Ravishing in Red (The Rarest Blooms, Band 1) - Softcover

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Madeline Hunter is a New York Times bestselling author with more than six million copies of her books in print. She has twenty-nine nationally bestselling historical romances in print, including most recently, The Most Dangerous Duke in London, The Wicked Duke, Tall, Dark, and Wicked, His Wicked Reputation, and The Accidental Duchess. A member of RWA’s Honor Roll, she has won the RITA Award twice and been a finalist seven times. Her books have appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly, and have been translated into thirteen languages. She has a PhD in art history, which she has taught at the university level.

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Chapter One

An independent woman is a woman unprotected. Audrianna had never understood her cousin Daphne’s first lesson to her as well as she did today.

An independent woman was also a woman of dubious respectability.

Her entry into the Two Swords coaching inn outside Brighton garnered more attention than any proper young woman would like. Eyes examined her from head to toe. Several men watched her solitary path across the public room with bold interest, the likes of which she had never been subjected to before.

The assumptions implied by all those stares darkened her mood even more. She had embarked on this journey full of righteous determination. The shining sun and un- seasonably mild temperature for late January seemed de- signed by Providence to favor her great mission.

Providence had proven fickle. An hour out of London the wind, rain, and increasing cold had begun, making herdeeply regret taking a seat on the coach’s roof. Now she was drenched from hours of frigid rain, and more than a little vexed.

She gathered her poise and sought out the innkeeper. She asked for a chamber for the night. He eyed her long and hard, then looked around for the man who had lost her.

“Is your husband dealing with the stable?”

The white crepe skin of his aging face creased into a scowl. His mouth pursed in five different ways while he examined her again.

“I’ve a small chamber that you can have, but it over- looks the stable yard.” His reluctant tone made it clear that he accommodated her against his better judgment. An independent woman also gets the worst room at the inn, it seemed. “It will do, if it is dry and warm.” “Come with me, then.”

He brought her to a room at the back of the second level. He built up the fire a little, but not much. She noted that there was not enough fuel to make it much warmer and also last through the night.

“I’ll be needing the first night’s fee in advance.”

Audrianna swallowed her sense of insult. She dug into her reticule for three shillings. It would more than cover the chamber for one night, but she pressed it all into the man’s hand.

“If someone arrives asking questions about Mr. Kelmsley, send that person up here but say nothing of my presence or anything else about me.”

Her request made him frown more, but the coins in his hand kept him mute. He left with the shillings and she assumed she had struck a bargain. She only hoped that the fruits of this mission would be worth the cost to her reputation.

She noted the money left in her reticule. By morning she expected most of it to be spent. She would only be gone from London two days, but this journey would deplete the savings that she had accumulated from all those music lessons. She would endure months of clumsy scales and whining girls to replace it.

She plucked a scrap of paper from her reticule. She held the paper to the light of the fire even though she knew its words by heart. The domino requests that Mr. Kelmsley meet him at the two swords in Brighton two nights hence, to discuss a matter of mutual benefit.

It had been sheer luck that she even knew this advertisement had been placed in the Times. If her friend Lizzie did not comb through all such notices, in every paper and scandal sheet available, it might have escaped Audrianna’s attention.

The surname was not spelled correctly, but she was sure the Mr. Kelmsley mentioned here was her father, Horatio Kelmsleigh. Clearly, whoever wanted to meet him did not know he was dead.

Images of her father invaded her mind. Her heart thickened and her eyes burned the way they always did whenever the memories overwhelmed her.

She saw him playing with her in the garden, and taking the blame when Mama scolded about her dirty shoes. She called up a distant, hazy memory of him, probably her oldest one. He was in his army uniform, so it was from before he sold his commission when Sarah was born, and took a position in the office of the Board of Ordnance, which over- saw the production of munitions during the war.

Mostly, however, she kept seeing his sad, troubled face during those last months, when he became the object of so much scorn.

She tucked the notice away. It had reminded her why she was here. Nothing else, not the rain or the stares or the rudeness, really mattered. Hopefully she was right in thinking this Domino possessed information that would have helped Papa clear his name.

She removed her blue mantle and the gray pelisse underneath and hung them on wall pegs to dry. She took off her bonnet and shook off the rain. Then she moved the chamber’s one lamp to a table beside the door, and the one wooden chair to the shadows in the facing corner, beyond the hearth. If she sat there, she would immediately be able to see whoever entered, but that person would not see her very well at all at first.

She set her valise on the chair and opened it. The rest of Daphne’s first lesson recited in her mind. An independent woman is a woman unprotected, so she must learn to protect herself. Reaching in, she removed the pistol that she had buried beneath her spare garments.

Lord Sebastian Summerhays handed his mount to a drenched stable boy. The lad got in the long line waiting attendance by the grooms of the Two Swords. Sebastian entered the inn’s public room. A cross section of humanity huddled there beneath its open-beamed ceiling. The rain had forced riders to take refuge, and coaches had been delayed. Women and children filled most of the chairs and benches, and men arrayed themselves around the perimeter, taking turns near the fire to dry off.

That was where Sebastian stationed himself while the worst of the weather dripped off his riding coat. The odor of damp wool and unwashed bodies filled the air. A few servants did their best to salvage some silk hats and crepe bonnets, while others served expensive, unappetizing food. Sebastian cast a practiced eye on the sea of faces, looking for one that appeared suspicious, foreign, or at least as curious as himself.

The advertisement’s use of a code name both annoyed and intrigued him. It would make this mission more difficult, but it also implied that secrets were involved. The notice itself, addressed to Kelmsley, indicated the writer did not know the man had been dead almost a year now. That in turn suggested the Domino was not from Lon- don, or perhaps not even from England. Since the name was not spelled correctly, Sebastian trusted that the Domino was not a good friend or close associate of Horatio Kelmsleigh. Hopefully, the Domino did not even know what Kelmsleigh looked like.

Kelmsleigh’s suicide had been unfortunate on many counts, one of which was the way it offered too easy an explanation for a mystery that Sebastian was sure had many more facets. Tonight he hoped to learn if he was correct.

“What ho, Summerhays. I did not expect to find you taking refuge along with me in this sorry way station.” The greeting near Sebastian’s ear jerked him out of his search of the room. Grayson, Earl of Hawkeswell, beamed alongside him with a near empty tumbler of hot wine in hand. A smile of delight stretched beneath his blue eyes and artfully clipped black hair.

“A cloudburst caught me five miles back,” Sebastian said. Hawkeswell was an old friend, and had been a close companion in his wilder days. Sebastian would normally be delighted to have his company to pass what promised to be a miserable night, but Sebastian’s reason for being here made Hawkeswell an inconvenient discovery. “Are you on your way up to London, or coming down?”

“I am returning. I met with...