Wagered in Winter Read online

  Wagered in Winter

  The Wicked Winters Book Five

  By

  Scarlett Scott

  Lord Ashley Rawdon has agreed to accompany his painfully shy brother, the Duke of Coventry, to a country house party with the goal of securing him a wealthy bride. A dedicated rake, Ashley is so confident he can help his brother to ensnare the lady of his choosing, he offers him a wager. It’s too bad the lady his brother selects is Miss Prudence Winter, who is infuriating, stubborn, and far too alluring.

  Pru has no patience for sophisticated, handsome scoundrels like Lord Ashley. Nor does she seek a husband. All she wants is to spend the house party in peace so she can return to her charity work in London. But Lord Ashley is persistent. And far too charming.

  Ashley’s plan is proceeding splendidly. Until he finds himself alone with Pru, and he cannot resist stealing a kiss…

  Dedication

  Dedicated to Caroline Lee. I’m so honored to call you friend. Thank you for tirelessly cheering me on!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Excerpt from Wild in Winter

  Don’t miss Scarlett’s other romances!

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Oxfordshire, 1813

  Lord Ashley Rawdon had a problem.

  A tall, beautiful, brunette problem.

  Ordinarily, such an obstacle would be pleasant for a man who had devoted his life to chasing, wooing, and pleasing the fairer sex. But in this situation, he was not chasing, wooing, and attempting to win the lady in question for himself.

  Rather, he was attempting to do so for his brother.

  There would be no delicious culmination of his efforts. He would not be taking the lovely Miss Prudence Winter’s supple berry-colored lips with his. He would never help her out of her gown or find his way beneath her petticoats, and he most certainly would not know the delight of spreading her legs and plying his tongue to her cunny until she spent.

  Damn and blast.

  Gill was going to owe him after this.

  Ash followed Miss Prudence Winter down the massive hall of Abingdon House at a discreet distance. He had no wish to cause a scandal and find himself forced into marrying the chit, after all. Even if he had always had a secret yearning for long Megs like her. And even if he found her delectably tempting.

  He put the last down to his forced rustication at a country house party all in the name of helping his painfully shy brother, the Duke of Coventry, obtain a bride. Namely, one Miss Prudence Winter. She was the eldest of all the Winter sisters, wealthy ladies who hailed from trade and whose brother Devereaux Winter was doing his damnedest to use his newfound connection to nobility to ensnare aristocratic husbands for his sisters.

  Hence the advent of this blasted party at Christmastide.

  Hence Ash’s presence in Oxfordshire.

  And his current plight.

  Miss Prudence disappeared into a chamber four doors down, and Ashley sped up his strides, casting a cautionary glance over his shoulder, before he, too, crossed the threshold and joined her. He found himself inside the sprawling, two-story library of Abingdon House.

  Alone with the woman his brother wanted to make his future duchess.

  He closed the door at his back and cleared his throat to make himself known.

  Pressing a hand to her heart, Miss Prudence Winter spun about, her skirts whirling around her ankles. He fancied he caught a glimpse of slim, stocking-clad perfection and the hint of appealingly curved calves.

  “What are you doing in here, my lord?” she demanded, frowning at him.

  Even her displeasure was somehow alluring.

  He ground his molars and forced himself to imagine a shovel’s worth of cold December snow being dumped down the fall of his breeches. Anything to abate the irritating desire the disapproving creature glowering at him now inspired.

  “Forgive me, Miss Winter,” he said, bowing stiffly. “I find myself bored and in search of diversion. I had not realized the library was occupied.”

  Her lips pursed, and she raised a dark brow high, her countenance making it apparent she did not believe him. Nor was she wrong to find him or his motives suspect. A wise woman, Miss Prudence Winter.

  “Now that you realized I am within, you can see the necessity for you to go,” she told him coolly.

  Here was the other thing about her. Unlike most females of his acquaintance, Miss Winter was not easily won over by him. Upon their every previous interaction—three, not that he was counting—she had made him work for each word she deigned to utter.

  “It would be wise for me to observe propriety and go,” he agreed calmly. “However, now that I have your ear, I find myself loath to leave.”

  “Lord Ashley, you do not have my ear, you have my irritation,” she countered, sweeping toward him with purpose in her step. “I have told you before that I have absolutely no tolerance for meaningless flattery.”

  Yes, she had, the impertinent baggage. Only worse.

  “I believe you said you had no tolerance for meaningless flattery from empty-headed rakehells,” he mused, stroking his jaw as if in deep thought.

  There was no need for thought. She had said precisely that. Verbatim.

  “Then one wonders why you have followed me here, Lord Ashley,” she said, standing near enough now that he could touch her if he wished.

  Of course, he wished.

  He clenched his fists to stave off the desire.

  “I did not follow you, Miss Winter,” he lied.

  “Of course you did,” she insisted. “Just as you followed me on the two previous occasions our paths have crossed.”

  “Three occasions,” he muttered below his breath before he could think better of it.

  Ash could not be certain if she had truly forgotten how many times they had spoken or if she was intentionally nettling him. With Miss Prudence Winter, it could certainly be either.

  “I beg your pardon?” she asked.

  He cleared his throat again and then busied himself by brushing the sleeve of his coat. Affecting ennui was a special gift of his. “Nothing to concern yourself over, Miss Winter. I can assure you, I have not been following you.”

  She tilted her head, considering him with a chocolate-brown gaze he could not help but to feel saw far too much. “As you wish, Lord Ashley. Please just go. I am in search of a book to read. Surely there is some other lady in attendance you can attempt to seduce in my stead? I am certain I have made my lack of enthusiasm known.”

  Curse it, the woman was bold and brash. He would have told Gill to seek another bride, but the bind their wastrel father had left the estates in meant Gill needed to take a wife with the sort of immense funds only a Winter possessed. And the Winter sisters were all a troublesome lot, as far as Ash could tell.

  Especially the Winter before him.

  “You have confused the matter, I am afraid, Miss Winter,” he told her calmly, forcing a polite smile. “Seducing you is not my aim at all. Rather, I am aiding my brother in his search for a bride.”

  She appeared distinctly unimpressed. “While offering His Grace your assistance is commendable, I fear you are wasting your time with me. I have no intention of marrying.”

  No intention of marrying?

  Just what manner of female was Miss Prudence Winter?

  “And why is that, Miss Winter?” he asked. “I should think marriage the goal of every eligible young lady.”

  Gads, he sounded like a bloody vicar. Ash shuddered inwardly.

  She graced him with the smile of someone who was humoring another. “Not every eligible young lady. Indeed, some of us prefer to remain free to live our lives and spend our fortunes as we see fit.”

  It sounded rather a lot like his own philosophy, except he did not have a fortune. His freedom, however, yet remained his, and always would if he had any say in the matter. He was the second son. He need not marry well or at all, and spend the rest of his life a bachelor, pockets to let. There could be worse fates, surely.

  Gill, however, bore all the responsibility.

  “What did you have in mind for your freedom and your fortune?” he could not resist asking her, curious in spite of himself.

  “I want to start my own foundling hospital,” she told him.

  Her response flummoxed him. He would not have been more surprised had she announced she intended to ride a donkey to the moon.

  “A foundling hospital,” he repeated.

  “Yes.” A smile curved her lush lips, so deep it revealed twin dimples in her cheeks. “My brother patronizes a foundling hospital in London, and I have thoroughly enjoyed all the time I have spent there with the children. There is nothing I would like more than to begin my own.”

  When she smiled like that, she was bloody breathtaking. He could not look away, even if she was spouting on about her charitable works. Bloody hell, the woman was a saint.

  Not his sort of female, thankfully.

  He preferred the licentious sort. Ladies who were selfish and interested only in finding the next v
ice. Ladies who were not ladies at all.

  “Coventry adores children,” he told her. “Indeed, it is a coincidence which cannot be overlooked that just yesterday, His Grace was telling me how desperately he longed to begin his own foundling hospital as well.”

  Complete rot, of course. But worth a try.

  Miss Winter’s lips pursed once more, her smile fading.

  It was as if the summer sun disappeared behind a cloud.

  Which was ludicrous. He should not even notice her smile. Or her appearance at all. She was not meant to be his. His sort of woman would have already been in his arms, long since in his bed. She would have swooned over his flattery. If she were his sort of woman, she would have had her gown around her waist, and the two of them would have been putting the oversized settee across the room to good use…or perhaps even the rug before the crackling hearth…

  Devil take it, now he was sporting a stiff cock.

  “Do you think me hen-witted, Lord Ashley?” she asked him, her tone more frigid than the winter air raking over the countryside beyond the Abingdon House walls.

  “Of course not,” he hastened to reassure her, whilst praying the fall of his coat covered the evidence of his sudden and most unwanted reaction to the fantasy of making love to her.

  Not her, he reminded himself.

  A fictional woman, he amended. One who was light on virtue and easy on the eyes. One who was not a chilly, disapproving long Meg with a heart as pure as an angel’s. The sort he could spend all day debauching, kissing and licking every creamy curve on her body until she was writhing beneath him and crying out for more.

  “Then why would you say such a thing to me?” she demanded.

  His cravat was too tight. As were his breeches.

  Discomfited, he slid a finger between his throat and his neck cloth, attempting to garner himself a bit more breathing room. “What is the thing in question, Miss Winter? And why are you so outraged? I cannot think a word I have spoken to you has been untoward.”

  He had to admit, he had gotten lost in his own thoughts. But he still did not think he had said anything which garnered insult. She was distracting him. For some reason, he could not bring another lady’s face to mind for the fantasies he had intended to divert him from his inconvenient attraction to Miss Winter.

  All he could see was her face. Her smile. Those dimples. Those soft brown eyes molten with desire. Those long legs.

  Damnation.

  This was not good.

  Perhaps he should tell Gill he needed to find a different bride.

  “You are lying to me about the Duke of Coventry’s interest in foundling hospitals,” she accused then. “You are an abysmal liar, my lord. Most unconvincing.”

  He tugged on his cravat a bit more.

  Nothing about his interview with Miss Prudence Winter had proceeded as he had expected. And that, coupled with his steadily increasing desire for her, was beginning to make him incredibly vexed.

  Pru had a problem.

  Lord Ashley Rawdon was the handsomest devil she had ever seen. Tall and broad and strapping, golden-haired and godlike, he set her heart pounding whenever he appeared in a chamber. And since he had seemed to be wherever she went over the course of the last few days, she had been going about in a perpetually flustered state.

  But as she watched him pulling at his elaborately knotted cravat, she began to suspect she was not the only one suffering from such an unwanted snag in the otherwise flawless fabric of her day.

  He cleared his throat, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “I would never lie about such a serious matter.”

  She had never imagined she would find a heartless scoundrel like him appealing. But there was no denying the heat unfurling within her, nor the longing. He made her feel achy and uncertain, needy and greedy, all at once. She was heartily disappointed in herself.

  Fortunately, her reaction to him could be squelched. Even if she could not control the way he made her feel—all down to his handsomeness and rakish charm, no doubt—she could ignore it.

  And she would.

  “If you are indeed trying to impress me on behalf of your brother,” she told him, careful to keep her voice even and wintry, “may I at least suggest you avoid resorting to prevarications? I find your halfhearted attempts at feigning similarities between His Grace and myself most insulting.”

  He stopped fidgeting with his cravat then, his regard intensifying, his sky-blue eyes piercing hers. “And how would you recommend a gentleman impress you, Miss Prudence Winter?”

  Heaven help her, but the way her given name rolled off his tongue made her shiver. It sent a liquid sensation straight through her, one that settled somewhere between her legs in a most improper ache.

  “I cannot be impressed,” she said. “But as I have already explained, I am not on the marriage mart. If, however, you are truly serious about helping Coventry to obtain a bride, you might take greater care with your manner of wooing.”

  He arched a brow, his lips twitching as if he suppressed his amusement. “What fault do you find with my manner of wooing?”

  “For one thing, you have been following me about like a lost puppy,” she said.

  “I have not,” he protested, true outrage in his voice.

  Good, she thought unkindly. Let the beautiful scoundrel see that not every female in his presence would so quickly succumb to his rakish allure. “You most certainly have. You just did so now.”

  “I was bored,” he clipped. “And you, Miss Winter, are impertinent.”

  “Honest,” she corrected him. “I am being honest, Lord Ashley. I am beginning to suspect that you are a rather poor emissary for your brother to send in his stead. You have no notion of how to properly court a lady.”

  “I bloody well know how to court a lady.” His tone, too, had grown cool. All the flattery was gone.

  He had been sleepy and serpentine before, affecting boredom, spouting off nonsense. Undoubtedly, he had expected her to simply eat up every word he had said because that was how he was accustomed to being treated. Ladies likely took one look at his face, and they melted inside. She, however, was made of sterner stuff. While she could not control her body’s attraction to him, she most certainly could rein in her mind and words.

  “For a man who claims to know how to court a lady, you are not doing a very good job of it, are you?” she could not resist needling him. “I stand before you as evidence. No indeed, Lord Ashley. If you truly mean to help secure a bride for your brother, you must try harder.”

  A muscle tensed in his jaw. “What would you suggest I do, Miss Winter? Perhaps if I am as inept at courting ladies as you charge, I require some assistance.”

  His words gave her pause. She had not truly pondered the notion too carefully. She had been more interested in goading him than aught else. And look where she had landed herself now.

  She thought for a moment, before seizing upon a reasonable way of eluding his question. “Why does your brother not do the courting himself, Lord Ashley?”

  “Coventry is a man of few words,” he said, unsmiling. “He is painfully shy when surrounded by those he is not familiar with, whereas I am not. He also has precious little experience with ladies. I, on the other hand, am quite familiar with the fairer sex.”

  For some reason, his last statement peeved her.

  She was sure he was familiar with ladies. Very familiar. Indecently so.

  “There you are,” she said airily, forcing such thoughts from her mind. “That is the reason you are no good at this. You are a man who is too accustomed to wooing ladies. It has made you arrogant. Complacent, even.”

  He toyed with the fall of his coat, his searing gaze never leaving hers. “Arrogant and complacent, am I? Perhaps we should merely turn our minds to where I have erred. Tell me, Miss Winter, what have I done that is so wrong?”

  Drat. He had routed her quite neatly. They were once more back to where they had begun, and she had no choice but to answer this time.

  “We already discussed your following of me,” she said.

  “Like a puppy,” he agreed, his tone bitter.

  “Yes, a lost puppy,” she amended. “There is also the matter of the assumption you made. You simply supposed that because I am unwed and am of marriageable age, and that your brother is a duke, I would be overjoyed to accept a proposal of marriage from him. However, you were vastly wrong, were you not?”