A Regency Earl's Pleasure: The Earl Plays With Fire / Society's Most Scandalous Rake. Isabelle Goddard
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Regency
Collection
ISABELLE GODDARD was born into an army family and spent her childhood moving around the UK and abroad. Unsurprisingly it gave her itchy feet and in her twenties she escaped from an unloved secretarial career to work as cabin crew and see the world.
The arrival of marriage, children and cats meant a more settled life in the south of England, where she’s lived ever since. It also gave her the opportunity to go back to ‘school’ and eventually teach at university. Isabelle loves the nineteenth century and grew up reading Georgette Heyer, so when she plucked up the courage to begin writing herself the novels had to be Regency romances.
A Regency Earl’s Pleasure
The Earl Plays with Fire
Society’s Most Scandalous Rake
Isabelle Goddard
Table of Contents
Society’s Most Scandalous Rake
Isabelle Goddard
London—1816
‘Have you heard the latest?’ The voice came out of nowhere.
Christabel Tallis, aimlessly fanning herself, stopped for a moment and glanced at the mirror which hung on the opposite wall. She knew neither of the women reflected there. Perched uncomfortably on one of the stiffly brocaded benches that lined the Palantine Gallery, she had been wondering, not for the first time that morning, why she’d ever agreed to her mother’s suggestion that they meet Julian here. Lady Harriet had insisted they attend what was billed as the show of the Season, but for Christabel the delights of London society had long ago palled. The salon was overheated and far too crowded, and her delicate skin was already slightly flushed.
‘About the Veryan boy, you mean?’ one of the women continued.
The name hovered in the air, menacing Christabel’s shield of calm detachment. The buzz of inconsequential chatter faded into the distance and every fibre of her body became alert.
‘He’s hardly a boy now, of course.’
‘Indeed no. How long has it been? Lady Veryan must be overjoyed that he is returning home at last.’
Suddenly Christabel longed to be far away from this conversation, away from this room. A shaft of sunlight streamed through the gallery’s long windows, breaking through a lowering sky and burnishing her auburn curls into a fiery cloud. The warming light was gone almost as soon as it appeared, but to her it seemed to beckon escape. Escape to where, though? To a country of grey slate and blue seas, a landscape of moor and rocks? To Cornwall, to home? But that could not be; she knew well that her future lay elsewhere.
‘One can only hope that he actually arrives,’ the woman opined in a hushed voice.
The other shuddered theatrically. ‘I understand the journey from Argentina is very long and most dangerous.’
‘My dear, yes. You must remember The Adventurer—just a few years ago. It sailed from Buenos Aires …’
The women moved away and she heard no more. That was sufficient. Richard’s name reverberated through her mind. After all these years—five, six it would be—he was coming back. Her deep green eyes stared into the distance and saw only memory.
She was seated on a stone bench in the garden of the Veryan