Free The Perfect Rake by Anne Gracíe Page B

from outside the door.
    Lord Carradice grinned. “Bribe Bartlett? But he’s so expensive!”
    “Be that as it may,” said Great-uncle Oswald, “the gel has been compromised enough by—”
    “No, no,” cried Prudence, realizing Great-uncle Oswald was about to insist on marriage. “There is no question of compromise. I utterly refuse. The betrothal is off. I cannot marry a man such as, such as…this!” Unable to think of any sufficiently damning epithet, she gestured at Lord Carradice in disgust. She looked at him hard, willing him to take up her lead. Surely he would.
    Lord Carradice opened his mouth to speak. Prudence relaxed a little.
    “What if I shave?” he said. “I look much better when I’m shaved. My cousin will vouch for that—do I not look almost handsome when I shave, Edward?” He didn’t wait for the duke’s reply but turned earnestly back to Prudence. “Do you think you could marry me if I shaved?” The duke frowned and stared at Lord Carradice intently. Lord Carradice ignored him.
    The man was impossible! Prudence glared at him. “No,” she snapped. “I would not marry you if you were the last man left alive in the world! You are a complete—an utter—” She waved her hands in frustration, but the words would not come. All she could think of was shag bag, or scoundrel, or unshaven lout, or smoky knave, and if she uttered those words, she knew she would be completely undone.
    It was impossible. The whole thing had got completely out of control. She had tried everything she could think of and now she could see only one way out of her current predicament.
    So she fainted.
    It was quite a good faint, she thought, being unplanned and the first she had ever attempted. It certainly put an end to the ridiculous conversation about her betrothal to Lord Carradice. The only trouble was that she should perhaps have signaled her imminent collapse to Great-uncle Oswald—a sigh or a small gasp of feminine distress perhaps. Elderly men clearly found it not to their liking to be the recipient of an unexpectedly falling female.
    Great-uncle Oswald staggered and gasped under her weight. He seemed in imminent danger of dropping her to the floor. It may have been a miscalculation on her part to fall toward him instead of collapsing gracefully into insensibility onto Cleopatra’s barge. It took all her control to maintain the illusion of insensibility as she felt herself slipping.
    And then, with shocking suddenness, she was snatched from disaster by a pair of muscular arms. She was only just able to prevent herself from squeaking as she was lifted bodily off the floor and clasped securely against a broad, masculine chest.
    It was not Great-uncle Oswald’s chest. It was not the duke’s. Prudence hoped very much it was the butler, Bartlett, who was holding her with such apparent effortlessness, but Bartlett had seemed more cushionesque than otherwise. She sniffed surreptitiously. There was no telltale scent of musk. There was—she sniffed again, just to be sure—a faint aroma of spirits and tobacco, a tang of soap and starch from his linen, and, most intriguing of all, the scent of…She was hard put to recognize it, but it was most appealing. Could it be, the scent of…a rake?
    Reluctantly, Prudence allowed her mind to recognize what her body had known instantly. It was Lord Carradice who had snatched her thus. Against whose chest she was nestled. It was a very broad and comforting chest, she had to admit. She felt an overwhelming desire to curl up against it forever, but apart from the fact that she had no business feeling anything so shocking, she knew that within that chest beat a heart that was quite without proper feeling of any kind.
    Great-uncle Oswald had called him a famous—nay, an infamous rake, a scoundrel, and a reprobate. And he hadn’t denied it. He’d even seemed quite proud of having such a dreadful reputation. It seemed quite conclusive.
    And Prudence had the evidence of her own