Madeline Prescott, a teacher at Mrs. Harris' School for
Young Ladies, is determined to prove her father innocent of
a heinous crime. It looks as though all hope is lost until
rakehell Anthony Dalton, Viscount Norcourt, seeks
enrollment for his niece. Since he's famous for his
notorious parties and scientific acquaintances, Madeline
sees an opportunity and makes him a bargain; if he teaches
her students how to recognize a rogue in gentleman's
clothing, she'll assist him with gaining Mrs. Harris'
approval.
Anthony is quite shocked at Ms. Prescott's proposal, but
for the sake of his niece's well-being, he agrees to teach
the bevy of young misses. Anthony steals a few kisses from
Madeline. In the process of his seduction, he discovers
she's hiding more than her innocence and is determined to
find out all her secrets. Anthony's investigation takes him
home, to a place he ran from when he was young, where he
discovers their pasts connect and Madeline knows his
deepest secret.
LET SLEEPING ROGUES LIE is a delightful romantic story
about finding love, trust and healing. Sabrina
Jefferies writes an emotional tale with realistic
characters bringing love and laughter to a story of abuse
and neglect.
When Madeline Prescott took a teaching position at Mrs.
Harris’s School for Young Ladies, it was to help restore
her father’s reputation. Instead, she’s in danger of
ruining her own. The devilishly handsome Anthony Dalton,
Viscount Norcourt, has agreed to provide “rake lessons” to
Mrs. Harris’s pupils so the girls can learn how to avoid
unscrupulous gentlemen, and Madeline has been tapped to
oversee his classes. She has always believed that
attraction is a scientific matter, easily classified and
controlled – until she’s swept into the passionate desire
that fiercely burns between her and Anthony. Nothing could
be more illogical than risking everything for a dalliance
with a rake – even one who’s trying to behave himself.
Yet, nothing could be more tempting either...
Excerpt
Anthony Dalton, the Viscount Norcourt, smiled as Miss
Madeline Prescott hurried him out of the school’s office,
then walked briskly down the hall ahead of him in full
expectation that he would follow.
And follow he did, though at a more leisurely pace to allow
him a good look at her small but shapely bottom, made for
cupping and fondling and squeezing. No doubt that would
rouse a blush in her fair cheeks—
Stop that, you randy arse! he told himself. You can’t
seduce Miss Prescott, not if you want Tessa to attend here.
Besides, naturalist or no, she was still a schoolteacher,
which made her the marrying sort, not the take-a-tumble-
with-a-rake sort. And she was probably as virginal as a
nun, too, which ruled her out entirely.
He did have scruples—he’d never ruined a woman before and
didn’t mean to start now. It was the surest way to end up
trapped into wedding some virtuous female, which only led
to disaster. Let other men hunt that elusive creature—the
happy marriage. Although occasionally he allowed himself
the sweet luxury of imagining himself in one, he knew men
like him didn’t dare to marry.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy looking at the
unattainable, he told himself as his practiced gaze drank
in the pretty curve of Miss Prescott’s back, the small but
obstinate shoulders, and the bouncing yellow curls.
As if she’d read his wicked mind, the young lady turned on
him a good distance from the office. “See here, Lord
Norcourt, if this is to work, you must be guided by my
advice. When I tell you to wait for me, I have a reason.”
“To gossip about me with Mrs. Harris? I hardly think that
helped my cause.”
“You’re certainly not helping it by saying outrageous
things to her. With every rash remark, you make it more
difficult to persuade her to keep you.”
“Keep me!” He eyed her askance. “You seem to have mistaken
me for a lapdog, sweetheart.”
“I am not your sweetheart, drat it!” She cast a furtive
glance in the direction of Mrs. Harris’s office. “And
that’s precisely the sort of rash remark I’m talking about.
My employer is generally amiable, but men of your kind
annoy her.”
“My ‘kind,’” he echoed.
“Rakehells. You know what I mean.”
“Forgive me, I’m still trying to imagine Mrs. Harris
being ‘amiable.’”
With a sigh, Miss Prescott continued down the hall. “You
must understand,” she explained as he kept pace with
her, “in her youth, she eloped with a dashing rogue who
turned out to be quite the fortune-hunter as well. Is it
any wonder she dislikes that sort of man?”
“And how do you feel about rogues and rakehells, Miss
Prescott?” he asked, watching to see her reaction.
“Having only met my first one today, I can hardly voice an
opinion.”
“That doesn’t stop most people.”
“Most people have seen a rakehell in his natural habitat. I
have not.”
“Natural habitat?” He laughed. “You are a lover of
science.” Stepping in front of her, he blocked her
path. “But I know you have an opinion. Everyone does. You
won’t wound my feelings if you voice it.” Then he’d know
where he stood with her.
A sigh escaped her lips. “Very well then.”
Ah, now we get to the truth. And the lecture.
“From what little I know, rakes seem a fascinating species,
well deserving of study.” Sidling neatly past him, she
continued down the hall.
He closed his slack jaw long enough to hurry after her.
A “fascinating species”? “Deserving of study”? Was she
serious?
Seconds later, they emerged into the foyer where he’d
earlier been admitted. Sounds of girlish chatter cascaded
down the impressive central staircase. The Elizabethan-era
building had apparently been a private residence before
being adapted for use as a school, and the high ceilings
only amplified the noise.
Miss Prescott halted outside a door painted white. “Why
don’t I show you the dining room before the girls come down
for afternoon tea?” She spoke as if she hadn’t just made
the most bizarre pronouncement he’d ever heard. “Then I can
bring you up to see the classrooms while the girls aren’t
engaged in lessons.”
“All right.” He followed her into a spacious room with a
mahogany dining table that easily seated twenty. “Tell me,
Miss Prescott. Why in God’s name would you think we
rakehells deserve study?”
With a shrug, she strolled along the table, straightening
chairs. “Because of your reckless way of life, I suppose. I
want to understand how you can stomach it.”
“I want to understand why you think it reckless,” he
countered, not sure if she was trying to insult him.
“Don’t you fight duels?”
Ah, that was the sort of thing she meant. “Absolutely not.
You have to get up at dawn for those, you know.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you race your phaeton?”
His smug smile faltered. “I don’t own a phaeton.” But he
did race his curricle from time to time. No point in
mentioning that.
“And I suppose you don’t drink strong spirits either.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“It isn’t good for the constitution, you know. Otherwise,
it wouldn’t make generally healthy men suffer from
headaches the morning after or cast up their accounts in
the street. Surely you see that such reactions tax the body
unduly.”
He held out his arms. “Do I look as if I’m teetering on the
edge of death?”
Miss Prescott skimmed him with blatant nonchalance. “Not
now, but I daresay you look quite different on the mornings
after your carousing.”
“I can handle my liquor perfectly well,” he remarked,
unaccountably peeved by her logical observation. “I
certainly wouldn’t call my ‘carousing’ reckless.”
“Fine.” She strode off toward a door across the room. “Do
you gamble?”
“Of course.” This had to be the oddest conversation he’d
ever had with a woman.
“Surely you consider that reckless. Given the odds of
winning versus losing, any good mathematician can tell you
it’s rare for someone to increase their annual income by
gambling. Yet rakes insist upon risking the loss of their
property.”
“It isn’t a risk if you know the mathematical odds and play
accordingly. The odds of winning at loo are about 5 to 1.
Of course that depends on whether you’re playing three or
five card loo, but when you factor in what trump the Eldest
Hand plays to start, it can vary from 5 to 1 to 10 to 4.
According to my calculations.”
Her look of shock rapidly changed to one of admiration, and
that warmed him as no woman’s ever had. He’d always
excelled at mathematics—that’s why he’d been able to
supplement his small allowance so effectively with
investments—but women weren’t usually impressed by a man’s
skill with maths.
To have her look at him through new eyes full of interest
roused his rakehell instincts. How easy it would be to step
close and kiss that enticing, lushly proportioned mouth…
Now that would be reckless. “The point is, Miss Prescott,
I’m well aware of the odds, so I never risk more than I can
afford.”
Setting her hand on the door handle, she frowned. “But why
risk anything at all? You don’t have to gamble to enjoy
playing cards.”
He laughed. “My fellow club members wouldn’t share your
opinion, I assure you.”
A thundering noise overhead made her start. “The girls are
coming. Quick, through here. We don’t want to be inundated
by questions and curious glances.”
With a nod, he followed her into a ballroom. He paid no
mind to the oak floors that stretched an impressive
distance beneath a crystal chandelier or the rows of simple
white chairs that flanked walls covered with elegant green
fabric. He was much more interested in why Miss Prescott,
with her apparent disapproval of reckless rakehells, had
proposed that he give lessons to her charges.
“We have dancing lessons three times a week in here,” she
said in the tone of the impersonal guide. “Every Saturday
night we hold an assembly for the girls, and once a month
we invite local young men to attend so our students can
practice their skills with gentlemen.”
“Do you dance, Miss Prescott?” he probed, hoping to learn
more about her.
“When I can.” Circling the room, she headed out through the
open French doors onto a gallery that afforded a fine view
of well-laid-out gardens teeming with roses and lilacs.
When she halted beside the marble balustrade, the sheen of
gold cast by the afternoon sun over her glorious curls made
him itch to touch them.
“I’m surprised that you don’t find dancing to be reckless,”
he said, trying not to imagine her slender hips swaying,
her pert breasts pushed high in an evening gown until they
rose and fell fetchingly with her exertions. She was the
marrying sort, remember?
“I suppose dancing can be reckless.” She tipped up her chin
at him. “If it leads a man and woman to do other things.”
At last they got to the heart of the matter. Not that he
was surprised. He had known she would eventually raise the
subject of morality, especially in relations between men
and women. The marrying sort always did.
“What ‘other things,’ Miss Prescott?” he drawled, the devil
in him determined to force her into speaking the words
aloud.
She eyed him as if he were a fool. “You know what I mean.
Swiving.”
“Swiving?” He burst into laughter. “You have an interesting
vocabulary for a schoolteacher.”
“The word comes from Shakespeare,” she said
defensively. “It’s perfectly acceptable.”
“Perhaps for a tavern in Spitalfields, but gentlewomen
don’t discuss swiving.”
“Oh, but they should! Then they’d learn the dangers of it.
Indiscriminate swiving is the most reckless activity of a
rake. It spreads disease, it provokes characters like that
Harriette Wilson with her Memoirs to blackmail gentlemen
with the threat of ruin, and it can result in the siring of
illegitimate children—”
“Disease,” he broke in, incredulous. “Blackmail and
illegitimate children. These are what concern you about the
indiscriminate swiving of rakehells.”
“Of course.” She eyed him with clear surprise. “What else?”
“Virtue? Morality?”
She snorted. “Those are what make indiscriminate swiving so
reckless in the first place. The woman bears the brunt of
it, you know. Aside from losing her position and possibly
her home, she risks finding herself with child and cast out
by a society that dismisses her as ‘immoral’ to excuse its
not protecting women from—”
“Men like me?”
“Well … yes.”
The thinly veiled accusation unnerved him. It was true that
women could plummet from respectable to disreputable in
society’s eyes very easily, even when the man was to blame
for it, but he’d never let that little inequity bother him.
His lovers had either been soiled doves or widows—having
fun with him was entirely their choice. Neither seemed to
need much protecting.
Now that he had his young niece Tessa’s future to consider,
however, he couldn’t look at the average woman’s prospects
in quite the same way. And that disturbed him. Deeply.
Then it annoyed him. It wasn’t as if he were ruining
respectable women right and left. And he was trying to do
right by Tessa, damn it, even though it could mean years of
enduring long nights alone in his bed, unable to chase away
the darkness with drink or whoring.
The thought of what he was giving up—the sacrifice Miss
Prescott didn’t even heed—goaded him into looming over
her. “Some people, even women, find the pleasures
of ‘swiving’ well worth the risks.”
Though she caught her breath, she didn’t edge away. “I
can’t imagine why.” Her clean, sweetish scent engulfed him
as she met his gaze. “You were sincere about behaving as a
gentleman while here at the school, weren’t you?”
He started to point out that he’d only agreed to be a
gentleman to her pupils. But nothing had changed—she was
still the wrong sort of woman to seduce.
With what he considered admirable restraint, he drew
back. “I don’t have much of a choice,” he bit out, still
chafing over that truth.
“Everyone has a choice, sir.”
“Even those of us born wicked?”
“Don’t be silly,” she chided. “Wickedness is just a pattern
of bad behavior, a habit cultivated over time. One merely
has to break the habit.”
“Ah, but we both know that habits are hard to break.”
Awareness dawned. “Is that what you’re worried about? That
I can’t keep from exercising my bad habits around your
charges?”
His bluntness brought a shadow to her wholesome features.
She dropped her gaze. “What I have heard of you suggests
you were telling the truth about your preference for
experienced females.”
“And as a naturalist, you really want to trust in that.” He
searched her face. “But part of you still worries that the
temptation of so much young female beauty will be too much
for my … er … habit of seducing women.”
When she met his gaze, her answer plainly showing in her
expression, he stiffened. “Don’t worry, Miss Prescott,” he
said wearily. “My seduction habits are limited to women.
I’m no debaucher of children. You can trust me to behave
with perfect propriety around your girls.”
“Good,” she said, relief shining in her face. “I need this
position, you know, and if you were to attempt to seduce
even one of my pupils—”
“Or you?”
The words were out before he could stop them, and for the
first time that afternoon, a flicker of uncertainty
deepened her eyes. She masked it with a shaky laugh. “You
may attempt to seduce me as much as you please. It would be
pointless. I’m too aware of the risks. Besides, such things
don’t tempt me.”
The bloody devil they didn’t. “Then you’d best watch your
step around me, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Or I will
prove you wrong.”
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