummed into him. He’d kept quiet to protect his mother’s name. But he was drunk and angry and he’d almost lost control.
His damn father, when he’d turned his back, had taken the opportunity to walk away.
Lytton gripped his shoulder again and pushed him in the direction away from his father. “Why don’t you go find another distraction tonight, my friend? A brothel, perhaps—”
Dorian shook off his friend’s hand. “I came from a brothel. I hired six ladybirds for my own private orgy and here I am, unsatisfied and frustrated.”
He deliberately joined one of the tables close to his father, though his sire did not acknowledge him in any way. The other players recognized the potential powder keg in their midst—Dorian sensed their sudden tension.
Lytton joined as his partner, watching him warily. From across the table, one of the young peers gaped at him. Dorian recognized the youth as Viscount Woodley, just as he realized the lad had heard the end of his conversation.
“You hired six women? At once?” Woodley’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed on a nervous swallow.
Dorian let a cool, humorless smile lift his lips. “Indeed. I’d wanted ten but the bed was a bit small for all of us.”
Woodley leaned toward him, blushing pink. “How much did it cost you? To have your own private orgy?”
“Too much.” He said it jokingly, but as the young man’s face fell, Dorian sighed. Obviously, the boy wanted an actual figure. “Two thousand.”
“T—two thousand?” Woodley stammered. “That’s my yearly income!”
Dorian looked toward his father who was playing whist with some of his cronies. His father grimaced and snarled.
It was strange, but his father’s rage didn’t please him. His mother had suffered, and she had died. This...didn’t feel like enough. To Woodley, he shrugged. “Sexual overindulgence doesn’t come cheap.”
Lytton groaned. “You know, Haydon, you spend enough money at a brothel in one night to buy one.”
“A peer of the realm wouldn’t own a brothel,” Woodley declared. “It would be a...a hell of a scandal.”
Dorian rubbed his jaw. This time he gave a genuine grin. “Hell, it would, wouldn’t it?”
Chapter Two
HOW COULD THREE SIMPLE words ruin a woman’s entire future?
Emma Taylor stared at her madam, Mrs. Nichol. An odd rushing sound filled her ears. Over the roar in her head, she asked, “Did you truly just say, ‘I sold it’?”
She had been in her room, preparing for the coming night by styling her auburn hair, painting her lips red and lining her green eyes with dark kohl. When her madam had come in, she had been finishing her preparations, stuffing a fabric pad under each breast to plump them up above the edge of her bodice.
Mrs. Nicol sighed. “Close the door, Emma.”
She did and as soon as the door closed, Mrs. Nicol sank into Emma’s favorite silk-cushioned chair. She had never seen her madam appear disconcerted, embarrassed, or nervous. Yet now her employer—her mentor—would not meet Emma’s eyes.
Finally, Mrs. Nichol said, “I did. I am sorry, Emma, but it is time I retire. The earl made such an extraordinary offer I could not refuse.”
“An earl,” she said. Her voice hardly sounded like her own. It was deadened, without emotion. Blank and empty with shock. “An earl has bought this house?”
It had to be a joke. But there was no laughter in Mrs. Nichol’s eyes. There was only guilt. A long sigh wracked her employer’s chest. Mrs. Nichol took care of them all—she dressed the girls well, taught them to read, trained them to lose their country accents, find their ‘h’s and save their money. Emma had always felt gratitude for that.
But Mrs. Nichol had one dangerous weakness. Emma feared she knew exactly what had happened.
“You were gambling again.” Emma clasped the woman’s hand and crouched down—not an easy thing in the full corset she wore to make her waist tiny and her breasts spill up top. “You had to sell it for gaming debts, didn’t you? There won’t be very much left of the fortune the earl paid, will there?” Mrs. Nichol always owed money to the most disreputable thugs who ran gaming hells. Men who would slit the throat of anyone who crossed them.
“There will be some money left,” the woman said guilty. “I know—I promised I would not play again...but I thought a game or two would not hurt. And then I could not stop.”
Emma swallowed hard. Now twenty-two and Mrs. Nichol’s right hand woman, she was supposed to take over the house when Mrs. Nichol retired. From it, she would earn a substantial income that would let her protect her sister.
To protect anyone in England, one needed money. Emma needed it to pay for rent on a house for Meg, to pay a companion to care for her sister, who could not be left alone. She needed money to ensure their stepfather never found her and never, ever found Meg.
In her experience, disasters had always come with warnings. They were insidious things that she would watch advance over a long time. She’d lived with the fear of them for days, months, even years before they struck. She’d always had time to prepare.
But not now. She felt as if the world was rocking beneath her feet.
“Peers of the realm do not own houses of ill repute, they visit them,” she protested. “Surely it is wrong for a peer to own such a place. It would be like being in trade. This cannot be right.”
A rueful smile lifted Mrs. Nichol’s lips. “This one argued he had come to the realization he spent so much money at brothels, he might as well buy one of his own.”
“What am I going to do?” It was a mere whisper of a sentence and she hadn’t meant to speak it out loud.
“Well,” said Mrs. Nichol, “work for the gentleman, of course.”
Emma jerked her head up. She gaped in disbelief. Everything was ruined and this woman, who had treated her well, who had promised her this house, was happily suggesting she become the property of the earl who had just stolen her hope of independence.
