Lady Kitty Varney runs a discreet, but risqué matchmaking business to support herself and pay off her late husband's debts. When Viscount Justin Belmont appears in her parlor, Kitty's latest client is the very man she was forbidden to marry years ago. Kitty wonders if she can find Justin a woman worthy of him...and if she can bear to match him to another.But when Justin lists his own criteria for a wife, Kitty is among the few candidates suitable. And he demands each candidate spend one night of bliss with him in his love nest.
Can Kitty deny herself the opportunity to enjoy the charms of the man she's never forgotten? Lady Varney's risqué business might be her saving grace -but it may well become her undoing.
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Lady Varney's Risqué Business
May, 1818
Cavendish Square, London
Lady Katherine Varney stared into her cheval mirror in her boudoir, fluffed the ruffles at her throat and pursed her lips. “Have I aged terribly since I last saw him, Maggie?” she asked her younger sister. “I hate to think I look like a dowdy matron.”
Margaret Donaldson winked back, tossing her golden curls in glee. “Justin Belmont will be astonished at you, Puss. In the past eleven years, you’ve grown only lovelier.”
“And heavier,” Kitty pressed her palms to her waistline beneath the lavender afternoon receiving gown.
“You’ve had a child. But your bosom is high. Perhaps, even fuller? Men like that.”
Kitty grinned at Maggie, married only a year and reminding Kitty of herself at the age of twenty. But Kitty differed from Maggie in one major respect. As a bride, Kitty had not loved her husband. Never had. Nor could. And the man downstairs awaiting her in her drawing room on this Sunday afternoon was the reason why. She frowned at her own reflection. “I’m nervous, though I tell myself I should not be. He has come to me.”
Maggie arched a brow. “And we know why.”
He wants revenge. He vowed it years ago. Kitty squeezed her eyes shut. “He wants a wife.”
“And you can find him one.”
“Why could he not find one the usual way?” The man downstairs had friends—even Prinny—who could make a match for him. “With a bit of help from his set?”
Maggie tipped her head. “Puss, be reasonable. He would have more challenges than most. He’s not your average English gentleman.”
“But he is legitimate now. His uncle made him so. Adopted him and made him heir to the earldom. Many a girl in her first season wants a viscount with a fortune to burn, a house in town, two in the country and—”
“And a past as an American clipper ship captain?” Maggie rose from her slipper chair to put her arms around Kitty’s shoulders. “A man who seized a French frigate and captured an English lady on board?”
“Brought her back to London—”
“And tried to marry her,” Maggie added in a sorrowful whisper, “but her papa wouldn’t allow it.”
“What irony that the elderly man her father married her to died penniless,” Kitty murmured. She could still hear her father bellowing at Justin, demanding to know if he’d taken his eldest daughter’s virginity. He hadn’t. But how I wish he had. Then Justin and she would have been married from necessity—and that would have been better than being married to Throckmorton Varney for money.
A knock came at her dressing room door. “Madam,” her butler called, “Viscount Belmont asks after you once more.”
“Not to worry, Harlow. I am coming.” To her sister, she said, “What a joke that today Justin Belmont is rich enough to buy my house two times over, while I must work to pay off my husband’s creditors.”
“Stop this, Kitty.” Maggie stepped backward. “Remorse solves nothing. Turn around.”
Kitty inhaled and spun.
“You are beautiful, Lady Varney. Stunning. You are the well-regarded and well-received widow of the late Lord Throckmorton Varney. You know how to navigate the ton with wit and grace. And if you also earn fees from the gentlemen who come to you to recommend a bride, then you deserve them. To date, I do believe, you have matched five men to proper ladies.”
“Seven,” Kitty corrected with a small, satisfied smile curling her lips.
“Seven then. And so now, if one of the benefits of your—shall we call it, referral services?—is to reestablish an acquaintance with a man who was once your rescuer and by some measure, your beau, who are we to question the wisdom of the Fates? Hmmm?”
“You are right. At thirty, I should be stronger.” Kitty grabbed Maggie’s hands and brought them to her heart. “You’ll not leave until he’s gone? So I can tell you how it went?”
“How he looks? And acts? What precisely he wants in a wife?” Maggie’s amethyst eyes danced in delight.
“Yes, you urchin!”
“I will revel in the smallest details!” Maggie swept aside. “Now, do go down, Lady Varney. I must learn every tiny detail about the new Viscount Belmont. Before supper, too!”
And so must I. Kitty stiffened her backbone but felt no stronger than a floundering mackerel. How she took the circular staircase down to her drawing room was a mystery, given her knees of jelly.
“Buck up, Puss,” she chastised herself. Pulling open the double doors herself rather than call her butler, she wished privacy for her meeting with Justin Belmont. She needed to look upon him alone.
And oh, my. Yes. To realize that the newly dubbed Viscount Belmont, American-born, Englishman by blood, nobleman now by adoption and the entail, was even more devastatingly handsome than a decade ago when the world seemed fresh and full of positive possibilities.
“My Lord Belmont.” Kitty sailed toward him where he stood before her fireplace, her expression, she hoped, one of civility. My lord, how can you shake my sanity so easily with that harsh look? That painful curiosity in your hazel eyes?
Here before her stood the man who had saved her from lascivious Frenchmen. Ten years ago he’d been as huge and imposing as Satan. Now he was more muscular, his face more angular, his hair more raven against skin more pale. In clothes that were better tailored and more form-fitting than the loose linen shirts that once had flowed to his fingertips, he was now the epitome of a titled English gentleman. He gave no hint of the American privateer who had captured her body with his boldness, her mind with his intellect and her heart with his artless charm.
She walked forward, her gaze up at his imperial height, her hand out for him to take.
He touched her fingertips, his own cold as the grave. “Lady Varney. Kind of you to receive me.”
You don’t sound as though you think me kind. You sound…dismayed, appalled, even—dear God—disgusted that you are here.
“Please, my lord, do sit with me.” She nodded to one settee, and as he complied, she took the one facing him. His eyes, such a myriad of earthen colors, faceted in the lamplight of late afternoon. His gaze flowed over her. Her hair, her lips, her breasts, her fingers. Everywhere his gaze touched, her body pulsed, remembering how once he had looked at her with desire. Not this…this indifference. That sparked her to lie with her next words, “I am delighted you have come to see me.”
He did not even breathe as he said, “Are you now?”
“Of course,” she countered his challenge, but stayed true to her manners by adding, “I have heard of your recent good fortune.”
He cocked a long black brow. “When the news is published in the scandal sheets as well as the social notes, nothing in London is a secret.”
She licked her lower lip. “Very little.”
“But this service of yours,” he said with measured tone as he circled a hand in the air to denote her business, “this is a tidbit only the men of the ton share with each other.”
She hastened to agree. “Those who need help have found my—”
“Assistance? That is what you call your match-making, am I correct?” One corner of his mouth tipped up, and she could not say if the move denoted humor or ruefulness. “Whatever your term, I need your help.”
His directness had her fighting for a response.
“I hear you pride yourself on your knowledge of human nature,” he prodded her.
She lifted her chin. “Or to be exact, the nature of men.”
He barked in laughter. “If you knew that, dearest woman, you and I would not be sitting here.”
Should she show him the door? She bristled and sought to hold her ground, reprimand him, if she could. “You asked for this appointment, my lord.”
“It seemed the only way to see you,” he shot back.
“Perhaps I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that you requested a Sunday afternoon appointment because—”
“Because since my newfound status as a peer of the realm was announced in September, you have not invited me to any of your dinner parties.”
“Forgive me, but you really wished an invitation to dinner?” Incredulous at that conclusion, she felt a thrill sweep up her spine that he might indeed not seek a wife. “I—I am only recently out of my year of mourning for my husband, Justin, and those who may dine at my table with me do not include bachelors.”
“Especially bachelors whom you once knew? Ah, the rules of this blasted society!” He leaned forward, his gaze at once tender and yearning. “Kitty—”
“Please, sir, I am still Lady Varney to you.”
“You never were that to me. Besides, you just called me Justin.” His eyes twinkled.
“I did not!”
“Of course, you did.” He sat back, crossed one long leg over the other and seemed too well satisfied with himself to soothe her ruffled senses.
“We are here to discuss business,” she insisted with a hauteur that had him narrowing his gaze on her.
It was not a kindly glance, either, but the fierce glare he’d worn so long ago as he climbed over the sides of the French Cyr.
He blinked, drew back and appraised her.
Good. At least we are now on firm footing. Two equals about to do business. Not two older people who had cared passionately for each other so very many years ago.
She tipped her head when he remained silent. “Please tell me what you wish.”
He set his jaw, never having cared for anyone to give him orders. “As you know, I am to inherit the Earl of Belmont’s titles and estates. He is ailing. Sadly, I might add. I have come to care for my uncle deeply in the past six years that he and I have been friends. When I first set foot in England eleven years ago, I must say I had no idea he and I would ever get on. But we did. Do. Save for one issue.”
Kitty nodded, knowing precisely the matter that divided them. Touchy subject though it was, she went on boldly, because that was her wont, because it was her business to be forthright and because she knew this man very well. Or once had. “He wants you to marry.”
Justin seemed to retreat even further into himself. His jaw firmed. His lips thinned. His large eyes turned to glittering stones. “He wishes me to marry an heiress with title, high social standing and a suitable dowry. To put a fine point on it, he wants the perfect woman.”
“The earl thinks appropriately. His titles are six hundred years old and his estates are numerous and bring in a sizable sum each year.”
Justin snorted. “My uncle was right about you.”
Kitty felt what would come next would not be a compliment. “How so?”
“He declares there is not much you do not know about the peers of the realm, their income or their need for propriety.”
“To learn the genealogies of the famous one hundred families was a favorite pastime for a lonely little girl.”
His features softened to a genuine compassion that made her heart ache. “You were alone as a child?”
She swallowed, not wishing to remember her youth. “I do have one sister, younger by ten years. But our parents were preoccupied with society. Hence, the house was often cold and dark. But the library was a wonderful room, warm and full of enchanting tales. Not all of them were fiction.”
His mouth spread wide in a grin, and her memory of how those lips felt on her own was one she told herself could not be so fresh after more than a decade. Yet, it was.
She tipped her head, unable to suppress a smile. “Please tell me about the kind of woman you wish me to seek for you.”
“Ah. Yes.” He scowled, his glittering eyes hard as glass. “First, she must be lovely.”
“Of course.” No less for such a striking man. Besides, a plain woman would be intimidated by a husband who was so damned handsome.
“Blonde.”
“Blonde?” Hair color was often listed by a man, but not usually this early in the discussion.
“Golden-haired.”
She shifted. That specific? “I see.”
“She must be a peer in her own right.”
Kitty knit her brows, recalling how her own barony of writ had been the lure to Throckmorton. “Why is this important?”
“Her own blue-blood complements my lack. Since I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, a lady in deed secures my own legitimacy.”
Kitty’s mind was racing. How many single golden-haired ladies who were titled in their own right could she count? Four? Five?
“It also enhances the reputation of any of my offspring.”
“True. I had not thought of that.”
Looking innocent as a cherub, he lifted a palm. “You see my logic.”
“Certainly.” Dear God, a taskmaster. “What else might I add to her qualifications?” A huge dowry? That’s what the ton says the old Earl demands of you.
“She must be shorter than I. Talented at the piano forte. A good conversationalist.”
“Really, how interesting.” Her gaze wandered to her own French piano. She frowned and noted, “Most men would have asked that she be a wizard at cards.”
He chuckled.
“Most bachelors,” she ventured, “want to ensure they keep their money in the family.”
“Oh, never doubt, my dear Kitty, that I have other requirements perhaps more astonishing than not caring about my future wife’s ability at the card table.”
Oh, my. This was the point at which many men told her they wanted peculiar qualities in their spouse. She hadn’t expected any oddities from Justin. Would she be disillusioned as well as surprised? And even more jealous? “Do tell me what they are.”
“I want someone versed in the art of conjugal bliss.”
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