Raked Away in September （Chapter 1）
BY DIANA BOLD
The September air held a chill, a reminder that the Season was waning and summer was ending.
Beneath the brilliant glow of ten thousand colored lamps, Vauxhall Gardens was a kaleidoscope of music and laughter, but Lady Tamsin Fairchild paid no attention to the tightrope walkers or the soaring notes of the soprano in the orchestra stand.
She bit her lip as the pale lilac hem of her best friend Lady Rose Sinclair’s gown vanished into the entrance of the Dark Walks.
Oh, Rose. What are you doing?
Tamsin adjusted her midnight-blue cloak, pulling the hood forward to obscure her face as she stole out of her family’s private box, seeing that her brother and sister-in-law were distracted talking to a group of friends.
She had to stop Rose from doing something foolish.
Hopefully, no one would even notice she was gone.
She knew exactly why Rose was stealing away.
For weeks, her friend had been obsessed with Lord Julian Vane.
The man’s charm was as legendary as his empty pockets and his lack of a moral compass.
He was a younger son with the face of an angel and the reputation of a predator, and he would ruin a girl like Rose just to see if he could.
When Tamsin had spoken to Rose earlier this evening, she’d been glowing, vibrating with a sort of energy Tamsin had never seen from her.
Rose had gone on and on about Lord Julian, about how he’d been sending her love notes and asking her to meet him.
When Tamsin had voiced her opinion of the man in question, Rose had grown silent and gotten that bullheaded look upon her face that Tamsin knew too well.
She’d feared Rose hadn’t listened to her, and she’d been right.
Tamsin stepped off the gravel path, her thin silk slippers pressing into the damp, mossy earth of the Dark Walks. The music faded, replaced by the creak of tree branches and the distant, muffled whispers of trysting couples.
She shivered, pulling up the hood of her cloak and bowing her head, hoping it hid her features entirely. If she were caught here, she’d be utterly ruined, no matter how good her intentions. But Rose was in even more danger, and so she pressed on.
Tamsin found Rose a few minutes later. Lord Julian had trapped Rose against a gnarled old oak, her wrists held above her head, his lips pressing kisses along the column of her throat.
Rose’s eyes were wide and glassy, and soft sounds of pleasure escaped her lips.
For a moment, Tamsin just stood there, hesitating to break up what was obviously a passionate encounter.
But someone else could happen along at any time, and she couldn’t let Rose be found in such a compromising situation.
“Rose,” Tamsin said, her voice slicing through the darkness.
The pair sprang apart. Lord Julian’s handsome face contorted with anger, while Rose looked as though she might faint.
“Tamsin! I—we were only—”
“You were only destroying your life,” Tamsin interrupted, stepping forward and grabbing Rose’s arm. “Lord Julian was just leaving. Weren’t you, my lord? Unless you’d like me to find your brother and explain why you are accosting an earl’s daughter in this manner?”
Julian hissed an oath, but he knew the dangers of what he was doing. No matter how much he might enjoy sneaking off into the darkness with Rose, he certainly didn’t want to end up married to her. With a final, lingering look at Rose that made Tamsin’s skin crawl, he vanished into the fog.
“You’re a mess,” Tamsin whispered, stepping forward and doing her best to fix Rose’s blonde hair, which had become completely undone from its pins. “Oh, Rose! If I wouldn’t have followed you, who knows what liberties he might have taken!”
Rose’s lips trembled, and she refused to meet Tamsin’s eyes. “Kissing him was magical, Tam. Why couldn’t you just let me have this?”
“Because I love you,” Tamsin told her, letting go of her hair and gripping her shoulders, trying to make her see the truth of who Lord Julian truly was.
“That man doesn’t care about you. His conquests are legendary.
He takes some sort of sick thrill in ruining good girls.
I’m glad you had a few moments of pleasure, but I don’t want to see you pay for it for the rest of your life! ”
Rose shook her head, still refusing to listen. “He said he loved me, and I believe him. If you hadn’t come along—”
“You’d have been ruined,” Tamsin interrupted. “And then he’d have walked away and never looked back.”
“You don’t know anything about him,” Rose said angrily. “How can I ever forgive you for this?”
Tamsin swallowed hard, suddenly doubting herself. She’d wanted to protect Rose, not lose her. “If he really cares about you, he won’t let this stand in his way. But you must insist that he court you properly. You can’t sneak off with him to the Dark Walks and expect anything good to come of it.”
“I thought you were my friend, not my mother! I’m going to return to the supper boxes. Please don’t follow me!” Rose replied angrily and fled back toward the lights.
Tamsin leaned against a stone plinth, her heart hammering against her ribs. Had she been wrong to follow Rose? Should she have just let her friend follow her heart? She certainly didn’t want to lose Rose’s friendship, but she hadn’t been able to just stand back and do nothing.
Taking a deep breath, she waited until Rose was out of sight before she turned back toward the main walk. She took a shortcut through a dense thicket of yew, intending to emerge near the rotunda.
But the path was blocked.
She stopped dead. Ten feet away, in a pocket of darkness illuminated only by the distant, flickering glow of a Chinese lantern, stood Rowan Blackwood, the dark-haired Earl of Haversham.
He’d been a schoolmate of her older brother’s, and she’d always found him ridiculously attractive.
Not that he’d ever given her a second glance.
He wasn’t alone.
He was backed against a brick wall, his large hand buried in the hair of a woman Tamsin didn’t recognize—a woman whose bodice was dangerously low and whose skirts were bunched in Haversham’s grasp.
Tamsin knew she should turn away. She should flee in the opposite direction.
But the scene before her was nothing like the chaste, wooden dances at Almack’s or even the kiss between Rose and Lord Julian.
Haversham’s mouth moved against the woman’s throat with raw, primal hunger, and the low groan that escaped him made the fine hairs on Tamsin’s neck stand up.
She watched, mesmerized by the sheer power in his shoulders and the way the woman clung to him, breathless and wanton.
It made something low in the pit of her stomach clench with need.
For a heartbeat, she allowed herself to wonder what it would feel like to be held with such terrifying intensity by a man as handsome and brooding as this one.
Haversham shifted, his profile catching a stray beam of light.
He looked fierce, his dark eyes hooded and alight with a passion Tamsin had never imagined existed.
As she continued to watch, mesmerized, the woman sank to her knees in front of him, giving him a wicked smile as she undid the placket of his trousers, and then…
she was holding his member, stroking it, and…
Dear Lord… she took him in her mouth, making him moan with obvious pleasure.
Tamsin put a hand to her mouth, unable to even comprehend what she was seeing. Did people really do things like this with each other? So intimate? So carnal? She took an unconscious step back, and a twig snapped under her slipper.
Haversham’s head snapped up, his gaze piercing the shadows exactly where she stood. Their eyes caught and held, and for an instant, time stood still. The look in his eyes… He didn’t seem upset that she was watching. He seemed… excited. Worse yet, he seemed to recognize her.
Tamsin gasped and spun on her heel, sprinting through the trees, her hood falling back, and her breath coming in jagged gasps.
She burst out onto the Grand Walk, causing a group of passersby to turn and look.
Ignoring them, she raced back toward the supper boxes, determined to get as far away from what she’d witnessed—what she’d felt! —as possible.
She had saved Rose. At least for now. But Tamsin realized with a jolt of dread that she might have just lost herself.
* * *
Rowan Blackwood’s current paramour was a delectable distraction, all silk and perfume and eager sighs, but the moment the twig snapped, his world narrowed to a single point of light in the darkness.
Lady Tamsin Fairchild.
She stood frozen at the edge of the yew thicket, a vision in midnight blue.
He knew that face, though he had spent years pointedly ignoring her in crowded ballrooms. She was the sister of Nicolas Fairchild—a man Rowan had spent his school years clashing with, a man whose rigid, tiresome morality made Rowan’s own lifestyle feel hedonistic in comparison.
But Tamsin was not her brother. She had inky-black hair, a pale, elegant face, and cornflower-blue eyes that were wide, not with the expected horror but with a startling, breathless intensity.
She wasn’t looking away. She was watching.
A jolt of heat, sharper and more dangerous than the simple lust of a moment ago, slammed into Rowan’s gut.
He felt a flash of stinging embarrassment—he was a rake, but he was not a boor, and being caught like this by a well-bred girl felt like a violation of the very rules he pretended to despise.
Yet, seeing her gaze riveted upon him, her lips parted in a soft, stunned ‘O,’ he felt a dark, forbidden thrill.
She was intrigued. The virtuous Lady Tamsin was fascinated by his depravity. Which, in turn, fascinated him.
Their eyes locked for a heartbeat that felt like an hour, and a silent, ruinous understanding passed between them.
Then, she blinked. Reality rushed back in, and she spun on her heel, vanishing into the September mist with the speed of a frightened doe.
“Haversham?” The woman on her knees before him removed her warm, wet mouth from his cock, sensing his sudden inattention. “What is it? Did you see someone?”
“I have to go,” Rowan blurted, his voice rasping. He pulled away, wincing as he hastily tucked himself back in his trousers.
“Go? But—”
“I’m sorry, Elena. I truly am.” He didn’t wait for her protest. He strode toward the thicket where Lady Tamsin had stood, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
He didn’t know why he was chasing her. To see if that spark of interest was still in her eyes? To defend his honor to a woman who belonged to a family he detested?
He burst through the yew trees and onto the path that led toward the Rotunda. The lights of the Grand Walk blurred before him, a dizzying array of color and sound. He scanned the crowd, looking for a dark blue cloak, for a glimpse of black hair, for anything that would lead him to her.
But the path was empty save for a pair of laughing dandies and a cluster of women with their heads bent together. A violin played mournfully in the distance, but Lady Tamsin was gone.