Lost in Pleasure
Authors: Marguerite Kaye
London, 1816
Richard, Earl of Kilcreggan, longs for the thrill of the
unpredictable—but nothing prepares him for the sudden appearance of a beguiling
woman in his library. As a man of science, he’s intrigued by her story of
time-travel. As a man of passion, he cannot resist their smoldering desire.
Thoroughly modern Errin McGill never dreamed a wish for
romance would land her in Regency London—and face-to-face with the most
attractive man she’s ever imagined. But her fantasy man and the sensual pleasure
he offers is decidedly real…
Lost in Pleasure
Marguerite Kaye
Chapter One
Kilcreggan
House
,
London
,
1816
Richard, the third Earl of Kilcreggan, picked up his
newly delivered package of books, crossed his legs, clad in tight-fitting
pantaloons and polished leather boots, and settled into his favourite wingback
chair. Amongst the bundle was a new German edition of Gauss, but as he idly
flicked through the uncut pages, the book he had been so eagerly awaiting failed
to hold his attention.
The library, his favourite room, was located at the back of
Kilcreggan House, which itself stood on the south corner of Cavendish Square.
Sash windows looked out onto the garden where Richard kept his treasured
telescope, made to one of Mr Herschel’s designs. Much of the library’s wall
space was taken up by glass-fronted bookcases, but a large mahogany cabinet with
a rosewood veneer stood in the corner by the fireplace, its innumerable drawers
containing the most prized of Richard’s specimens—butterflies and insects,
semi-precious stones, fossils, and a plethora of other curios he had amassed on
his extensive travels. His famed exotic botanical specimens, also collected
abroad, were cultivated at his country seat in a number of expensively heated
custom-built succession houses. These featured in the background of the painting
that hung above the mantel.
Richard’s portrait, by the renowned Scottish artist Henry
Raeburn, was, even he conceded, a good likeness. It depicted a tall man with a
darkly brooding face, too forbidding to be considered classically handsome, but
arresting enough to be unsettling. Mr Raeburn had captured the earl’s air of
amused detachment, as if the sitter took neither the portrait nor himself too
seriously. A volume of Erasmus Darwin’s
Zoonomia
was
held open in his hands but his golden-brown eyes gazed out intently at the
viewer, something that Richard’s friends and family found so disconcerting that
he had been forced to move the portrait from the dining room, in which it had
originally been hung. ‘Can’t eat with you staring over my shoulder like that, my
dear fellow,’ his friend Nick Lytton had joked.
Richard drummed his fingers on the frontispiece of a volume of
poems. He was bored. No, not just bored, he was malcontent, though it pained him
to admit it, for there was no logical reason to be so, and he was a man who
valued logic above all else. Getting to his feet, he strode over to gaze out of
the window. He was in no mood to be convivial, he had no urge for intellectual
debate, and even the thought of whiling away an afternoon making love to a
beautiful woman roused in him little more than mild ennui. Despite the endless
opportunities with which his acknowledged charm and considerable wealth
presented him, the pleasure he derived from lovemaking was becoming ever more
unsatisfactory, leaving him spent but not sated. The sense that there was
something vital missing from his life nagged at him.
He sighed heavily. Nick Lytton insisted that what he needed was
a wife. Nick, who had for years forsworn matrimony, had recently been felled by
a beautiful French heiress and had now become a staunch advocate of the married
state. Richard was not persuaded. Love was a transient illusion, a trick of
nature designed to ensure the continuation of the species, nothing more. There
was no such thing as eternal love, nor such a woman as the perfect mate. Richard
had never even come close to being mildly infatuated, never mind beguiled. Now,
at six-and-thirty, he considered himself pretty much immune to emotions of that
sort. As a man of science, he held that to be an entirely appropriate state of
affairs.
Outside, the rain started to fall, the kind of soft grey
drizzle that enveloped one like a damp blanket. It matched Richard’s mood
perfectly. He pressed his forehead against the windowpane and closed his eyes.
There was much to be said for the reassuring predictability of science, but
sometimes, just occasionally, it would be nice to experience the thrill of the
unexpected.
London
,
the
present
.
Errin McGill pushed open the door of the small junk shop
in Camberwell and paused, as she always did, to drink in the familiar evocative
smell of old wood, mildewed books and damp upholstery. She loved this place, so
much so that she always made it her first port of call on her regular buying
trips from New York, though she rarely purchased anything here. Errin’s wealthy
Manhattan clients demanded the very best, which meant genuine antiques in mint
condition, without any of the scratches and signs of wear and tear that Errin
herself preferred, for they gave each piece a provenance, a personality. But her
rich clients weren’t really interested in history. They wanted ‘authentic’
period rooms, unsullied by evidence of real age. If antiques could somehow be
injected with botox serum, that’s what her clients would have her do to
them.
She’d come straight here after dumping her bags at the hotel,
having only two weeks in which to acquire a frighteningly long list of
commissioned items. The flight from JFK had been delayed by three hours, and she
hadn’t eaten since that fateful dinner with Mark the night before. Not that
she’d eaten much then, not after Mark dropped his bombshell and produced, with a
flourish, the small designer ring box. She had been too shocked to do anything
other than stare, and Mark, expecting delighted exclamations, had taken
immediate offence. The ring, a diamond solitaire, winked up at her smugly. She
hated it. Too big, way too showy, it would brand her indisputably as Mark’s
property, another one of his expensively acquired possessions.
Suddenly and with embarrassing clarity, Errin had realised that
she didn’t love Mark. She would never love him, not in the crash, bang, dizzy,
breathless way that true love should manifest itself. Nor experience that
heart-stopping desperate-to-be-with-him, can’t-bear-to-be-without-him feeling.
He was rich and gorgeous but that wasn’t enough. Despite her pragmatic sister
Megan forever reminding her about biological clocks and career women, Errin
wanted something she’d only read about in romance novels. What was wrong with
shooting for the stars? She was only twenty-eight. Surely, out of the millions
of men out there, her Mr Absolutely Perfect existed and was waiting for her?
Mark had been more angry than upset, stung by her refusal. He
was, as he himself pointed out, an excellent catch. They’d been dating
exclusively for over a year, so marriage was the next logical step, except now
it made no sense whatsoever to Errin. ‘Your loss, Errin. There’s plenty more
fish in the sea,’ he’d sneered before storming off, sending their champagne
flutes flying and drawing shocked stares from their fellow diners at the
exclusive restaurant.
Cringing now at the memory, Errin stooped to examine a
companion set of brass fire irons, but although they were prettily made, they
had been over-polished, the patina destroyed, so she put them back. Her head
ached. Reaching up, she removed the clip that held her auburn hair back and
shook it out, sighing with relief and rolling her shoulders in an effort to ease
the tension in them.
She’d wanted to explain properly but Mark had refused to take
her calls. She couldn’t really blame him, but nor was she sorry. When she got
back from this trip, maybe it was time to make some other long-overdue changes
to her life. Despite the phenomenal success of her interior-design business, she
was bored. It wasn’t how she’d pictured her life panning out when she graduated
with a master’s in fine arts seven years ago. She’d imagined an exciting career
doing something fulfilling and creative, not becoming a glorified personal
shopper for people with more money than taste.
A wingback chair caught her eye. Mahogany, with cabriole legs
and ball-and-claw feet, it was upholstered in dark brown leather. Early Regency,
one of her favourite periods. She stooped to examine it more closely. It was in
sad need of reupholstering, but there was something captivating about it that
made her want to try it out. She did so, snuggling into the high seat back,
closing her eyes with a sigh of pleasure. The worn leather on the out-scrolled
arms spoke of much use. It was a gentleman’s chair. She pictured it sitting in
front of a roaring fire in a library or book room.
The chair seemed to envelop her, wrapping her in its welcoming
embrace. Whoever he had been, the original owner was clearly a man who liked his
comforts. Well-to-do, judging by the quality of this bespoke piece. Maybe a
scholar, or a poet—the early nineteenth century was practically awash with
poets. Errin smiled to herself. How different life must have been then. How
romantic. How much she wished her life...
Her eyes grew heavy, and closed. There were flashing red lights
behind her lids. A deeper, more intense red swirled in the background like a hot
mist. She felt dizzy. Her fingers and toes tingled. The dizziness took a firmer
hold, making her feel as if she were spinning round and falling backwards at the
same time. The dazzling light hurt her eyes, but she couldn’t seem to prise her
lids open. Then a sudden flash of white light burned through the crimson, making
her sit bolt upright.
* * *
The first thing she noticed was the portrait of a man,
an extremely attractive man, dressed in the cutaway coat, clinging pantaloons
and polished leather boots of the Regency period. His eyes, a striking brown
colour that was like burnished copper, were tinged with amusement and seemed to
be observing her intently. He had a strong nose, a most decided chin, and his
mouth trembled on the verge of a smile, as if he knew some rather shocking
secret. Night-black hair cut very close to his head, but no hat. More devilish
than handsome really, and very sure of himself into the bargain, Errin
decided.
She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t noticed it when she
first entered the shop. Her headache had gone. She must have dozed off. The heat
of the fire perhaps—that always made her woozy.
The
fire
?
What
fire
?
The fire burning in the hearth. Above which the painting hung.
In the room that looked very much like a library and not at all like Pandora’s
Box off Camberwell High Street.
Was she still asleep and dreaming this?
Jet-lagged?
Hallucinating?
Errin rubbed her eyes, but the scene remained the same. She
pinched herself, something she’d always thought a ridiculous thing when people
did it in books. It hurt, but still nothing changed.
She looked around her, at the glass-fronted bookcases and the
beautiful curio cabinet that took up most of one wall. It was a lovely room,
authentically Regency, with some much older pieces. She ran her hands over the
ebony-and-ivory marquetry of a pedestal side table that looked to be straight
out of Sheraton’s
Cabinet
Dictionary
. If this was a dream, it was an extremely
vivid one.
The portrait above the mantel drew her attention again. A
wealthy man, a scholarly man, but above all a
sexy
one. It might be the boots, or the way the pantaloons clung to his legs, or
perhaps the devil-may-care look. There was nothing insipid about him. His
smouldering demeanour suggested a man capable of giving, and receiving,
pleasure.
The idea made Errin’s blood heat. Keeping one eye on the
portrait, she wandered over to the bookshelves, running an idle finger along the
titles. The unlit lamps scattered about the room were oil-fired. There were
candelabra on the mantel, standing on either side of a clock showing the phases
of the moon.
French
, she thought automatically.
Louis Quatorze, and in perfect condition. Worth thousands. Intrigued, she was
about to take a closer look when a door in the panelling opened.
A man stood in the doorway. Tall, with long legs clad in long
boots and tightly fitting trousers. A tailed coat left unbuttoned to reveal a
striped waistcoat. The coat framed broad shoulders. The white shirt with its
high collar framed a strangely familiar face.
Goosebumps rose on Errin’s skin. The man closed the door softly
behind him and began to walk purposefully towards her. In the flesh, he was even
more viscerally attractive, exuding an almost tangible sexual aura. She backed
away from him. Not from fear. She was not at all afraid. Why should she be?
Whatever this was, it was not real.
But it felt real. It felt very real.
Her back encountered a bookcase, forcing her to cease her
retreat. Her heart was pounding as it did at the end of a spin class at the gym.
She tried to speak, but no sound emerged. The man stood in front of her. He
didn’t look like a dream. He looked extremely solid. Extremely male. She had
thought the width of his shoulders and chest the usual portrait painter’s
flattery, but in fact the artist hadn’t even begun to capture the sheer physical
presence of the subject.
Errin took a deep breath. He gave off a definitively male scent
she couldn’t even begin to deconstruct as it wrapped itself around her and
tingled its way into her blood. Sensory overload. Desire kicked in, sudden and
violent, like a shattering of glass, sharp and edgy and dangerous.
Please let her not wake up; this was her best dream in ages.
‘Please. Not yet.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Richard eyed the strange female cowering against his folio
edition of the Encyclopédie with a mixture of amusement and surprise. She was
very tall for a woman; those hazel eyes of hers did not have to look too far up
to meet his. Fiery red hair, most unfashionably cut, hinted at an equally fiery
temperament, and there was intelligence there too, in that unusual countenance.
She looked exotic, though he couldn’t quite say in what way. Foreign
perhaps?
He stepped closer, the better to appraise her. Smooth skin. A
well-defined face, a strong face, for a woman. She held his gaze with something
akin to defiance. He liked that. Richard smiled. The strange female smiled back.
It transformed her face. She was quite lovely in an unconventional way.