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Page 7 of When the Marquess Needed Me (The Rake Chronicles #4)

Chapter Five

V exing, impossible woman.

When Leith had first laid eyes on Miss Beatrice Salisbury, he had been sure that he had not desired her.

Now that certainty was a shambles.

He liked his mistresses elegant and obliging, all outward smoothness, but Miss Salisbury was something else altogether.

She was cold-blooded.

And while she was not his usual type of thing in character, damn her if she wasn’t right. He did want her.

He had awakened this morning, not at all rested, because he had been pursued by…intimate dreams of her.

It turned out that having Miss Beatrice Salisbury waiting for him, untouched, made his cock ache. When he had awakened, he had refused to slake the bastard, as he would have any other morning waking with a cockstand like that.

Now, he regretted that decision.

He did want to tup her. Just thinking of that pert, imperious little manner, her talking about negotiating with men, and the lovers that she had had—who were, exactly, those fellows?—it made his cock hard. It hadn’t in the moment, but when he thought about it now, he felt himself stirring. And he had to think of a series of horrific things—smallpox, carriage crashes, sick children—for some minutes to quell the warmth in his blood.

Such doings were greatly displeasing to him.

Given his state of mind, he had brought no attendants, not even Charles. Only Preston at the reins and a glower in his heart.

Many saw his relationships with the women of the demimondaine as scandalous. But what the scandal sheets and, even, perhaps, his best friends didn’t understand was that he ordered his life the way he did because he wanted everything in its proper place. He had no interest in scandal. He had no interest in unsuitable women or uncontrollable passions or carriage cockstands in broad daylight.

Yes, of course, he had had his wild days. And even had run into trouble. There had been the time that he had mistaken the ample bottom and fair profile of a viscountess for that of her half sister, his mistress at the time. When he had given the viscountess a little, provocative pinch on her rear, he had had to pay off her husband handsomely to avoid being called out. Or the time that he had inadvertently double-booked the house in St. James’s and had had two mistresses on his hands at once—a trial that he would never again repeat if he could help it.

He told such tales as larks, showing that he could see himself in good humor, because he knew John, Trem, and Monty tended to see him as a prig. And no one wanted to be friends with a prig.

Undoubtedly, he had urges. Lusts that needed to be slaked. Unlike his friends, who had always seemed to be at home with their desires, his wants had always unsettled him. He liked the etiquette of high society, of rules, of order . When he was a younger man, he had thought such desperate appetites abnormal. It didn’t seem right to want to put his cock into a woman, when the regular run of society seemed to preclude even the possibility of such a thing. His friends had long ago shown him that his desires were not his alone—but he had never been able to completely shake that initial, boyish feeling. That such desires should be locked away and dealt with in the darkness. And that his needs, if left to hold the reins in his life, would drive him straight into a ditch.

So he kept a new mistress every two weeks, bedded her in the fashion that he preferred, and then bid her adieu. It kept everything running smoothly.

No mess. No cumbersome emotions. He kept his passions secured in a place where they couldn’t hurt him—or anyone else.

And now Miss Beatrice Salisbury was ruining all of that. If Monty found out that he had bedded her, against his express wishes…he didn’t know if their friendship could survive another breach. But he also couldn’t take the chance that Monty would believe Beatrice’s lies. He would rather lose Monty over an act that he, in his heart of hearts, did want to commit. It would be too painful to lose his friendship over his believing a passel of lies about his utter depravity.

Only one man on this earth could help him with his current predicament. He needed advice, badly, and he needed it from the one close friend who had once found himself in very close quarters with a woman he shouldn’t bed. Of course, he reflected grimly, that woman had been his wife these three years.

He found the Duke of Edington in his study. One look told him, however, that the papers spread out over the desk did not belong to John, but said wife, Catherine. Catherine was a scholar, of history or some such thing as that—Leith did not always attend on that score—and she seemed to be quite prolific and well regarded in her work. John was not a scholarly type himself and had always preferred riding and similar diversions to books.

“Leith,” John said, looking up and grinning. In that moment, he reminded Leith so much of the boy that he had known at Eton that he couldn’t speak. John had changed so much since his marriage—he had gone from a wayward rake to a happy family man. Leith had looked on in bemusement, pleased for him in a perfunctory way, but not understanding the transformation.

“I am surprised to find you here,” Leith said, as he seated himself in the armchair opposite.

“Ah, yes, in the study, you mean. You’re right that I have long ceded such territory to my brilliant wife. But she asked me to read over this manuscript she is preparing for publication.” He gestured downwards at the stack of paper in front of him. “And so I am spending some rare time reading at this desk. To be honest with you, I have long associated this desk with other—”

John’s sweet grin turned his stomach. Dear God, must his friends always go on and on about tupping their wives? Could there be any subject more saccharine? Or more off-putting to himself?

“I assure you I catch your meaning,” he said, cutting off John’s raillery. “I didn’t realize you were an expert on history. From what I remember, you always used to copy off Monty.”

Only once the words were out of his mouth did Leith realize what he had said. He had known how to imitate Monty’s hand because, long ago, as boys at Eton, they had learned to complete schoolwork in each other’s names. Leith had hated history and Monty had loathed Latin, so they had just done the work for each other. It was easier that way, because, knowing what they had written in their own assignments, they could make the one penned in the other’s name different enough to pass muster with the tutors. It had been ingenious—but it had also been why Leith had been able to write that note as Monty to Olivia all those years ago.

John grimaced. “Indeed, I did.”

Leith could feel his friend thinking about that painful piece of history. Luckily, he also seemed disinclined to dwell on the past.

“But Catherine likes me to read over her manuscripts all the same. I call it my blockhead’s proofread. If I can understand it and find it lively, well, I reckon anyone will.”

Leith gave a soft chuckle. It really didn’t amuse him, how his friend had become such a devoted husband and thus unrecognizable to him. But he appreciated that John skated over his unintentional reference to the painful business with Monty. And he knew that, underneath the devoted husband, the rakish boy that he had once known could still be accessed.

“I have a problem,” Leith said, without further preamble. “And I need your counsel.”

“ Me? ”

Now, Leith really laughed. “Why not?”

“Well, I thought you would go to Monty, of course.”

He shook his head. “He’s involved in the matter.”

“What do you mean?”

Leith sighed.

“Yesterday, he sends me a missive, asking me to come to Carrington Place immediately. He used our symbol.”

He and his friends had a symbol for times of emergency, which they had developed at school. It was the first letters of all their titles—well, John’s back when it had been Forster—overlaid on each other. It created a symbol not unlike a four-paned window. They sent it when they needed one another immediately.

“Dear God, what was it? Was Olivia ill?”

“No, not at all. A chit had showed up at Carrington Place, a third cousin, asking for entrée into the demimondaine. As a courtesan.”

“A cousin of Monty’s wants to be a courtesan ?”

Leith proceeded to tell John the whole tale—up to and including the threat he had received from Miss Salisbury this morning.

“Why don’t you just tell Monty that the girl is insisting? That she’s threatened you?”

Leith looked down at the carpet. “I’m not sure he’ll believe me.”

“But why?”

“You know why.”

“I cannot say that I do.”

He let out another sigh. “Because of what happened. With Olivia.”

“Oh. The note.”

“Yes, the note,” he snapped.

“But you made amends for that mistake. And it was so long ago.”

Leith shook his head. “He says he has forgiven me, but it has never been the same between us since he found out the truth. And, really, I can’t blame him. It was a horrible act. What I did.”

“You were very young.”

“It doesn’t matter. The way he loves her…I didn’t understand.”

“None of us did,” said John. “But he also didn’t particularly tell us either, you must remember. He downed an incredible quantity of spirits and let the scandal sheets broadcast his supposed taste for debauching maidservants.”

Leith shook his head. It wasn’t that simple. “I would understand if he never forgave me. I hardly think a ball thrown in his honor and a few months’ time have done the trick.”

“But this business with Miss Salisbury. It’s a different affair altogether. Do you really believe that Monty would think you would try and force ‘depraved predilections’—whatever that means—in the bedchamber on a woman?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t want to find out.”

John paused, his expression thoughtful. “You know best about Monty. If you say nothing has been the same, I believe you. I thought he had gotten over the note. He seems so happy with Olivia. But perhaps you are right.”

“So, you think I am right? That I have no choice but to tup her?”

John laughed.

“I think you want to tup her, even if you say she is too rustic for your taste.”

“Damn you.” He paused, trying to figure out how to articulate this next part. It was the question that had brought him to Breminster House. “Before you were married to Catherine, when you were traveling in the countryside with her, you wanted to bed her but knew you shouldn’t. You told us that at the time. But you ended up bedding her anyway. Why?”

John looked at him, his green eyes somehow growing both more serious and more mirthful at once.

“I had about as much hope of resisting Catherine as I did of living a quiet and moderate youth. If fate had placed me in that situation with her a thousand times, I would have bedded her in every single one. Catherine was made for me—by whom or why, I cannot say. All I know is that resistance to that fact is futile.”

For once, Leith found himself actually listening to one of his friends’ soliloquies about their wives.

“In short, only you know if you can resist Miss Salisbury.”

Leith tried to imagine Beatrice—with her prickly, decided demeanor, and her lush dark hair and equally lush bosom—living in his townhome in St. James’s for a fortnight and not bedding her.

His mind drew a blank.

He wasn’t sure what that meant, of course. If it was a matter of the woman herself or just his own weakness.

“If Monty finds out that I have done it…”

“Then take care he doesn’t. In the case of Trem and Henrietta, I would have given quite a bit to have remained ignorant of their—” John stopped short, seemingly at a loss for the right word.

“Obvious passion?”

He winced. “Precisely.”

“But you don’t think that is deceitful? That it isn’t wrong?”

John shrugged. “With Henrietta and Trem, I learned that despite being her brother and her only protector in this world, I did not get to make her choices. If this Miss Salisbury has determined on bedding you, and you are willing, it is not Monty’s right to interfere.”

Leith nodded. John’s reasoning seemed sound to him. Yet he still did not like the notion of going against his best friend.

Nevertheless, leaving Breminster House, he knew. A little voice inside of him spoke the truth.

He could push it off, he could delay, but at some point, over the next two weeks, if she remained so willing and eager, he would bed Miss Beatrice Salisbury.

Yes, because she was threatening him.

But also because, as was becoming clear, he wanted to do it.

On the carriage ride back from Breminster House, he imagined thrusting himself inside of her. His bollocks ached at the thought.

He tried to dismiss these images from his mind.

But they plagued him all the way back to St. James’s.