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      London, 1801

      No one could have guessed that virginal companion Penelope Montague is the author of the scandalous manual A Woman’s Handbook. Society believes she was educated in a convent, unaware she spent the first half of her life raised by the ladies of the famous Black Swan brothel.

      Only rake Robin Sackville Tufton, Earl of Thanet, sees the sensual woman behind Pen’s proper exterior. From the moment he sees her, he wants her more than anything else. But Pen isn’t fit to be an earl’s wife, nor can he simply take her—despite her passionate response to his touch. Can Robin and Penelope rein in their desire…or will they find a way to indulge it?

      Contents

      Begin Reading

      London, 1801

      Pen Montague fanned herself briskly and watched the dancers whirl in the hot ballroom. She loved to dance. The ladies at the Black Swan—billed as “An Establishment for Fine Gentlemen,” but which was, practically speaking, a whorehouse—had taught her when she was a child. But no one would invite her to dance tonight. She was in attendance as the paid companion of the Dowager Countess Prudence Dalrymple. Asking her to dance would be tantamount to asking the parlor maid to dance.

      She heaved a quiet sigh, jettisoned the idea of dancing and counted her blessings instead. She had this employment, which kept her fed and housed, and she was genuinely fond of the dowager, who was nothing if not entertaining, even at the advanced age of seventy-six. And the book Pen had written, the mere thought of which sent a shiver down her spine, was well into the second printing. Of course, no one on earth knew she had written it and hopefully never would. Despite its prosaic title, A Woman’s Handbook, by Anonymous, the content was so scandalous that were she ever identified as its author she would likely be tarred and feathered. Here, Pen, though she was unaware of it, frowned. The fan, hitherto moving at a furious pace, stuttered and then stopped altogether.

      Robin Sackville Tufton, the Earl of Thanet, leaned his shoulders against a marble pillar and wished he were anywhere else. He had recently become earl at the death of his father, and in due course would be expected to produce an heir. To be precise, he would be expected to sire one.

      He supposed the requisite countess would be the party undertaking the actual production of the heir. Until that occurred, he would be expected to attend these bloody balls in search of a wife. Now he stood, neck itching under his stock, annoyed because he wanted to dance and could not: he was overly eligible. His glance slid to Lady Dalrymple, whose dancing days were over, though mentally she was still as sharp as the proverbial tack. His wandering attention was arrested by the woman seated next to the dowager, fanning herself in the hot air. Overall, her face gave the impression of roundness: big eyes, plump cheeks and a tip-tilted nose. But offsetting this, the eyes were slightly almond-shaped, like a cat’s, and her chin, which he caught sight of when she frowned and lowered the fan, was definitely not round. His heart missed a beat. He had no idea who she was. But very shortly he was going to find out.

      “Whom are you examining with such feline intent?” Lady Dalrymple asked, breaking into Pen’s reverie.

      “No one.” She resumed fanning herself. “Only woolgathering, beg your pardon.”

      “When I was your age,” Pru began, taking no notice of Pen’s apology, “I only spoke to proper gentlemen because they make the best husbands. But now that I’m my age, I prefer rakes because they are by far the more interesting to converse with. And talk—” she sighed dramatically “—is all I’m currently able to do.” She paused for Pen’s laughter and said confidentially, “He is, you know.”

      “Who is what?” Pen asked blankly.

      “A rake. The man you were staring at—” she was practically pointing and Pen grabbed gently at the offending digit “—an inveterate seducer, slept with most of the women in this room, I don’t doubt it, nothing like his father, I can assure you—”

      Having drawn a deep breath, the dowager, as Pen knew perfectly well from experience, could go on ad infinitum. Pen interrupted ruthlessly. “I wasn’t staring—I wasn’t!” This when the dowager gave her the expressionless, wide-eyed stare that meant, Pen also knew from experience, that she was being judged as disingenuous. “I possibly happened to be looking in that direction, but I wasn’t staring,” she ended firmly. Now that she actually did look, Pen saw that very handsome, the first banal words that sprang to mind, were a gross understatement.

      The man was ludicrously, ridiculously, unfairly, unreasonably and overwhelmingly beautiful, so much so that for a few moments Pen could not separate the whole into its component parts: a face longer than it was wide, a high forehead and dark brows, beneath which were eyes of the clearest blue. Dark hair flecked with gray, though he could not be above thirty years of age, and a bladelike nose in perfect symmetry with the rest of his features. A deep chest narrowed to waist, hips and long, rangy legs, the whole encased in finely tailored clothes. Pen’s tumbling, chaotic thoughts were brought to a full stop by his mouth, a sheer marvel of engineering. Pen’s insides gave a disturbing little lurch and she judged him in that moment to be a man she should not speak to under any circumstances.

      “Not classically handsome, of course.” The dowager was still talking, as if Pen had never spoken. “Not like his father and, oh, my, you should have seen his uncle, but he died years ago of the sweating sickness—” At this point, the rake in question, perhaps sensing himself to be a topic of feminine conversation, pushed his shoulders away from the pillar and began moving in their direction.

      “Oh, God,” Pen said.

      “Oh, good,” Pru said.

      He stopped in front of Pru and bowed. “Lady Dalrymple,” he acknowledged formally.

      “Robin,” she replied, nodding to him but not bothering with a more formal address. She had known him in the cradle and in short pants. The fact that he was now an earl changed none of that. She turned to Pen. “You’ve met my companion, Miss Montague? Pen, the Earl of Thanet.” Pen waited, steeling herself against the flare of dismissal in his eyes—a servant, that look always said: beneath my notice. But it did not come.

      He merely bowed politely and said, “I haven’t yet had the pleasure. Would you care to dance, Miss Montague?”

      “I keep her with me in the country,” Prudence Dalrymple said. “I never bring her up to town. She does not dance.”

      “No,” Pen agreed. “I don’t.” But her legs stood up nonetheless and she put her hand in his. “You lead, and I’ll follow.”

      “A happy coincidence,” he countered, taking her hand. “It’s exactly how I was taught.”

      Oh, dear, Pen kept thinking. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

      They danced perfectly, like silk pulled through a thin gold ring; taut and focused at the center, then opening and flowing outward effortlessly. The points at which they touched—his hand over hers, her hand on his shoulder, the brief intrusion of his thigh into her skirts as they turned in time to the music—all these she felt as a fluid heat rippling throughout her heretofore solid being. She only stumbled once, afterward, when he held her hand on his arm and escorted her back to Lady Dalrymple. They did not speak. She could not gain her bearings.

      The dowager gave Pen a thorough appraisal. “Rakes,” she said with satisfaction, “by far more interesting to talk with than other men.” Pen, who could normally conjure a witty rejoinder at the drop of a hat, said nothing. For hours afterward, she could not catch her breath.

      Pen heard the bell peal from the library, where she had her nose buried in a book. Books, she often