A Dangerous Seduction Read online

  “Of all the outlandish–” Lady Edgecombe cut herself off, nostrils flaring as she took a deep breath. “Very well. Order your scones, but be quick about it.”

  Scarlett turned to Owen. “We will take three dozen of your blueberry scones, please.”

  “Three dozen?” Lady Edgecombe exclaimed before Owen could respond. “What on earth is your father going to do with three dozen blueberry scones?”

  “Eat them.”

  Lady Edgecombe held her daughter’s gaze for three very long seconds before she gave the tiniest of nods. Like Scarlett, she knew when to pick her battles. “Fine. Three dozen blueberry scones, and be sharp about it. We haven’t all day.”

  Owen’s jaw hardened and for a moment Scarlett was afraid he was going to turn them away but with a shrug he said, “I don’t have that many.”

  “Well then how many do you have?”

  He did a quick count. “Four.”

  “Then four shall have to suffice. Ms. Atwood, please see to it that the scones are–”

  “Wait!” Scarlett cried.

  Lady Edgecombe pressed her lips together so hard a pale green vein bulged high on her forehead. “There are people waiting,” she hissed, “and they are beginning to stare. Come along, Scarlett.”

  Scarlett knew there was nothing her mother hated worse than staring. In fact, she had been counting on it. Just as she’d been counting on the fact that Owen would not have three dozen scones at his disposal.

  “Why not have the scones delivered right to the house? That way they will be freshly baked. You can do that, can’t you?” she asked Owen, biting back a triumphant smile as all of the pieces of the puzzle she’d so hastily put together fell neatly into place. “Tuesday morning should work brilliantly.” Especially since both of her parents were going to be attending a play in London.

  Owen rubbed his chin. “I suppose so. Delivery’s going to be extra, though.”

  “Price is of no issue,” Lady Edgecombe snapped before she looked pointedly at her daughter. “Are you happy now, darling?”

  Was she happy that she’d be able to see Owen again without anyone – with the exception of Ms. Atwood, who really did not count – being the wiser?

  “Exceedingly so.”

  “How wonderful. Can we leave now, or would you like to stop at the florist and purchase ten dozen white roses?”

  “No,” Scarlett said cheerfully, ignoring her mother’s biting sarcasm. “The scones should do it.”

  If either Lady Edgecombe or Ms. Atwood noted the extra bounce that accompanied her step on the way back to the carriage they did not mention it, and before Scarlett had even settled into her seat she was already counting down the days until she would see Owen again…

  Chapter One

  I never should have married him.

  Clutching the windowsill so hard her knuckles were leeched of color in the dim morning light, Lady Scarlett Sherwood watched in bitter silence as her husband rode away, the clatter of his horse’s hooves echoing loudly on the cobblestones.

  He was going to wake the neighbors, but what did he care? The only person Rodger cared for was himself. If there was one thing Scarlett knew to be true after seven long years of marriage it was that.

  Seven years…

  Her eyes closed as a shudder went down her spine. How had so much time passed? Some days it felt like only yesterday she’d stood beside him in church and smiled like a fool while they were bound together before King and Country; others dragged by so slowly she was certain she’d fallen straight into hell. And no matter how hard she clawed and kicked and fought she couldn’t climb back out again.

  Seven years of marriage and her hate for her husband grew more and more every day. It bubbled up inside of her like a living, breathing thing, twisting and twining its way through her stomach and her heart and her lungs until it pained her to eat, to smile, to breathe.

  How long had it been since she’d drawn a full, contented breath?

  She could not remember.

  “My lady, would you care for some tea?”

  Scarlett turned at the familiar sound of her maid’s voice. Round faced and quiet spoken with plain brown hair and kind eyes, Ruth had been working in the kitchen when Scarlett took over the Sherwood household. Having not brought a lady’s maid with her, she chose Ruth to fill the coveted position and the two women had quickly become confidants. No one except for Ruth knew the full extent of her misery, for only a trusted servant was privy to all of the moments one wished to hide from the outside world.

  Like the night she cried herself sick after discovering Rodger was carrying on with one of her best friends. Or the bruises he left on her wrist after he drank too much. Or the screaming matches that shook the rafters of their brick townhouse nearly every evening.

  “Does it have a dash of brandy in it?” Turning away from the window, Scarlett gathered her shawl more snugly around her shoulders and padded barefoot across her bedchamber. A fire crackled in the hearth, chasing away the chill brought on by yet another cold frosty morning. Spring may have been right around the corner, but after four long months of snow and sleet and freezing rain it felt as though winter had been upon them for an eternity.

  Not unlike her marriage.

  “No brandy, but it does have a dash of honey.” Steam spiraled up from the cup of tea that Ruth held out. “Did you and Lord Sherwood have another disagreement?”

  Scarlett lifted a wry brow. “We both know you heard us yelling, Ruth. No need to pretend otherwise.” Wrapping both of her hands around the white porcelain cup to warm them, she blew across the top before taking a sip. The exotic taste of jasmine flooded her mouth, followed by a sharp hint of ginger.

  She had always preferred her tea as she preferred her men: strong, full flavored, and just a little mysterious. Three traits she’d thought Rodger possessed in spades when she first met him. How dashing he’d seemed when she spied him across the ballroom all those years ago! With his sparkling green eyes and wavy blond hair and charismatic smile he had looked like a hero torn straight from the pages of a fairytale. Little did she know he would turn out to be the villain. Perhaps if she had listened to her heart… but she’d been too young, too impulsive, and too bloody stubborn to see Rodger for who he truly was.

  And now I am paying the price, she thought silently as she carried her tea over to a velvet stool and sat down facing a large oval looking glass framed in gold leaf. Her reflection stared back at her: a willowy thin woman with high cheekbones that were just a little too gaunt and ivory skin that was just a little too pale.

  As she examined her countenance with a critical eye Scarlett was reminded that Rodger wasn’t the only one who had changed over the course of their marriage. There was a frailty to her appearance that hadn’t been there before. Gone was the spoiled young heiress who did not have a care in the world. In her place was a woman full grown who knew the deep, dark pain of living beneath the heavy shadow of regret.

  If only she had picked Owen…

  No, she thought sharply. Her hands involuntarily trembled, nearly spilling tea down the front of her dressing gown. Setting the cup aside, she forced herself to take a long, measured breath. She would not think of him.

  Especially not on today of all days.

  “I was thinking something simple,” she told Ruth as the maid gently began to untangle her hair with a fine-toothed ivory comb. Long and thick and heavy, Scarlett’s hair tumbled all the way down to her waist in a shimmering wave of spun gold. It was beautiful, but like all beautiful things it was not without its burdens, the most costly of which was the time it took to brush and twist and pin it into place every single blessed morning.

  How many hours had she sat on this very stool staring at herself while Ruth fashioned curls and coiffures and chignons?

  Too many too count, she decided abruptly.

  “Ruth, I have changed my mind.”

  Their gazes met in the mirror’s silvery reflection as the maid looked up.

&n
bsp; “You would like something more elaborate?” she asked.

  “No,” Scarlett said with a small, determined shake of her head. “I want you to cut it.”

  “Cut what, my lady? Not your hair,” she said, her eyes widening with alarm when Scarlett remained silent. “Oh, you cannot do that!”

  “It is my hair. I can do whatever I please with it.”

  Ruth’s hands fluttered with distress as she set the comb down on the vanity table with a sharp click. “But Lord Sherwood has often expressed how much he loves your hair. I wouldn’t dare touch it, my lady.”

  Scarlett barely managed to contain a snort. Rodger did not love anyone or anything except for himself. He fancied her hair because he thought it made her look beautiful, and he was a man who liked to surround himself with beautiful things. In that regard she was no more important to him than his prized horse or his favorite jacket or the hideously ornate gold chandelier he had insisted on hanging in the middle of the foyer. “All the more reason to cut it off. There are shears in the top drawer of my dresser. If you do not get them, I will.”

  “But my lady–”

  “I will not force you to do something you do not want to do, Ruth. But know that I will see it done either way. I am weary of spending half of my morning sitting in front of a mirror. Surely you have grown just as weary standing behind it.”

  They had known each other for too long and been through too much for Ruth to lie.

  “I must admit it does, at times, get rather tiresome,” she admitted in a small voice.

  “There, you see?” The dimple on Scarlett’s right cheek made a rare appearance as she smiled up at her maid’s reflection. “The shears, if you would.”

  With obvious reluctance Ruth removed the silver shears from the dresser, but when it came time to make the first cut she hesitated.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to reconsider?”

  Scarlett’s head canted to the side as she met her own gaze in the mirror. She knew she was being impulsive and just a tad dramatic, but she needed something to distract her from the decision she’d made seven years ago. The one that had her sitting here, on this red velvet stool, in this enormous townhouse with its ugly gold chandelier, instead of a little cottage in the country. A cottage that would have been too small and too plain but oh, it would have been filled with so much love.

  “No,” she said, drawing her shoulders back. “Cut it off. Cut it all off.”

  “What the devil did you do to your hair?” Rodger’s roar echoed through the entire parlor and most of the downstairs. A maid carrying clean linens visibly flinched and went scurrying off in the opposite direction. Scarlett did not even bother to look up from her needlework.

  “I thought that would be rather obvious,” she said mildly.

  Her husband’s boots left smears of dirt on the rug as he stormed into the parlor. Snatching the embroidery hoop right off her lap he threw it into the fireplace. “Look at me when I am speaking to you,” he snarled, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth.

  Scarlett lifted her head ever-so-slowly. She’d anticipated Rodger would pitch a fit the moment he saw her which was why she’d positioned herself in the one room he had to pass on the way to his study. She was ready for a good fight. More than that, she wanted it. Anything to distract herself from the traitorous direction of her thoughts.

  She just wished she’d had the foresight to put down her needlework first.

  “Yes dear? Is there something I can help you with?” Once upon a time the mere sight of Rodger would have filled her belly with butterflies. Now as her gaze moved dispassionately across his bloated, blotchy face she felt nothing but a mild twinge of disgust.

  The years had not been kind to her husband. Courtesy of his penchant for drinking to excess nearly every night his green eyes were permanently bloodshot and his belly bulged over the waistband of his trousers. His hair was beginning to thin and his neck pushed against the collar of his waistcoat. The dashing lord she’d convinced herself she was in love with had almost vanished completely. In his place was a dissolute cad with too many vices and a body that was as ugly as his temper.

  Looking at the vein bulging in her husband’s forehead Scarlett could not help but wonder, as she often did despite the pain it brought her, how Owen had changed since she’d last seen him. In her mind he was still the tall, gangly boy with a shock of unruly black hair sticking out from beneath his wool cap. He would be almost thirty by now. A man fully grown.

  Was he still selling bread in the same village where they’d met?

  Did he have a wife? Children?

  Was he happy?

  She hoped so. He deserved all the happiness in the world while she… well, she deserved precisely what she’d gotten: a fancy house and a loveless marriage.

  “I asked you a question,” Rodger growled.

  Scarlett rose out of her chair in a swirl of blue skirts. She wasn’t afraid to stand up to her husband. She never had been, which was one of the reasons Rodger despised her so much. If she’d been demure and obedient and curtailed to his demands as a good wife should they might have had some semblance of a peaceful marriage instead of the bitter war they were constantly engaged in.

  “And I gave you an answer.” Her newly shorn curls bounced from one shoulder to the other as she tilted her head. In the end she hadn’t had the heart to cut all of her hair off, but it was considerably shorter than it had been, stopping just shy of her collarbone. On some women the shorter style would have been atrocious. Scarlett liked to think it made her look like a pixie.

  “You look like a boy.” Rodger’s bloodshot eyes flashed with pure malice as he took a menacing step towards her. “What the bloody hell were you thinking?”

  Scarlett’s narrow shoulders lifted and fell in a graceful shrug. “I wanted something different. I was not aware your permission was required.”

  When he grabbed her wrist and squeezed it took all the strength she possessed not to flinch. Yanking her forward so quickly that she stumbled, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and gave it a derisive pull. “You did this on purpose to anger me.”

  “Do not be silly,” she said, even though that was precisely why she’d done it. Anything to get under his skin. “I did it for myself and no one else. Now let me go, or have you forgotten we are expected at the Manheim’s tonight?” She looked deliberately down at his hand which was still wrapped tightly around her wrist. “I am afraid bruises are not at all in style, you know. People will talk.”

  Rodger had the good grace to flush before he dropped her arm and stepped back. If there was one thing more important to him than money, it was preserving his reputation as a man who had everything: a title, a fortune, a fashionable townhouse, an elegant manor, and (most importantly) a gorgeous wife that made him the envy of every other man he knew.

  Despite their loathing of one another Scarlett and Rodger were regarded as one of the ton’s premiere couples: a lauded example of marrying within one’s class. She often wondered what their friends would think if they saw how she and Rodger acted behind closed doors. Would they be appalled? Repulsed? Or would they carry on acting as if nothing were amiss? She had an inkling it would be the latter.

  “I did not mean to squeeze so hard,” Rodger said, scowling at his wife though it were her fault he had grabbed her arm in such a forceful manner.

  “No,” Scarlett murmured as she rubbed sensation back into her wrist. “You never do.”

  They stared at one another for several long seconds while the fire crackled and hissed and filled the parlor with a warm, merry glow that did little to thaw the ice between them.

  “You still compare me to him, don’t you?” he asked suddenly. “I can see it in your eyes when you look at me. Even after all these years you wish you had picked him instead of me.”

  Every vertebrae in Scarlett’s spine stiffened. There were many things she tolerated when it came to Rodger. His constant parade of mistresses. His excessive drinking. Even his verbal
and physical abuse. But the one thing she had never allowed – the one thing she could not allow – was any mention of the boy she had loved and ultimately betrayed. It was too painful. More painful than a scathing insult. More painful than a blustery shout. More painful than a bruised wrist.

  “I am certain I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Oh yes you do. What was the little beggar’s name? That’s right,” he sneered before she could muster a response. “Steel. Owen Steel.”

  Even the sound of his name was enough to send a blade stabbing straight into her heart. Particularly when it came from the mouth of the one man who had no right to speak it.

  “Leave him alone,” she hissed as her eyes flashed a dark, ominous gray. “You were the one I chose and you were the one I married, God help me. There is no need to bring up the past.”

  “Why ever not?” It wasn’t often that Rodger managed to get beneath his wife’s skin and she could tell by the vindictive gleam in his eyes that he wasn’t going to pull out his knife until he’d drawn blood. “I knew you fancied him, of course. But I never thought you actually loved the poor bastard.”

  Scarlett drew in a sharp breath.

  “Do not speak another word,” she warned.

  “The rich earl’s daughter and the poor baker’s son.” Shadows spun from the fire danced Rodger’s face as he threw back his head and laughed. “Can you imagine what people would have said if you had actually run away with him?”

  “This conversation is over.” But when she tried to walk past him Rodger’s hand shot out and grabbed her chin in a bruising grip.

  “Not yet.” His breath reeked of brandy as it fanned across her face. “Tell me, would you really had done it? Eloped to Gretna Green and become the wife of a baker?” He made a tsking sound under his breath. “You know as well as I that you never would have been suited for such a life.”

  “Are you quite finished?” Despite the frantic pounding of her heart her voice was level and even and a bit bored. “I should change before we leave for the Manheim’s. This dress is too simple for a dinner party.”