A Wickedly Pleasurable Wager
Автор
Carole Mortimer
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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, of observing Trudie Faraday from afar had revealed to Bastian that she obviously required much more from marriage than the offer of wealth or a title, that her emotions, indeed her whole being, would need to be engaged before she would agree to become any gentleman’s wife.
“How is anyone to know whether or not they would be happy in their marriage when the dictates of Society are such that the bride and groom are rarely left alone in each other’s company before they are married?” he prompted.
Miss Faraday’s delicate—and very determined!—chin rose once again. “I am sure there must be…ways in which one might circumvent Society’s strictures, in order that the couple might be sure of their feelings for each other before any marriage took place.”
Considering that had been exactly Bastian’s intention when he accepted the invitation to come to Shoreley Park, he could barely restrain his inward surge of triumph behind his usual expression of boredom at this precipitous turn in their conversation. “‘Ways’, Miss Faraday…?” he prompted softly.
As much as Trudie was enjoying their exchange, she was also aware that it would not do for the attention of the other guests strolling in the gardens to be drawn to the fact that the eligible Mr Bastian Wilson and Miss Gertrude Faraday were at this moment completely alone together on the terrace. Her sister Daphne, Trudie’s chaperone for this week of entertainments, was no doubt sequestered somewhere private with her handsome husband. “Surely it is all a matter of mutual compatibility, Mr Wilson?” she insisted doggedly.
“In emotions or in a sexual way?”
Trudie drew in a sharp breath. “Surely the latter naturally follows the former, Mr Wilson?” She was stubbornly determined that her inner feelings of dismay at the scandalous intimacy of this conversation not become apparent to this haughtily superior and far more experienced gentleman.
“You believe falling in love with someone to also be a guarantee of sexual compatibility?”
“I have always believed that there must be a meeting of emotions and minds for such…intimacies to be successful, yes.” She nodded abruptly.
Bastian Wilson smiled derisively. “And I assure you, Miss Faraday, that you are quite wrong.”
Trudie’s mouth firmed. “Then I am afraid we shall have to agree to disagree, sir!”
“Or not…” Bastian Wilson drawled.
She sharply looked at him. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged those broad shoulders as he turned his back on the garden to concentrate all of his narrow-eyed attention on Trudie. “Is it not obvious?”
“Not at the present time, no,” Trudie assured frostily.
“Then perhaps you will allow me to explain?”
“If you feel you must.” The haughtiness of her tone hid her inner distrust of the calculating glitter she now espied in Bastian Wilson’s assessing grey eyes.
“Oh, I believe I should very much like to do that,” Bastian Wilson spoke. “Let us start by ascertaining whether or not you are in love with me…?”
Trudie’s eyes widened. “I hardly think my own feelings towards you, or, indeed, the lack of them,” she added dismissively, “have anything to do with the shocking content of this conversation, sir!”
“Very nicely put.” He arched one dark and mocking brow. “But unfortunately that statement did not answer my question.”
“I doubt I am in love with you any more than I believe you to be in love with me.” Trudie glared, knowing she could not truthfully deny her feelings for this gentleman; how could she, when he had been at the centre of her romantic fantasies for a year or more!
His lids lowered. “In which case, according to your own ideas on the subject, it should not be possible for either of us to give the other…sexual completion?”
Trudie gasped, almost breathless. “Mr Wilson, please!”
Those grey eyes gleamed between those hooded lids. “I believe I should very much enjoy hearing you say those words, and in just that fashion, as I bring you to physical climax, Miss Faraday.”
Trudie’s usual air of self-possession had completely deserted her. “You go too far, sir!”
“Or not far enough.” He smiled. “Perhaps you would care to make a wager on the subject, Miss Faraday?” He raised those dark and challenging brows.
Much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, Trudie knew she was completely out of her depth with this conversation. “What sort of wager did you have in mind, sir?”
Bastian could not help but feel admiration for Gertrude Faraday’s determination to hide her inner feelings of trepidation from him, feelings that were revealed to him by the rapidly beating pulse at the base of her creamy throat and the slight trembling of those full and sensuous lips. “The two of us are to be incarcerated together at Shoreley Park for the next week, during which time I will wager that I am able to give you…sexual completion, without your being in the least bit in love with me.”
She gasped. “I could not possibly—”
“And for your part you will endeavour to withhold that sexual completion from a man with whom you have already stated you are not in love.” That he had shocked her with the details of his wager Bastian was left in no doubt as he saw the way Trudie’s eyes widened and her cheeks became flushed.
Whether that shock would be deep enough to prevent the stalwart Trudie Faraday from accepting his wager now hung delicately in the balance…
