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Page 1 of When the Marquess Needed Me (The Rake Chronicles #4)

Prologue the First

London, England

July 1803

“C ome now, Leith,” John hissed into the carriage, as he stood on the street. “The ladies won’t bite.”

“Or muss your clothes. Overly.” Trem laughed, sticking his head over John’s shoulder so he could see Leith, who still sat in the carriage. Soon, though, he cast his eyes back up at the elegant townhome looming in front of them.

John and Trem had been speaking of this excursion for months. They had insisted they would all go to Madame Stirling’s place the moment they next got to London, and now they were all here. Because if John and Trem wanted something, they got it.

“He doesn’t have to come inside if he doesn’t want to,” Monty said. He was on the other side of the carriage door, peering inward, his usual kindly smile on his face. A different smile than Trem’s vulpine grin or John’s smirk.

They were all best friends, but Leith and Monty were particularly close, just like John and Trem had their own bond. Leith appreciated Monty’s solicitude, although it also embarrassed him, especially in front of John and Trem, whose eyes were shining in the dim evening light. Their faces and voices had been loosened by whiskey and their excitement over what the night would hold.

“Oh, he wants to,” said Trem. “He just doesn’t want to get in trouble. With his mother or the masters, if they find out. Which they won’t.”

“Don’t be a prig, mate,” John teased. “You’ll regret it if you don’t come in.”

Thomas Balfour, the Marquess of Leith, all of seventeen years of age, sat in the carriage, unable to move. Trem was right, of course—he did want to go inside, and he did fear getting in trouble. But that wasn’t the whole of it.

He wasn’t like John or Trem or Monty. They didn’t know it, but he hadn’t bedded a woman yet. He pretended that he had—nonsense about serving girls and the like—but the truth was that he was still a virgin. His best friends, on the other hand, weren’t lying. Their conquests were real. He had seen evidence. Christ, in some cases, he had heard evidence.

“Leith, there’s a tavern around the corner,” Monty said. “Why don’t we just go and have a pint—”

“No,” Leith forced himself to say. “It’s fine. I’m coming up.”

Trem and John cheered.

“Are you certain?” Monty said, his expression of sanguine concern making Leith feel even worse, somehow, than John and Trem’s jeering.

“Yes, of course,” he snapped.

He knew Monty could see his nerves. Leith suspected his best friend knew about his lack of experience. He had never said it out loud to Monty and, in fact, he had repeated the same lies about his sexual history to him that he had to the others, but Leith sensed that, somehow, Monty knew the truth anyway.

The four young men entered the town house, which was lavishly appointed. A butler saw them into the drawing room, as if they were entering any fine home in the city, and not one of its most hallowed brothels.

Leith could feel sweat prickling under his collar. He would have taken another swig of whiskey from the flask in his pocket, but he already felt sick, and he doubted drink would help.

When they entered the drawing room, six beautiful women, all of whom looked only a few years older than themselves, perched on sofas and divans. The women rose and murmured their greetings, and an older woman on the center sofa, clearly Madame Stirling, bid the footmen to serve refreshment.

Quickly, John filtered off through a door with a ravishing blonde. Trem followed soon after, leading a slim brunette who Leith, upon entry, had regarded as the most handsome woman in the room.

He was not sure how his friends managed it. The women had seemed drawn to them by some force that Leith himself did not possess.

“Are you truly well?” Monty asked.

A plump redhead, with a face full of rather becoming freckles, had approached Monty. From the way his best friend’s eyes had gone round, it was clear Monty was interested.

“Yes,” he hissed, although he was not at all sure that he was. He had seldom been so ill at ease.

“Is your friend bashful?” the redhead said to Monty, softly.

“No,” Leith said, desperately.

“Belinda,” the redhead said, gesturing to a woman in the corner. “One for you.”

“Well—I—that is—I am not—”

A tall woman approached. Her hair was a sweet light brown. She was wearing a blue silk and was, indeed, very pretty. She looked more mature, more sophisticated, than some of her compatriots.

“My, you are a handsome one. Like a prince,” she said to Leith, only making him feel more uncomfortable.

Monty grinned. “Enjoy yourself, brother.” And then he went through the door with the redhead.

“Shall we go somewhere more private?” the woman asked him.

“Please.”

The truth was that he was desperate to get away from this room and the watchful eyes of Madame Stirling. Her gaze was so piercing that he felt convinced she knew how many times he had taken himself in hand yesterday (three) and how often he fantasized about bedding a woman (endlessly, it seemed).

“Come,” his courtesan said, gesturing through the door his friends had walked through. She brought him to a stairwell and then he followed her up it. When they reached the second floor, she led him through a door.

It was a bedchamber—that was clear. Done up in a feminine, pristine style. Trem and John had said Madame Stirling’s was the best brothel in London. Leith hadn’t known what that meant and, now that he was here, he was relieved to see that it meant that the furnishings were elegant, the baseboards sparkling clean, and the women uncommonly beautiful.

“Sit,” the woman said, gesturing to the bed, and he obeyed. “Do you know what you would like?”

“Well, I—” He did, in a way, but, in another, he did not at all. He had a driving, primal urge to bed a woman, to bury his cock into a lady, and to fill her up with his seed. Other than that, he was not sure.

He had no idea how to charm a woman or please her in the bedchamber. And then there was the matter of his character. He didn’t have the easy charm of his friends and he abhorred mess in all facets. He could be, he knew, too little obliging.

And there were his physical defects. Yes, he had been called handsome many times in his life, and he supposed his face was a good one. But he was the shortest of his friends. And his cock was not especially large. No, indeed, he knew it was, in fact, small. His member wasn’t the smallest that he had seen in his life, but he knew it was, nevertheless, distinctly not large. And he understood, from the way Trem told stories about women losing their minds over his (admittedly very large) cock, that ladies cared about such things.

“Do not be nervous. I will not be affronted, no matter what you say.”

Her soft voice, the sweet fragrance of her perfume, and the creamy skin above her bodice—they had started to take effect. He felt his cock hardening in his breeches.

“I want to tup you. In the darkness. I don’t want to undress. You needn’t, either.”

It was the most orderly, least frivolous progression he could think of. John and Trem had been right—he had wanted to come here. But he couldn’t bear any sort of untidiness or display. Or exposure of himself. He wanted a furtive, blissful release.

“Are you certain? That is all?” the courtesan said, her expression a little perplexed. But she had been right—she didn’t look at all affronted.

“Yes.”

And so that is what they did, after she fit him with the French letter that she pulled out of a box on the nightstand.

The Marquess of Leith bedded a woman for the first time in a darkened brothel room with only his breeches tapes undone.

He found he had been right, too. He found the release exactly what he had craved.

He also found it soothing that, with a courtesan, such an experience could be replicated again and again. With a courtesan, he realized, he could always ask for this , and she would be happy to oblige him for the coin he provided. No disarray, no turmoil, no exposure, was needed.

That night, during the carriage ride back to Mayfair, Leith could, for the first time, genuinely boast with his friends about his conquest. In fact, he might have enjoyed his newfound ability to boast honestly as much as the experience of losing his virginity itself. Of course, he understood that his friends’ proclivities were different than his own. But that hardly mattered, he reasoned. He didn’t have to provide those details. They wouldn’t understand.

He could, however, praise the fair woman whom he had bedded, and talk about how beautiful she had been.

Therefore, in the intervening years, he established a pattern.

A courtesan.

His particular request.

A neat release into a French letter.

And a sense that the pressure inside of him, that churning desire, had been temporarily satiated.

John, Trem, and Monty would come to tease him about his love of courtesans. John even joked that he felt responsible for leading him down such a sinful path, because it had been his idea to visit Madame Stirling’s that evening all those years ago.

Whenever his friends questioned his fixation, Leith claimed he liked courtesans for their elegance, their beauty, their refined manners.

And he did appreciate his mistresses for these qualities. That was true.

But he also loved that, with a courtesan, he could simply get what he needed, and she had no incentive, no motive, to ask him for more , in any regard.

So, for seventeen years, he hardly strayed from the course he had charted that night at Madame Stirling’s.

Why would he?

It was, after all, he told himself, exactly what he wanted.