The Perfect Gift

The Perfect Gift

Ladies of London
Book 3

Raven McAllan

Breathless Press

Calgary, Alberta

www.breathlesspress.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or

persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Perfect Gift

Copyright© 2012 Raven McAllan

ISBN: 978-1-77101-865-4

Cover Artist: Victoria Miller

Editor: Shyla Colt

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in reviews.

Breathless Press

www.breathlesspress.com

Dedication

To Shyla, Victoria, all at Breathless Press, and my crit group U C W.

And to my lovely sister-in-law Sue for her faith in me, and her help with all things Yorkshire.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

“So, it seems we are now to host the Duke and Duchess’s Christmas house party for them,” Stephen, Viscount Pelham told his housekeeper. He tried to ignore the itch in his shoulder blade that intimated all was not as it seemed. “There is illness in their village, and Amanda feels ‘tis not proper to ask guests to visit in the circumstances.”

Or so she says. Why do I have no faith in Amanda’s pronouncements?
He wondered if Harry, his sister’s husband, knew her reasons for the change in venue. Whether he did or did not was immaterial. The house party would now be at Carrland Hall.

He stretched his long legs out. The gleam on his immaculate hessians shone in the firelight. Why did he not think he had been given the whole story? Due to the inclement weather, it had taken Loggins, his groom, longer than normal to ride to the posting office to collect the mails, and the short winter evening was rapidly drawing to a close. Tonight, the fog and damp so normal to this area seemed twice as deep as would be expected.

A swift perusal of the impressive missive from his sister, crossed and re-crossed, had his normally placid temper rising. Why, with a Peer of the Realm to frank her letters, did she deem it necessary to write so? The writing was illegible. It was as if a spider had dipped its legs in ink and walked over the paper. The patterns the loops and swirls created made him think of silken ropes crisscrossed over a smooth female body. His cock tightened in response to the images in his mind. With a ruthlessness he had cultivated over the years, he quelled his erection and cleared his mind. He could not speak to his staff with a horn such as he had.

Once his prick and balls had relaxed enough for his trousers to fit and not threaten his ability to procreate if he ever chose to, he reread the missive.

It caused him to roll his eyes and then ensure he rang the bell to summon Mrs. Clegg, his longtime employee. She smiled when he mentioned Amanda, who had always been her favorite. He knew once he uttered the magic word ‘Amanda’ everything possible would be done to guarantee his sister and her guests would enjoy all conceivable comforts.

As he finished speaking, she nodded. “Now that will be a treat for us all, my lord, I’m sure. Does Miss Amanda, I mean the Duchess, say how many chambers need to be prepared?”

Stephen perused the paper in front of him. “She says the enclosed is for you, to give you all the information required, and the first guest will arrive on the fifteenth.” He handed a package over to Mrs. Clegg. “Good grief, that is but five days hence. Can you manage, Cleggy? She has, I fear, been her usual thoughtless self.”

“Bless you my lord, ‘tis no trouble,” Mrs. Clegg said. She spoke as if she were comforting a child. Much as she had when, as a young boy, he’d scraped his knees or had a whipping from his tutor. “Miss, I mean her ladyship, knows we are able to cater to her desires and needs.”

Hmmm. It was that he was afraid of. However… His mind veered off at a tangent.
Needs, desires
. Stephen made a mental note to ensure the tower rooms were secure and locked, and the door to its secret stair secure and hidden. It was one thing to be confident in your own skin and your own preference, another to shout those predilections to all and sundry.

“She was so sure I would agree, the minx. I wonder how she got Harry to agree,” he asked. It was a rhetorical question. He knew fine well what wiles a woman could employ to get what she wanted. To delay the delivery of this diktat—for it was a command however the words were penned—until the day before he had been due to leave for the long ride south was one of them. He knew some of the guests would already have set out to undertake the arduous trek north to Yorkshire.

However, a thought struck him. “Does she say Lady Judith Gresham is to be one of the party?” To his secret and wry amusement his heart pounded as he waited for his housekeeper’s reply.

Mrs. Clegg perused the letter and a smile hovered on her lips. “Yes, my lord. She asks we prepare the Crimson Suite for her.”

Stephen groaned, his cock twitched, and he strove to keep the unwanted reaction contained. What maggot in her brain had made his meddling sister decide to house his nemesis in the room next to his quarters?

“And Lady Mallins?” he asked with little hope his desires would be accommodated.

His housekeeper colored in a delicate manner, as delicately as a fifteen stone matriarch who ruled her staff with a rod of iron could do. The obvious disapproval in her eyes was enough to deflate his ardor and his balls to shrivel. Mrs. Clegg had been more of a mother to him than the one who gave him birth, and her approval meant a great deal to him. He crossed one ankle over his leg and shifted slightly. The look she gave him was much too knowing.

“Ah, the Gardenia Suite my lord.”

His heart sank, though he gave a brief smile at his sister’s machinations. He was well aware of Amanda’s disapproval of his intentions towards the fair lady.

Now it all made sense. His sister had no time for the voluptuous blonde, who, with a little more coercion would, he felt certain, agree to be his mistress rather than a casual fuck-amour. Several dedicated evenings of seduction had given him hope in that direction. He had hoped the next step would be for her to accept him and him alone as her paramour. Sadly, he knew her inclusion in Amanda’s party was not, however, on his behalf. Lord Mallins was a renowned expert on prime horseflesh, and a well-known raconteur, invited to all the best houses. It was, many ladies agreed, a pity his wife had to be invited as well, because she had no compunction in trying to take a little light dalliance with any man around to a higher level of intimacy. And, it was whispered, she used wiles and powers not of the norm. Those he had no idea about, but Stephen knew she would have no effect on him. His heritage was well-hidden but highly developed. It was his choice not to use it. Something he realized he needed to address and soon. His time to accept or deny it outright was almost upon him. He dragged his mind back to the problem of his guests and their accommodations.

For all their lack of interest in each other, the Mallins arrived and departed from all such parties together. What they did in between was not mentioned. The Gardenia Suite was as far as possible from his rooms, and in a different wing of the house. He wondered where Amanda had chosen to house Lord Mallins, but deemed it not politic to ask.

“Perhaps those ladies could be accommodated elsewhere?” he suggested, with little hope of agreement, for he knew his sister too well. “Swap rooms for instance?” The thought of Judith, so close and yet so far, and he thought with dawning horror, so close to that staircase to heaven, was unbearable. He foresaw more than one solitary session to sate his needs.
If
he could access those stairs without fear of discovery. One untoward noise, and if the occupant of the adjoining bedchamber heard, he would be undone.

Mrs. Clegg looked flustered. “Oh my lord, my lady is most insistent that where she has placed everyone should stand. She says she has taken considerable time and forethought to ensure everybody is accommodated as is best for their situation. She begs me not to alter her arrangements. I cannot upset her ladyship, it would never do.”

Stephen sighed and nodded his acquiescence; it was as he thought. Amanda had long held an unconscious dislike for the fair Lady Mallins. He remembered his sister once describing her as akin to a piranha. His lips quirked. In his experience of her, the lady in question
was
somewhat voracious, and did nip and bite rather well. Whether she would have bowed to his more extreme requests had yet to be determined. Alas, it did not look if he would find out over this festive season.

As the housekeeper curtsied and left the room, he wondered what it was that meant Judith was most suited to being accommodated next to him? Not for the reasons he most desired, he was sure. His sister knew nothing of them. If his brother-in-law did, Stephen knew there was no circumstance under which Harry would divulge such things.

He sat, thinking.

Lady Judith Gresham. The one person he lusted after in vain. He was too old, too extreme, and in his justification, he decided, too set in his ways to take the virtue of a young, untried girl. Stephen hoped he was wise enough to see and deflect a juvenile crush without deflating the innocent bestowing her affections. At eleven years her elder, he had known from the first time he set eyes on the fresh young debutante she could be his for the taking. But Stephen was no seducer of virgins of any age, had no inclination to marry, and moreover, he enjoyed the life of a single man.
To say nothing of what I want from a relationship, which I dare not hope would be acceptable to her.

For three years, he had succeeded well enough; making sure they were never alone, behaving with polite courtesy, and acting in the same vein he treated his young cousins, almost father-like.

Until the last ball he had attended. Slipping into the gardens to smoke a rare cigar, he had been unaware she had followed until her hand rested on his arm, and he felt the soft sweet pressure of her breasts against him.

“How long are we playing this game?” she asked him, her lips tilting up at the sides in a mischievous grin. “I want you. You want me, why are you dissembling?”

He experienced a tight hard throbbing in his groin as he responded to her presence in his usual predictable way. Stephen forced himself to breathe in as even a manner as possible, and shifted to ease the sudden pain. He curled his hands into tight fists to stop himself reaching out and running them over her throat, biting the soft, milk-white skin of her breasts and making her his.

Of course she had noticed. When did she ever not?

“Hell, is it not?” she asked in a soft undertone. “When your body responds even though your mind dictates it should react in an indifferent manner?”

He had no answer to that; not even when, for one brief moment, he felt her soft hand burning through his breeches as it cupped his shaft. Judith laughed so softly he had to strain to catch the breathy sound.

“You may deny your reaction, but your body gives lie to any statement of denial, my lord. One day perhaps you will listen to it. Perchance then we will both benefit.” She paused and once more he heard her deep, throaty, arousing chuckle. “Or perhaps not. Who knows if by then I may have grown weary of my lonely wait and moved on to pastures new. For now, I am untried and waiting to be taught all I need to know—by you.” She paused and for a brief moment he could swear he saw tears in her eyes.

“All, Stephen, listen well to my words. All of them. You think you are alone? I know, Stephen, women gossip. I
know.
” She stopped speaking; even the air seemed to still as she waited for his reply.

Stephen swallowed the lump in his throat; he dared not introduce her to his needs. Nor did he believe she really knew. Have ideas, wonder, but not know. That would crucify one so innocent as her, surely? He didn’t know how to answer her, so stayed silent.