Love and the Shameless Lady (Scandalous Kisses Book 3)
Table of Contents
LOVE AND THE SHAMELESS LADY
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
LOVE AND THE SHAMELESS LADY
Scandalous Kisses Book III
BARBARA MONAJEM
SOUL MATE PUBLISHING
New York
LOVE AND THE SHAMELESS LADY
Copyright©2016
BARBARA MONAJEM
Cover Design by Anna Lena-Spies
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Acknowledgements
Once again, my thanks to Kathy Payne for patiently answering my questions about all things Roman.
Prologue
Dearest Mother,” promised Dianthus, her hand on her heart, “even if I must steal them all, I shall retrieve every last charm. One day, your bracelet shall be complete again.”
Narcissa gazed lovingly at her full-grown daughter. Tears came to her eyes. “Our bracelet, dearest. When I am gone, it will be yours, and your daughter’s after you.” She passed her a tiny notebook. “Read this and learn it by heart. It is my record of where each charm was lost, stolen, or bartered. I am certain you will succeed in finding them again.”
“I shall, even if I must travel the length and breadth of Britain to do so.” Dianthus kissed her mother’s cheek and left the room.
As she closed the door, she added under her breath, “Indeed I shall succeed, and more—for I shall also avenge your ruin.”
The End
Daisy Warren set her pen down with a heartfelt sigh. The Lady’s Ruin was her best novel yet. The plot and characters were so outrageous she felt sure they resembled nothing and no one in real life.
Except perhaps Daisy herself, but she didn’t want to think about that just now. The novel was over and done with, and so was the smuggler who’d inspired it—dead, and richly he deserved it. Unfortunately, neither of these facts changed a thing about the life of a ruined lady.
She bundled the pages, wrapped and sealed them, and addressed them to her publisher. In the morning, she would have it sent on the mail coach to London. She set it aside, went down to the taproom of the ramshackle inn where she lived, and indulged in a celebratory brandy.
Tonight she would play the out-of-tune pianoforte and sing for the drunken patrons of the Diving Duck, while her mother turned in her grave. Tomorrow she would begin the sequel—The Lady’s Revenge.
Chapter 1
Several months later
“He’s a good-looking man,” Sally said, wiping three tankards and preparing to fill them. “And one of your sort, too.”
Daisy Warren glanced up from kneading the dough for the cottage loaves. “Not anymore.” She was a ruined woman, and therefore her supposed ‘sort’—in other words, the gently bred—would have nothing to do with her.
That didn’t stop her from taking a good long look at the newcomer, plainly visible through the doorway from the kitchen to the coffee room of the Diving Duck. Slouched in a chair, he was entirely at ease, his station in the world assured. A man would practically have to commit murder before being ostracized, whilst a woman had merely to—
She stopped that thought before it had a chance to grow into full-blown fury. Anger did no good at all. It changed nothing, except to make her feel ill.
Sally rolled her eyes. “The gentry can’t all be prigs.” With practiced ease, she operated the tap with one hand and held the three tankards in the other.
“Most of them are,” Daisy said, punching the dough hard. His fairish hair was a little too long, curling over his cravat. A simple knot, not the complicated sort her brother Colin sometimes chose. His other clothing was fashionable without being ostentatious, his only jewelry a ruby ring on his left hand. She thought his eyes were blue, but she couldn’t tell from this distance.
God only knew why she found him so interesting. Perhaps because he brought a little culture, a little education, a little worldliness into this godforsaken inn.
Mostly, Daisy was content with her life at the Diving Duck. The smugglers who frequented the place knew by now to treat her with friendly respect, and whenever she wanted to play a proper pianoforte or go for a bruising ride, Colin’s estate wasn’t far away. She would never marry, never have children, but all in all—
Drat, the newcomer had noticed her watching him. She glared and returned to kneading the dough.
“Maybe this one ain’t so bad. I wonder why he’s here.” Sally shut off the tap and headed for the coffee room.
“I don’t care.” Daisy was tempted to close the door so she couldn’t see him and therefore he couldn’t see her, but damned if she would let any man’s appraisal discomfit her. She no longer minded the bold stares of some of the smugglers. They meant nothing by it.
Daisy covered the dough with a cloth and set it aside to rise. The only true advantage to being ruined—and to leaving her brother’s home to live at a disreputable inn—was that she was learning how to cook and bake. A Warren doing menial labor! Her mother’s shroud must be twisted into knots by now.
Sally returned with several empty tankards. “He’s on a riding tour, visiting Roman ruins.”
“Is that so,” Daisy said flatly. A scholar, was he? Thanks to her late father, she had a soft spot for those studying the ancient world, but she knew better than to let nostalgia affect her. He might seem appealing, he might even be knowledgeable, but when it came right down to it, he was just another man.
Sally never stopped moving. Already she was wiping the tankards preparatory to filling them again. A group of locals, most of whom were involved in smuggling to some degree, had come in for their customary darts and ale. “Finished with the dough, have you? Then if yo
u don’t mind, Miss Daisy, I think those rock buns are about done.”
It had taken Sally months to get used to Daisy in her kitchen, and only recently she’d begun to ask for help rather than waiting for Daisy to volunteer. She would never have done so if Daisy hadn’t proposed writing a cookery book, and said she needed to learn how to do things herself, not just watch how they were done.
Daisy opened the oven and shoveled the little cakes out. They were likely to cool as hard as their names indicated, but tasty all the same.
“They don’t look bad,” Sally said, “but what we really need is that recipe from Mr. Warren’s cook.”
At least they weren’t burned, which they would have been if Sally hadn’t prompted her. Yet another reason why Daisy shouldn’t dwell on handsome but boring men. The real reason, though—the most important one—was that if she let her thoughts wander in that direction, she might consider bedding one of them again.
No, she wasn’t that much of a fool. Once was enough.
“Haven’t really tried, have you?”
Daisy started. “Tried . . .?” She bloody well had tried, and . . . Oh, Sally was still talking about rock buns. “Yes, I did my best to pry the recipe from my brother’s cook, but she says she’s never written it down. She won’t want me in her kitchen watching her make them.”
“Tell her she has no choice,” Sally said. “If I was gentry-born, it would be do as I say, or else.”
“I daresay, but she’s not my cook, and she’s been with the family for eons, so I couldn’t sack her even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. We’ll find a recipe elsewhere, or we’ll adjust yours until we get them just right.” Nothing like a nice, safe conversation about food to take one’s mind off a man.
How could she be interested in men after what she’d gone through? It made no sense at all, and yet she kept on noticing them—their teasing grins, their powerful arms and thighs, their tight arses—and imagining how their cocks would look when aroused . . .
She must be mad, but she couldn’t help it.
“He’s acquainted with Mr. Bennett,” Sally said. “Staying there, not here, so you don’t have to worry that he’ll try tiptoeing to your bedchamber at midnight.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Daisy scoffed.
“The way he’s eyeing you, maybe you should be,” Sally said.
“Look, but don’t touch.”
Sir Julian Kerr raised a hand of welcome to the older man who’d just walked into the Diving Duck. “Mr. Bennett! I hoped you would find time for a tankard of ale. Writing poetry is all very well, but one must have one’s recreation, too.”
“No doubt, Sir Julian, but don’t turn my warning aside.” Mr. Bennett, the retired smuggler in his fifties who was Julian’s contact on his current mission, settled himself in the chair next to him. “Just because she’s in the kitchen doesn’t mean she’s available.”
Julian hadn’t the slightest intention of doing more than looking, but he couldn’t resist teasing a little. “Which, the redhead or the dark one?”
“Neither.” Bennett called for a heavy-wet. “The redhead is the landlord’s sister, and although she’s lifted her skirt in the past—her daughter being proof of that—she’s all set to marry a local lad now. The dark-haired girl, at whom you continue to stare with your mouth a-cock, keeps a knife and a loaded gun in her chamber. Not only that, if she should happen to screech, the entire household will rise up to defend her.”
“Arousing my curiosity is not the best way to discourage me,” Julian said.
Bennett went on as if Julian hadn’t spoken. “If you should happen to escape her fierce protectors, I would advise you to quit the country in a hurry. The last man who did so happened to die anyway, but at least he had a chance at survival.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Julian said, his curiosity growing.
The pretty redhead arrived with a tankard and a saucy grin. Julian wondered what the dark-haired girl’s smile was like. This mission, like most of them, was likely to prove tedious at best and distressing at worst, so why not ponder something more pleasant?
The door to the inn banged open, and a little girl ran in. “Mum! Mum!” Tears ran down her face. “Belch can’t walk no more.”
“What now?” the redhead said. “I swear, that dog is ten pecks of trouble and no use at all.”
The dark-haired woman came out of the kitchen. “What’s wrong with him, Jenny-love?”
“He can’t walk!” The child led the dark woman out the door, while the redhead returned to the kitchen. Julian reached the window just in time to see the woman squatting in the dusty yard beside a spotted mutt. He recognized it as the three-legged dog he’d seen basking in the inn yard earlier. A friendly little creature; all that remained of one of his forelegs was a stump.
The woman said something to the little girl, who raced back through on the way to the kitchen. “Mum, I need the tweezers and a strip of rag. And some brandy!”
Brandy? Curiosity, spiced with a touch of libido, took firm hold, and Julian strolled outdoors to assuage it.
The object of his interest now sat on the paving stones in the slanting light of the early evening sun. She caressed the creature with one hand whilst attempting to examine one of its hind feet. Every time she touched the pad, the dog flinched and evaded her grasp. “Blasted mutt.”
“Allow me.” Julian sat on the dusty ground near the mutt’s head.
The woman’s eyes met his, cool and unfriendly. “He may bite.”
Julian smiled his unconcern. She didn’t return the smile, simply lifting a shoulder in a graceful, indifferent shrug. He let the dog get accustomed to his presence before attempting to touch it, then took over stroking it whilst holding it still with the other hand.
The woman took firm hold of its leg and examined its paw more minutely, murmuring to it all the while.
The little girl came out again, carrying the tweezers and an earthenware mug. “Are we going to make him drunk, like when they dug the shot out of Ned’s bum?”
The woman laughed. What a pity she was still inspecting the injured paw, or Julian might have had a glimpse of her smile. “It would certainly mask the pain, but no, Jenny, I fear he has pushed a thorn or splinter deep into his paw by walking on it. I’ll use it to clean the wound.”
Granted, the brandy here was smuggled and therefore relatively cheap, but it wasn’t that cheap. An odd sort of barmaid, to appropriate the landlord’s brandy to clean a dog’s paw.
Except, Julian realized, that she didn’t sound like a barmaid. She spoke like a lady; both her accent and her confident manner spoke of privilege.
“Hold him firmly now.” She nipped quickly in with the tweezers and pulled out a long, vicious splinter of glass. “Where the devil did he pick that up?” she muttered.
The accent of a lady and the vocabulary of a barmaid. Fascinating.
She squeezed a little blood out and poured a drop or two of brandy on the wound. The dog yelped. “Oh, hush. It’s good for you.” She poured once more, then took the strip of rag and bound the foot.
“He’ll tear that off as soon as can be,” she told little Jenny. “Ask one of the grooms to carry him to the kitchen. Then stay with him and make him leave his foot alone for a half hour or so.”
“I’ll carry him,” Julian said, promptly suiting action to words. “Lead the way, Jenny.”
“Thank you, sir,” the little girl said. As they made their way toward the inn door, Julian glanced back. The woman was watching him . . . with interest, he thought, but then her eyes narrowed to cool slits. She picked up the cup and tweezers, and Julian went into the inn.
After depositing the dog in a corner of the kitchen, he returned to the coffee room. The dark-haired woman hadn’t followed them into the kitchen, but she was no longer outdoor
s. He dusted his breeches and sat next to Mr. Bennett again.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“Can’t help being nosy, can you?” the older man said sourly. “In fact, I’ll wager it’s required for the job.”
“Call it curiosity. I’ve had to develop it.” Julian had learned to let disdain roll off his shoulders. Everyone resented spies, including himself, but it paid well. “When I encounter something unusual, I’m obliged to learn more.”
Mr. Bennett huffed. “Trust me, she’s nothing to do with your damned job.” He raised his voice. “Sally!”
The redhead reappeared and curtsied. “Thank you kindly, sir, for helping out with that godforsaken mutt. I don’t suppose Daisy thanked you.” She grinned, and Julian caught amusement in her eyes. “She’s that unfriendly, sir.”
“It was my pleasure,” Julian said neutrally.
“Do I smell baking?” Mr. Bennett asked. “Your delightful rock buns, perhaps?”
“Oh, you!” Sally said. “They just come out of the oven, Mr. Bennett, but till we get a proper recipe, they’ll be hard as ever. Not fit for a cookery book, that’s for certain.”
“Ask Miss Daisy to bring us some, will you?”
Sally grimaced doubtfully but sashayed back to the kitchen.
Miss Daisy? Another indication that the dark one was a lady. “Cookery book?”
“Aye, Miss Daisy and Sally are collaborating to write one.”
The dark-haired girl glided gracefully into the coffee room with a plate of rock buns and a scowl. She set them on the table and glowered at Mr. Bennett. “They’re fresh from the oven and haven’t hardened yet, so you’d best eat them quickly, although they don’t go at all well with ale.” Interestingly enough, her accent was now much more like that of the locals.