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Chapter 1
Vauxhall Gardens, 1818
In the shadows of the lantern that hung outside their supper house, Fanny registered the dismay on Lord Alverley’s face and realised she’d just made the biggest miscalculation of her life.
He shuffled his feet, unable to look her in the eye. “I’m afraid I can’t marry you, Miss Brightwell. Forgive me.”
The distant strains of the orchestra now playing in Vauxhall Gardens’ rotunda competed with his awkward let-down. He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Lady Georgiana has been my intended bride since we were children… I thought you knew that.”
Despite her shock, Fanny kept her smile in place. If there was one thing her mother had taught her it was that dignity must be maintained at all times. Even when the unstable ground beneath her daughter’s feet brought back Fanny’s ever-present fears she was on the verge of being tossed overboard and fed to the sharks.
Her mother would do it, too. Fanny had just failed in her most important mission—make a match that would restore the Brightwells to their former position on society’s ladder—and now she must accept her fate…marriage to that other odious creature who’d got into Lady Brightwell’s ear and made her a bargain she couldn’t refuse: Her eldest daughter in return for a comfortable lease in Soho with a carriage and two for the baron’s widow for the rest of her days.
Carefully she breathed out. She would not cry. But she would not make it easy for him, either. No, there was a limit to how accepting Fanny could be, even for the sake of dignity. Lord Alverley wanted Fanny to forgive him for such a betrayal when her future lay in tatters? Her mother would never forgive her.
Clutching the spider-gauze fichu of her daring masquerade costume, Fanny stepped back to avoid his open-armed approach.
He wanted her, but not as his wife. Could he really imagine she’d sacrifice her reputation, and that of her family, to be his mistress?
“You deceived me, Alverley.” It was true. He’d led her to believe he was in love with her and she’d formed a fondness for him—for her mother’s sake— because there’d been precious few other suitors prepared to take a dowerless bride whose father, well-born though Baron Brightwell had been, had married so far beneath him.
“Fanny, wait—” His eyes were beseeching.
Cow’s eyes.
She’d thought it from the start, so why had she persisted in this futile courtship? Surely she should have been clever enough to trust her instincts?
But of course she’d persisted because Lord Slyther had been waiting in the wings.
An alternative worse than death.
Grotesque Lord Slyther, with his moist skin and his repulsive breath, had known Fanny was on a doomed mission to find a husband who would satisfy Lady Brightwell’s exacting criteria as well as the yearning of Fanny’s ridiculously sentimental heart.
Lord, what Brightwell of Fanny’s generation could afford to be sentimental?
She shook her head not trusting herself to speak as she turned away. It wasn’t only Alverley’s deception that had landed her in this predicament. She had to take responsibility for her own gullibility. The normally careful, calculating Miss Fanny Brightwell had miscalculated, and soon her mother would remind her that Lord Slyther was both just punishment and more than a girl like her could have hoped for
.
The tongue-lashing would be almost worse than what was happening right now.
“Fanny, I—”
“Please, leave me, my lord,” she managed in something just above a whisper. “I should never have agreed to visit you here, alone. If you have any regard for me, you’ll say nothing about this if only to preserve my reputation.”
“Just one final kiss.” His voice was too near her ear when she thought he’d comply and slink into the shadows. The thought of being touched by him, ever again, made her recoil, and as she spun away, her flimsy-soled slippers skidding on the gravel, her ankle gave way beneath her. She felt the brush of leaves, the scratch of branches, and thought of the pitiful sight she would make as her mother vented her fury upon her.
Fanny was to have made the Brightwells’ fortunes. She amended this in the split second available for thought. Fanny had begged to be given this last chance before the ghastly alternative that would ensure the Brightwells’ survival…
…but Fanny had failed.
The ground rushed to meet her. So! This was to be the final indignity—to land in the dirt at his feet!
She closed her eyes, throwing out her hands and tensing as she anticipated the pain, wishing the price of her failure could be similarly condensed.
Instead, strong, unfamiliar arms scooped her up and an amused voice murmured in her ear, “Young lady, I think you’d be far safer tucked up in your own bed than consorting with this obviously unsatisfactory gentleman.”
Fanny blinked up into a pair of dark eyes that glinted at her through the slits of his demi-mask. Her first instinct was to cleave closer to whomever was prepared to offer rescue from her current nightmarish predicament; then remembering that her instincts had been decidedly off lately and that if she had any chance of getting home before her mother discovered her missing, she made a violent attempt to struggle out of his arms.
The chest against which she was now pinioned seemed to ripple with amusement. To her fascinated horror it was a naked chest, hard and tense beneath the fine linen of his pirate costume. “It seems you are a disadvantage, madam. Allow me to remove you from further embarrassment.”
For just a moment, Fanny was robbed of speech. Then anger rose to the fore. This man, fascinating though he was—and no doubt all the more because he was in masquerade—was belittling her. He had no idea of the magnitude of the disaster Fanny now confronted and his levity in the face of her humiliation, still so fresh, swept away the gratitude she might otherwise have felt.
“Put me down,” she ground out as Alverley, after a hesitation, stepped forward, saying, “Your intervention, sir, is appreciated…”
When the stranger made no move to set Fanny on her feet, Alverley’s voice became diffident. “However, we must rejoin our party. Please…put the lady down.”
Was Alverley afraid? For her? For her reputation? The reputation he was prepared to see shredded in front of all the world—or, at least, those who mattered. Or did Alverley fear for his own safety, since her saviour’s piratical costume revealed that this was a man who did not resort to padding to bolster his masculine attributes?
The pirate tightened his hold on Fanny and regarded Alverley critically. “I gained the impression the young lady has no wish for your company, sir.”
