To Please a Lady
by Raven McAllan
Breathless Press
Calgary, Alberta
www.breathlesspress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To Please a Lady
Copyright© 2011 Raven McAllan
ISBN: 978-1-77101-037-5
Cover Artist: Victoria Miller
Editor: Jackie Moore
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in reviews.
Breathless Press
www.breathlesspress.com
To Paul, for putting up with a wife with a laptop attached to her and dust bunnies going forth and multiplying under the bed.
Also to UCW and Jackie. Thanks for all your help and support. Wouldn’t have been written without you all. To Victoria for the great cover.
Chapter One
No one, except Auberon Ashton Antigone Stray, Earl of Langlosh, would consider gray to be the color to wear.
Sitting in her elegant drawing room, waiting for her aunt to join her before they made their way to what promised to be a more-than-interesting ball, Hermione pondered on his affectation. Looking at her own elegant attire—muslin in shades of pink and red, which skimmed her body and hinted at delights never shown, and a deep red rosebud, nestled between dark tresses—she wondered if indeed she was any better. Neither conformed to the acceptable ways of the ton . Each was unconventional in his or her own manner and attitude.
Meeting Berry on a jaunt to Assinger Abbey arranged and led by a friend of her brother, she had immediately been attracted to his dark good looks, his acerbic wit, and his interesting companionship. Not to mention the way her pussy contracted when his gaze smoldered in her direction. He had been frank and forthcoming about his desire. No milksop maiden, Hermione had been eager to discover the delights he could show and give. Indeed, delights they were. The first time he impaled her on his eager cock she was hooked, ready to follow the road of discovery with all eagerness. A willing pupil to his clever tutelage.
She stood as her aunt entered the room. A chaperone in name only, Lady Symons was a chatterbox, providing all the gossip and on dits Hermione wanted, and more besides. At five and twenty, Hermione had decided she was no longer a deb and not prepared to do duty as the maiden aunt of her brother’s family, always at their beck and call. Being an heiress in her own right, she had defied convention and set up her own household.
Harry, her elder brother and the head of the family, had put every obstacle in her way but eventually had to grudgingly admit defeat. Hermione had no need to rely on him for anything. Indeed, to his chagrin, thanks to a very generous godfather, her fortune was considerably larger than his own. His one pleading proviso was that she not defy convention totally and would thus have a chaperone.
Sophia Symons, widowed and penniless, had been only too pleased when her niece had rather diffidently asked if she would like to come and share her homes and, to a certain degree, her life. The one stipulation was that she neither question nor condemn her niece’s absences. As far as she knew, or indeed chose to think, when she was at her select soirees, musical evenings, and card afternoons, her niece was also doing things so innocuous. Hermione was happy to leave the status quo thus, and four years later, both had established harmony in sharing a household. Hermione may be the “head” of the house, but never was Sophia made to feel the poor relation.
Now Hermione looked at her aunt with genuine affection. “My love, you look stunning. That deep blue is perfect on you. Much better than the pale green. So insipid, I thought.
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