To Please A Lady (The Seduction Series) Read Free Page B

couldn’t, could he?
    “How do you know so much about me?” He lifted his gaze, interested despite himself.
    She pressed ever closer, her lips on his ear so the other two lads couldn’t hear. “Save your mother and sister from the factories… or worse. Be the man your father wanted you to be.”
    What did she know about his father? Still, her comment hit him hard. Alex and Gideon watched him quietly, wariness and nervousness in their eyes because they knew they were next. She would offer them the same, but would they agree?
    “My life would be over,” he said, his voice cracking. His mum would kill him if she found out. “I’d have no family.”
    “I’ll be your family. I’m not taking your life. The very opposite. I’m offering you splendor. Passion. But most importantly, I’m offering you a way to save your mother and sister.”
    “I don’t…” Heated embarrassment shot to his cheeks. “I don’t know how to pleasure a woman.”
    She smiled, trailing her hand down his arm. “Dear boy, don’t worry. You won’t work immediately.” She shrugged as if unconcerned. “We’ll wait a couple of years until you’re more secure in your abilities.”
    “What will we do in the meantime?” Alex demanded.
    She nodded to Wavers, who shut the carriage door, trapping them in the gilded cell. “Help in the stables, be footmen. Rather easy work, much easier than the work they would make you do here, in the factories or on the docks.”
    Two years and he’d be almost sixteen. James took his lower lip between his teeth. In two years he’d be man enough. “You promise we won’t have to whore ourselves until we’re ready?”
    She released a trilling laugh as she knocked on the roof of the carriage. “Of course! And if you decide it’s not to your liking, you may remain a footman. What say you, James?”
    The carriage jerked to life. He shivered and glanced once more at the other lads. A picture of his mother and sister in the finest of silken gowns, feasting on goose, flashed to mind. He’d never have to worry about them again. Never have to steal. He would be the man his father had wanted.
    He might be selling his soul. He might not ever see his family again, but he had this chance… this one chance to save them. James swallowed hard and tilted his chin high. He owed his father this much. “Aye, I agree.”
    She took his hand in hers and smiled warmly at him. “Oh, James, I’m so pleased. We’re friends, we’re all going to be great friends.”

Chapter 1
    L AVENDER H ILLS E STATE , E NGLAND , 1869
    She was bloody mad.
    Completely and utterly insane.
    She wouldn’t at all be surprised if they locked her away in Bedlam because no normal person would ever even think of visiting a brothel. And certainly the cold, perfect Lady Beckett would never, ever do something so sinful. Yet here she was sitting before the infamous brothel owner herself, Lady Lavender.
    Yes, indeed, Eleanor had lost her senses.
    “Someone gentle you say, Mrs. Richards?” Lady Lavender flipped through a small leather book, those equally infamous lavender eyes darting from page to page. She treated the transaction as if it was business, and perhaps it was to her. If only Eleanor could think of it that way.
    “Romantic?” Lady Lavender added, glancing up through thick, dark lashes.
    Eleanor gave a quick nod. The netting over her face tickled her nose, but she didn’t dare brush it aside. She’d even covered her coveted blonde locks with the same netting to make sure no one could identify her. She looked like a bloody beekeeper but no one seemed to mind. No, because in a brothel that catered to women, discretion was a normalcy. She’d been both bemused and relieved when not one person had glanced her way upon her arrival in an unmarked hired hack. Even when she’d given an obviously pretense name to the large man who answered the door, he hadn’t blinked.
    She had to admit that she was rather intrigued by the brothel owner, who