Free London's Most Wanted Rake by Bronwyn Scott Page A

she’d looked right through him as if he were nobody, as if they had not clung together so fiercely in those last moments at Fontainebleau, as if she had not considered throwing all this away for him just a few days ago. She’d made it clear in a single, heart-piercing gaze she would not contemplate such an action now. She had made her choice: silks and jewels and the sporadic affections of an oft-absent husband over the passions of a second son. The woman whom he’d believed was different from others was no different at all. The dream was over.
    * * *
    Channing stretched on his bed and rolled over, looking for a cool space in which to reclaim some comfort. The sun was coming up and he realised too late he’d not shut the curtains. It hardly mattered, he wouldn’t sleep again, his thoughts were churning. He remembered what had happened next. He’d gone home, his heart broken, his ideals shattered, his lesson learned: pleasure and passion were right and good as long as one did not engage in them to an emotional extent. He’d merely been a tool she’d used to assuage a need her marriage had not met. He’d rather other young men not learn such a lesson in such a brutal way and he’d set out to do something about it.
    He’d formed the League of Discreet Gentlemen, a service that would save men and women alike from heartache while providing them with the pleasure they sought. He’d formed an agency, a league of gentlemen dedicated to a woman’s pleasure. There should be no more empty lives, no woman abandoned in her marriage, but, more importantly, no young men ruthlessly used and discarded when there were escorts who could be paid for the experience without jeopardising hearts and emotions.
    The organisation had flourished, but not once had he told anyone the inspiration behind it, not even his best friend, Jocelyn Eisley, who had helped him. What was the point? He was never going to see her again, never going to go to France again. But fate had a way of intervening and, as it turned out, he hadn’t had to go to France to encounter her again after all. She’d come to him, ironically because of the League, the very agency he’d formed to save others from femme fatales like her.
    He remembered her vividly, sitting in his office at Argosy House explaining her case. She had wanted to re-integrate into English society. She was widowed and wanted to be home. She’d hoped to use the Little Season and the holidays that followed as a first opportunity to show herself. She’d been a veritable ice princess with her white-gold hair and travelling gown in a deep blue; her new signature colour, no more pinks. There was an edge about her that leant her a sensual, sophisticated edge that appealed to him greatly. They were new people, different from whom they’d been in Paris. They were people who could take pleasure at will.
    It had not taken long for them to fall into bed, into whatever room was convenient. The winter holidays had been heated and the new man he’d become, the man who sought pleasure with detachment, had finally bedded the woman of his rather naïve dreams.
    Channing rubbed his eyes against the sun streaming through his window. His head hurt and his cock throbbed for an impossible woman, one that had spurned him. Yet his body still wanted her and he had to go downstairs, eat breakfast and pretend it didn’t. Or maybe not. A thought came to mind as his head cleared. Perhaps the best way to get her secrets out of her would be to seduce them, not an entirely unpleasant prospect. He could bed her as long as he didn’t mistake it for something else. For that, he’d need a plan.

Chapter Seven
    H e was going to have to apologise, too. Principle and practicality demanded it. On principle, he’d not behaved the way a gentleman of the League should have, no matter who the client was. On the level of practicality, alienating Alina didn’t help him determine her business with Seymour. He ought to be seducing her