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      England, 1796

      Miss Trudie Faraday has admired handsome Bastian Wilson for months, despite the aloof way he treats the rest of Society. She is surprised to find him at the same week-long house party she’s attending—and is even more shocked by his scandalous views on love and desire. While Trudie believes only love can guarantee compatibility in the bedchamber, Bastian vows to prove her wrong—by wagering that he can give her sexual satisfaction before the week is out!

      Dear Reader,

      Thank you so much for buying A WICKEDLY PLEASURABLE WAGER! I hope you find it an enjoyable introduction to my forthcoming trilogy, The Copeland Sisters—look out for The Lady Gambles, The Lady Forfeits and The Lady Confesses.

      Carole Mortimer

      To all you readers who make writing so much fun!

      CONTENTS

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      CHAPTER ONE

      August, 1796

       Shoreley Park, Hampshire

      “So, Miss Faraday, how do you fare now that all of your close circle of friends are married…?”

      Miss Faraday turned sharply where she stood on the terrace of the country home of the Earl and Countess of Westbourne. Her cheeks became slightly flushed at having been caught observing one of that “close circle of friends” and her husband of only six weeks as they strolled about the sunlit garden together. The two were in the throes of a tight-lipped argument, if the fiery glitter in Charlotte’s eyes was any indication.

      The colour stayed in Trudie’s cheeks as she found herself gazing up at the extremely eligible Mr George Sebastian Reynolds Wilson, known privately to friends and foe alike—of whom he seemed to have acquired an equal number!—as simply Bastian.

      And a man Trudie had seen—and admired—several times since his return to England from the Continent two Seasons ago. Not that this aloof gentleman had ever stood up to dance at the balls or assemblies, instead preferring to stand on the sidelines and observe the members of the ton with brooding intensity. Which was not to say that Trudie hadn’t looked her fill of Bastian Wilson whenever he deigned to grace Society with his disdainfully aloof presence….

      Indeed, aged one and thirty, Bastian Wilson was the sort of man that no woman, of any age—let alone one of two and twenty!—would ever overlook. He was exceptionally tall and powerfully built, that height and power shown to advantage today in the black silk jacket he wore over a lighter grey waistcoat, fine white Brussels lace at the throat and cuffs of his white linen, his black breeches moulding to the muscled length of his thighs, with unadorned silver buckles upon his shoes. Contrary to fashion, Bastian Wilson always wore the darkness of his hair uncovered by a wig or powder, its silky length at this moment pulled back and secured with a black velvet ribbon at his nape. Mocking grey eyes glittered above a straight slash of a nose, sharp and high cheekbones and a sensually sculpted mouth that was more often than not curved into a disdainful smile as he observed the rest of humanity through those cold and uninterested grey eyes.

      Of course, Trudie had been well aware that the elusive Bastian Wilson was to make up one of the party of summer guests invited to spend the week at the Hampshire estate of her friend Lady Harriet Copeland, Countess of Westbourne for this past year. Indeed, his attendance was an unprecedented social coup which had already earned Harriet many an envious glance.

      Trudie’s own glance, as she now looked up at the obviously contemptuous Mr Bastian Wilson, was guarded rather than covetous, unsure as yet as to what this particular conversation was leading up to. “I believe I fare very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,” she answered him dismissively.

      He arched a condescending brow. “Indeed?”

      Trudie gave a haughty inclination of her head, her dark curls falling in ringlets against her exposed breasts above the blue of her silk gown. “More so than most of my married friends, I believe.”

      “How so, Miss Faraday?” Mr Bastian Wilson drawled.

      Her chin rose. “From my observations, none of my friends’ marriages seem to be particularly happy ones.” Her friend Charlotte’s current argument with her husband was an example of that discord. As was the unhappiness of their beautiful hostess, Lady Harriet Copeland, married for one year to a man more than twenty years her senior, with a baby daughter already in the nursery. One only had to look at her to know the true state of her emotions.

      Arrogant brows rose over hooded grey eyes. “And do you consider the happiness of a husband and wife in each other’s company to be a necessary part of marriage?”

      “Of course.” Trudie was well aware of the suitability of an advantageous marriage—indeed, she had received many such offers of marriage herself since her coming out five years ago. But with no regard, let alone liking for any of those gentlemen, she had not hesitated in refusing every one of them.

      Having observed the happiness of her own parents’ marriage, Trudie, like her older sister Daphne, who had been happily married to the Earl of Osborne this past eight years, had no intentions of settling for anything less than that same mutual and abiding love and respect in her own marriage.

      “The poor may marry for love, Miss Faraday, the wealthy and titled marry for other reasons entirely,” Bastian Wilson now observed dryly.

      Trudie felt the sting of displeasure enter her cheeks. “Then I fear my own fate is to become an old maid, and over-indulgent spinster aunt to my nephew Nathaniel.” Which indeed, she already was, having doted on her seven-year-old nephew from the day he was born.

      Bastian could not see it as being even a remote possibility that the beautiful Gertrude Faraday would remain unmarried. With hair of ebony black, and eyes the blue of a clear summer day, a complexion as smooth and white as ivory, her hips and waist slender and graceful as her fuller breasts swelled above the neckline of her gown, she had become the coveted but elusive prize of all the young and eligible gentlemen of the ton.

      A fact that had been drawn to Bastian’s attention when he returned from the Continent two years previously and discovered those wagers placed in gentleman’s clubs all over London in regard to which of those gentlemen Miss Gertrude Faraday might marry.

      His curiosity piqued, Bastian had been eager to see this elusive Miss Faraday for himself, only to then find himself equally smitten by that young lady’s beauty. And something else, something less…definable, but there nonetheless.

      Weeks, months,