ONE SWEET KISS
Cosima took Benedict’s face in both hands and kissed his mouth hard.
“Do you still think I’m mocking you?” she asked softly. Her eyes were half-closed.
He slipped his hand behind her neck and kissed her mouth softly. Cosima was startled. Men usually attacked her if given half a chance. This was not an attack, but a lingering caress and she didn’t quite know how to take it. He seemed to be savoring her mouth slowly and gently. Now why would he do that? As far as she knew, men only kissed women to distract them from what their hands were trying to do lower down. He seemed to be in no hurry to get on with it at all.
“I could kiss you all day,” he murmured. “You taste like apples. Green apples.”
“I made a tart this morning,” she explained.
He kissed her again in the same style. His tongue felt clean and cool in her mouth. Her senses began to stir and quicken as she breathed in his scent. It really was as if he meant to go on kissing her all day, slowly and steadily….
Books by Tamara Lejeune
SIMPLY SCANDALOUS
SURRENDER TO SIN
RULES FOR BEING A MISTRESS
Published by Zebra Books
RULES FOR
BEING
A MISTRESS
TAMARA LEJEUNE
ZEBRA BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Contents
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Despite all rumors to the contrary, Sir Benedict Wayborn had not been born with a cast-iron poker lodged up his bum. He simply had excellent posture. Even while traveling alone, as he was now, in a hired carriage miles away from his own county, the baronet sat up straight, as stiff and unyielding in private as he was in public. His face might have been carved from marble as he considered his lack of progress in securing a wife.
He was on his way to Bath. A hard rain continued to fall as night closed in, but Benedict ordered the coachman to drive on. From Chippenham they advanced at a snail’s pace until, about four miles from Bath, they stopped altogether. A vehicle was foundering in the road, its wheels lodged a foot deep in mud. As servants worked to move it, a gentleman and a young lady watched from beneath a single umbrella.
Having lost half of his right arm as a boy after being mauled by a dog, Benedict was never eager for the company of strangers, but he civilly instructed his driver to invite the Fitzwilliams to share his carriage for the rest of the journey.
Smelling strongly of cheap tobacco and French musk, the gentleman climbed into the carriage first. He scarcely looked old enough to be the uncle of the well-dressed young lady who jumped up after him, but that was his claim. Benedict kept his cynical suspicions to himself, and the carriage resumed its slow crawl toward Bath. The lady’s maid sat outside on the box with the driver, but the Fitzwilliams’ other servants were left to extract the gig from the mud.
Benedict had just begun to hope that his guests were as unsociable and taciturn as himself when the young man suddenly exclaimed, “Why, it’s Sir Benedict Wayborn! Forgive my silence, sir. I did not know you were anyone.”
If the baronet forgave, he did so silently.
“I daresay you don’t remember me; I’m Roger Fitzwilliam. My brother Henry is married to the Duke of Auckland’s sister. Now that your own charming sister is safely buckled to His Grace, you and I are brothers-in-law, are we not?” Having established this tenuous connection, Mr. Fitzwilliam ventured headlong into intimacy. “How is the dear duchess? Breeding, I trust?”
“I have not heard from my sister since she left England on her wedding trip,” Benedict replied, fumbling for his black silk handkerchief. He sneezed into it violently.
“Must you wear so much scent, Uncle?” hissed the young lady, embarrassed.
The Earl of Matlock’s daughter was a pretty girl of seventeen. Unfortunately, the purity of her skin was lost in the gloom, along with the brilliance of her dark eyes and the luster of her expertly curled chestnut hair. Her worst defect, however, was glaringly apparent: a wide space between her two front teeth. She looked as though she had not fared well in the boxing saloon.
“We waltzed together once at Almack’s, Sir Benedict, but you neglected to call on me the next day,” Rose accused. “All my other partners called in person, except my Lord Redfylde, but he at least sent tulips—and he is a marquess!”
Try as he might, Benedict could not remember dancing with her. She was just the sort of insipid, yet insufferably vain, debutante that had forced him to abandon London.
“Don’t annoy the gentleman,” Fitzwilliam admonished his niece. “As I was saying: what a good thing you were passing, Sir Benedict. We actually sank in the mud, by Jove! I blame Rose: five enormous trunks full of frills and furbelows!”
“It would be a very strange thing if I had fewer than five trunks,” Rose protested. “You men may wear the same thing three days running if it pleases you, but a lady must change her dress at least three times a day, and she must never be seen wearing the same thing twice.”
“Poor Rose! Only seven hundred pounds a year on clothes. How do you survive?”
Rose did not choose to respond to her uncle’s impertinence.
“I daresay we will have less competition in Bath,” Fitzwilliam went on. “Eh, Sir Benedict? Little Bath is not so crowded as mighty London. Cheaper, too, if that matters to you.”
Benedict merely eyed him with chilling scorn.
“I did not get on at all,” Fitzwilliam complained. “London ladies all think themselves too smart to be vicars’ wives, I can tell you! If the Marquess of Redfylde would only make up his mind, we poor bachelors might get on, but, as it is, all the girls have set their caps at him.”
“We are not all mercenary, Uncle,” Rose said hotly.
Fitzwilliam’s smile was pained. “You must understand, Sir Benedict, that my niece’s season has been scrapped for a complete disaster. I am conducting her to her mama in disgrace. Lady Matlock will be able to puff her off in Bath, I daresay. The place is full of gouty old men on the lookout for something young and warm. Present company excluded, of course, Sir Benedict,” he added unctuously as Rose fought