Secret Life of a Scandalous Debutante. Bronwyn Scott

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For adventurers everywhere

       who are not afraid to embrace a new and uncertain future even when it takes them away from everything they know.

      For my editor, Lucy Gilmour,

       to celebrate our first book together. May it be the beginning of an exciting new journey.

       Chapter One

      Beldon Stratten, the fourth Baron Pendennys, was on a mission of matrimonial importance. His affairs were in order: the one prequisite needed for a good marriage or a good death among London’s social elite. Having been neither married nor dead, he’d have to take their word for it. There were those among his acquaintances who argued there wasn’t much difference between the two. He would reserve judgement.

      His gaze roved the room, quartering it with purpose. He would choose one of them. Perhaps the lovely Miss Canby with her modest fortune, but impeccable bloodlines; maybe Miss Ells-worthy, granddaughter of a viscount, whose financial endowment made up for the lack of other endowments; or the elegant Elizabeth Smithbridge with her icy beauty and twenty thousand pounds. Beldon gave a mental shrug. No. Not Miss Smithbridge. Too cold. A man must have his standards, it wasn’t all about the money.

      Dear Lord, did Miss Canby just wink at him? She waltzed by with the young heir to an earldom, clearly hedging her bets. That was definitely a wink.

      Beldon grabbed up a chilled flute of champagne from a passing footman and silently toasted himself.

      Welcome to the Season.

      Four months of sizing up the opportunities.

      And four months of being sized up. He was no naïve young blood first come to town. While he was assessing the available women, admittedly some more available than others, they were assessing him.

      Beldon sipped from the flute. Lady Eleanor Braithmore floated by in a froth of white lace and pink ribbons, daughter of an earl and the most eligible heiress of the Season. All his common sense, and he had a healthy dose of it, suggested he make his suit in that direction. Wealthy, young and pretty, Eleanor was all a well-bred gentleman should desire.

      Until his gaze moved on and he saw her.

      More precisely, until he saw her back.

      The her in question was not Eleanor Braithmore.

      In fact, he didn’t know who she was.

      The woman was stunning.

      Granted, he could only see her back, but what a back. Beldon gave silent thanks to the fashion gods who’d decreed that this year’s gowns be low, off-the-shoulder creations that revealed a tantalising glimpse of a woman’s back and the feminine swell of a neatly rounded shoulder.

      The woman in question wore the latest style exceptionally well. Her raven-dark hair was piled high and threaded with lengths of pearls, exposing the delicate column of her neck and enough of her back to cause a jolt of desire to fire straight to his core. He was suddenly and exceedingly aware of himself as a sexual being, a man in tune with his natural urges. What he could do with a woman like that! The very sight of her begged a man to conjure fantasies.

      He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the feel of that straight, elegant back beneath the caress of his fingertips. Even now, across the room and her face unseen, his fingers itched to skim the sensual surface of her skin, his lips lightly brushing the place where neck met shoulders.

      He seduced her in his mind. She would be exquisite by candlelight. He would approach her from behind, settle his hands, light but firm, on those bare shoulders and push the delicate material of her gown down the length of her arms, letting it glide over the slim flare of her hips, until the whole of her back was revealed; the indentation at the small where it gave way to the curved globes of her derrière.

      She would be superb nude.

       A man knew these things instinctively. And a smart man banished ‘those things’ to the recesses of his mind where they belonged, unable to interfere with logic and rational thought.

      Beldon