The Persuasive Love of a Libertine Read online

  The

  Persuasive Love

  of a

  Libertine

  A Marlow Intrigues Series Novella

  by

  Jane Lark

  "Pure, unadulterated romance." Best Chick Lit.com

  A new novella in Jane Lark's Kindle best-selling Regency romance series

  The Persuasive Love of a Libertine

  Jealousy and longing are cruel emotions when the woman you crave is your friend’s.

  But there is disloyalty; then there is love…

  Harry Webster has coveted his friend’s fiancée for months; then their engagement ends and he finally has a chance to pursue his interest. But how can Harry earn Emily’s trust when her heart has been broken?

  Emily’s beliefs are bruised and battered, but she has learned her lesson—she will not betroth herself to another man like Peter—she will never be used again.

  Copyright © 2016 Jane Lark

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior permission from Jane Lark.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Names, characters, places, and plots are a product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  www.janelark.co.uk

  Cover images and design copyright © 2016 Jane Lark

  A message from the author

  For those of you following The Marlow Intrigues series, before you begin, let me make you aware this is a sub-character story that looks back. It begins at the point that The Jealous Love of a Scoundrel closed, but it is set prior to The Secret Love of a Gentleman and The Reckless Love of an Heir.

  Enjoy,

  Jane

  Part One

  Harry lifted his hand, and for a moment, it hovered in the air before the door. He’d never done anything like this. Never called at a woman’s home, or rather never at a young, respectable woman’s home. Anger seethed in his blood as he gripped the brass knocker, the head of a fox, then thumped it down onto the wooden door. Perhaps too hard, but he had never been so maddened in his life. He wished to throw something—something heavy. He needed to fence or spar or shout, and preferably to do so with the man he’d always previously called his friend, Peter damned Brooke. The lordly bastard.

  The door opened. “Sir…”

  “I wish to speak with Miss Smithfield.”

  “The family are not at home, sir.” The door had only been opened a few inches yet it was obvious the statement was a lie because Harry could hear them within, voices called to one another across the hall, hurried voices that ignored the person outside the front door.

  “They are,” he answered, his blood too charged up with a need for an argument to put up with a rejection. “Tell Miss Smithfield it is Mr Harry Webster.”

  “Sir.”

  The door was shut on him. He was in no mood for that. He knocked again, harder than before.

  The door opened. “Please wait a moment, sir.” It was shut once more.

  Harry’s fingers itched to knock once more; he was not used to being shut out of a place, and he was in a hell of an ill mood. His inner voice snarled and snapped to be let in.

  The door opened. “I am sorry, sir, but Miss Smithfield is not accepting callers.”

  Damn. Damn. He could not force her.

  Or could he…

  A desire to shove the door wider and the footman aside, swept through him. But that was not the way these things were done. “Will she accept me later today, or tomorrow?” He had to see her.

  “I am sorry, sir, but the family are leaving London.”

  Leaving… Was she that upset? Would her eyes be red veined from crying and her eyelids puffy from many tears? It cut him with a sharp, sudden lance of pain that pierced straight through his chest into his heart. Damn. It was now not only anger but guilt that played through his blood with fierce aggression. He would happily strangle someone, and at this moment, it might very well be the footman. “And going where?”

  “Returning home, sir.”

  “And where is home?”

  “Devizes, sir.”

  Harry sighed out a breath. “Will Miss Smithfield not even allow me one moment of her time?” Lord, he sounded desperate. He felt desperate. Desperation was not an emotion he was accustomed to.

  The man did not even shut the door again to ask. “I am afraid not, sir.”

  Harry swallowed back his frustration. What to do? Shove the door and the man aside—or walk away? God, he longed to push against the wood. But it was not the thing. Even so, he could not make himself turn away. His fingers closed into fists and gripped tight, his fingertips pressing hard into his gloves. He wanted to go to Peter’s and let loose his anger. Yet Peter had already fled the town, with the whore he’d insulted Emily with and then damned well married.

  Married! Who married whores? One of his closest friends, it seemed, and not only that, his wealthiest friend. His titled friend. Who had been promised to a respectable woman, a woman far nearer his class. He’d cut her off for a whore.

  Harry still stood before the footman, at the partly open door, staring blindly at the man.

  He’d come here out of a desire to offer comfort and consolation, to even, perhaps… offer himself in the place of his friend.

  He hesitated still, unsure what to do. Would she even want him? Had she loved Peter?

  She had developed a friendship with Harry in recent weeks, and he had been more attentive since he’d discovered Peter’s deceit, hoping to protect her. But what did friendship and light conversation mean? In such instances as this it might have no value to a woman at all. She had only been courteous in response.

  He sighed out his breath with aggressive impatience.

  All he wanted to do was to speak to her. To know… To… What? Peter had only just set Emily aside; did Harry really now expect her to be willing to listen to his confession of love?

  Fool.

  What was he doing here?

  He stared at the man a moment more. Then. “Very well. But please tell her that it was I who called and…” And what? “Please… Please tell her, that I… That I…” What? “I am sorry for what has occurred and that I would not like to lose my acquaintance with her. Please… Please tell her that I shall send her my address and I would welcome a letter in return.” There. He would not lose contact with her. He would not… What? Lose her… He had never owned her.

  Damn.

  He turned away and commenced walking, at a swift pace.

  ~

  “Mark!” Harry called.

  Mark was sitting alone in a seat by one of the windows in White’s.

  His head turned. He smiled and lifted a hand. “Hello. I was becoming lonely. I thought you might have run off to find a wife.” He probably expected Harry to smile in answer to his wit.

  It seemed as though they were losing friends to women as quickly as they might empty a glass of whiskey. Yet that was not really true; they had lost Drew’s company two years before Peter’s desertion.

  Harry dropped into the chair opposite his friend, his limbs heavy, his spirits low, and his impatience and irritability palpable. It was stupid, though.

  “What is wrong with you?” Mark asked.

  They had originally been a four—four hellions—and then become a three—three reprobates. And now… Now a two.

  Two sad men who were growing older without any aim beyond debauchery. He could no longer be that man.

  What is wrong with me?

  “Everything,” Harry answered. “N
othing…” He corrected.

  Mark frowned. In their friendship group of boys who had become brothers, Harry had always been closest to Mark. If Harry told the truth—dared to speak it aloud to anyone, then it would be to Mark.

  Yet what was the truth?

  He sighed.

  Mark’s frown deepened, causing two narrow lines to form above his nose. “You are not in a right mood. What has riled you?”

  “Peter. Life.”

  “Peter?”

  Harry sighed once more.

  “Harry, what is wrong with you?”

  “The truth is I do not know.” Harry stared up at the ceiling. What the hell was wrong with him? What would he have said and done had he gained access to the house Smithfield had been renting? What would he do now he had not? What would he do?

  Damn, and what would he have done had Peter done as he should? Pretended that he felt nothing for the rest of his life…

  Yes.

  But now…

  Now there was an opportunity.

  And now there was anger because Peter had not done as he should and Harry—Happy Harry—Harry the joker—Harry the jester—the fool among their friends, had a chance to be something other than a fool. But how?

  Lord, he longed to speak with Drew. He even thought of Peter. He wanted someone to explain this madness to him. But he would not discuss it with Peter. And Drew was not in London, as well as Peter’s closest friend. Harry did not wish Drew telling Peter what he wanted to discuss anyway. So—there was Mark.

  Harry’s gaze lowered. He looked at his friend. “Do you not think that what Peter has done is wrong?”

  “Wrong… How so?”

  “He deserted Emily, a good genteelly bred woman, for a whore.”

  Mark’s frown twisted with a look of confusion. “I think he might take exception to you calling his new wife a whore, Harry. Perhaps you ought to stick to her name in future, it is Lillian, and she was never a whore, she was an actress. The two are not the same.”

  “They are very similar.”

  “What is wrong with you? I do not recall you being so judgemental when you have slept with actresses, nor do I recall you avoiding whores.”

  “But I have never been engaged to a genteelly bred woman,” Harry snapped at him.

  Mark sat back in his chair and laughed, heartily.

  When Mark had gathered up his humour and his breath, though, he replied, “Yet you have paid a great deal of attention to one in the last few weeks.”

  Harry did not respond immediately, because it was true. But words began to line up in his head, then poured out to defend his interest. “I stepped back because he wished to court her. I did not interfere. He had claimed her, and he had more right than me, more to give her…” Harry did not have to say who she was, Mark would know. “And now… He’s thrown her aside like his dirty linen.”

  Mark sighed. As though he was tired.

  “What?” Harry asked.

  “Does every man fall in love?”

  Harry shook his head. Was it really love? That is what he wanted to speak of to a man that knew. “I am not in love with her,” Harry barked in response, unwilling to admit his thoughts to Mark, after his friend’s complaints.

  Mark’s lips twisted into a smirk. “I believe I have heard that sentence from others. But pray, let that be true, because I do not wish to go through another journey with a troubled man. So if you are in love, and desiring not to be, then you might do us both a favour and keep not only the knowledge but the anguish to yourself.”

  “You are so amusing.”

  “Thank you.” Mark lifted his glass in a slight toasting gesture.

  Harry gripped the arms of his chair and looked through the window out into the street, many words all about her bubbling in his throat, as fiercely as boiling water.

  “Oh, get along, and damned well speak. You are burning up with it, I am sure.”

  Harry looked back at his friend.

  Was it wrong to speak aloud? Would it make the thoughts within him feel more real? The betrayal. The… “I like her. Emily. She is pretty and pleasant… and so different to the women—”

  “That we lay with. Well, that is a given.”

  “Do not mock me.”

  “I cannot help but find all this softness and sudden opening of eyes and feelings amusing. So you are telling me, then, that you have watched Peter and Emily through the eye of jealousy for all these months?”

  Harry hesitated to admit it, but. “Yes.”

  “Well, why are you not bloody smiling then, instead of sitting here huffing out sighs at me? She is free now.”

  A bitter taste filled Harry’s mouth. “She is, and a wronged woman, and still in love with Peter, yet now with a wound to her heart. She will not simply turn to me. I cannot expect it.”

  “Why?” Mark asked before taking a sip from his glass.

  “Because,” Harry sighed.

  “Because…” Mark prompted, pushing for an explanation.

  “I am a fool,” Harry answered. “I have nothing to offer her. I have no wealth to compare to Peter’s, no title—”

  “Her father is a merchant. He is not as well off as Peter. Had she married Peter she would have been damned lucky, and she and her parents knew it.”

  “Yet that is still very different to accepting a man with less.”

  “Drew and Mary seem to have managed perfectly well.”

  “Why must you have an answer for everything?”

  “Because there is an answer to everything. And your answer… What is that? Is it marriage you’re thinking of? Am I to lose another friend to a woman?”

  Clarity and common-sense were so easily spoken when emotions for a woman were not involved in a thing. Yet when they were, the whole world became smudged. “I cannot marry her. I will not have the chance. She is leaving town.”

  “But if you had the chance?”

  “If I had the chance… Then… Yes.” The word whispered through his soul. Yes. He would risk that step. He had called upon her today knowing it. If he had spoken to her, he would have even made a fool of himself and asked her—offering himself as a replacement for her lost love.

  Fool… He was no consolation.

  “I have never known you shy away from anything before.”

  “This is different.”

  Mark’s eyebrows lifted, in punctuation. “How?”

  “She is a genteelly bred woman, who had expectations—”

  “You sound very like a coward, Harry, and I do not recall—”

  “It is not cowardice, only fact. I called on her today; the footman was not even allowed to open the door beyond three inches. I am not welcome. I am not Peter.”

  “I have not noticed her showing any aversion to you. You two have spoken amicably and danced frequently for weeks. You have not fooled any of us. Even Peter knows your preference.”

  “Peter…”

  “Knows that you have coveted his fiancée, yes.”

  “Will you cease mocking me?”

  “I am not mocking. It is the truth.”

  Harry ignored him, because the words were bubbling out. “I like her. That is all. I like her. I like the simplicity of her nature, her quiet ways, her modesty—”

  Mark laughed, loudly.

  “Damn you!”

  Harry grasped a hold of his temper as Mark put the reins on his humour and sipped his drink, then smiled and said, “Harry, you must see. You. Harry. The man I have known since boyhood. The one of us fondest of a lark, or a party, to fornicate or fight, and you speak to me of her quiet ways. How do you expect me not to laugh at you? Do you hear yourself?”

  Yes. He heard himself. He shut his eyes for a moment, his stomach tumbling over with a desire to vomit. Perhaps he had been saved from his own madness today.

  He had, in the past, jested with Emily a dozen times… Marry me. She had always ignored his jest, no, laughed at it for the joke it was, when she was betrothed to his friend. But it had never wholl
y been a joke, and yet now it would be no joke at all. The words taunted him.

  He lifted a hand and beckoned a man over to fetch a bottle of whiskey. Then looked back at Mark.

  “I said I would write to her.”

  “Then the rot has begun, and do not ask me to help you. I had next to nothing to add to Drew’s love letters. Apart from laughter.”

  “Well, if I write, it shall not be a love letter, it shall be a letter of condolence.”

  “Peter has not died.” Mark laughed

  “Then of apology for my arrogant, selfish friend.”

  “Will you announce your selflessness then? Because if you do, then you shall breach the territory of a love letter. I have stepped back, watched from a distance, felt myself longing…and all of that nonsense.”

  “Perhaps you should write the damned letter, because I have not one clue what to say in it. Beyond my regret that she has been hurt.”

  “With nothing of your regret that you had not beaten Peter off and fought for her attentions from the commencement.”

  Harry shook his head. No. With none of that.

  He swallowed.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, forget the woman, let her weep and sulk, and we shall enjoy London again without any need to visit a ballroom.”

  Harry did not answer.

  “She will weep out her love and sulk away her shame, and then in a year return to town, and if you are sure that you desire a leg shackle, then you may chase the lady down.”

  Harry laughed, but the sound was humourless.

  He’d be damned, but a year sounded a long time away. Too long. The thought opened up an emptiness in his middle that only now seemed to realise—Emily was leaving. When would he see her next?

  His heart began to race.

  Part Two

  Dear Emily,