Her Beguiling Butler

  Her Beguiling Butler

  By

  Cerise Deland

  Delightful Doings in Dudley Crescent Book 1

  HER BEGUILING BUTLER

  Every woman needs a man to serve her!

  A lady shouldn’t desire her butler. But what’s a woman to do when the man fascinates her? She must taste him…or dismiss him.

  And how does a man kill his scandalous desire to kiss his charming employer? Especially when he must protect her from an unknown villain…as well as his dastardly need to possess her.

  Copyright © 2015 by Cerise DeLand

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  www.cerisedeland.com

  Published by W. J. Power

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Art by www.EstrellaCoverArt.com

  Photographic Credit http://www.periodimages.com

  Formatting by Wizards in Publishing

  Her Beguiling Butler, Delightful Doings in Dudley Crescent, Book 1/Cerise DeLand.

  ISBN: 978-0-9908943-0-8

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  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my darling daughter Ann, my husband Steve

  and my great friend, Desiree Holt!

  Dudley Crescent, London, England

  Dudley Crescent is a verdant parcel of land in London, granted by King Charles II to a man who was one of his staunchest supporters. With gold he’d stolen as a highwayman during Charles’s exile on the Continent, the Earl of Dudley put his ill-gotten gains to good use and built the finest town homes in the capital. Renting the land in perpetuity to certain Royalist friends quadrupled his fortune.

  Today, those who live in houses surrounding the park are among the most prominent, wealthy and influential lords and ladies in the kingdom. They are accomplished, refined and respected.

  Yet, many are lonely…and discover quite scandalously that they care deeply for a person in their employ!

  * * *

  Her Beguiling Butler

  The lovely widow at Number Ten Dudley Crescent hopes to lead a merry life without any husband to replace the elderly one she recently buried. Yet Lady Ranford finds herself in a pickle. Her new butler, Finnley, is not only the most obstinate man she’s ever met, but also an enigma.

  She’s never been lured to naughtiness with a man. Heaven knows, she certainly shouldn’t fantasize about the tall, dark, scowling creature who runs her household like his finely tuned pocket watch.

  But she can’t help herself. She needs to taste him—or dismiss him.

  Finnley, poor fellow, has a few risqué dreams of his own about how he’d like to handle the delectable widow. Alone in his rooms, he tries to deny how her humor riddles his mind and how her beauty steals his breath away.

  None of his solutions are proper.

  All of his desires are quite…dear me…scandalous.

  But what’s a butler to do when the very life of his beloved employer is at stake? And he cannot control his need to protect her and…ahem…bed her?

  Chapter One

  January 17, 1820

  No. 10 Dudley Crescent

  London

  “Finnley, please,” Alicia addressed her butler with a shaking hand to her brow. “I am perfectly fine. Really I am.”

  The towering creature had her by the forearm, half carrying, half dragging her toward the foyer bench. Slamming the front door to her townhouse, too. “You fell on the doorstep, my lady.”

  “The ice,” she explained, gasping, her hand to her chest where something inside hurt badly.

  “I told Grimes to melt the ice and sweep it all away. I shall dismiss him,” her Goliath told her.

  “No, don’t!” she begged him because she liked the young footman. But she was gazing at her butler’s fabulous face and so she tripped on the edge of the carpet.

  “Madam!” He caught her.

  “Oh, Finnley!” Alicia gasped as the giant swept her up into the power of his arms.

  Was she inclined to trip on ice? And carpets? Last week, she’d inadvertently stepped on broken glass in the upstairs hall outside the door to her bedroom suite. She’d asked the maids about how the vase broke but no one claimed knowledge. “Honestly, Finnley. No need for this. I am fine.”

  She was not. Not at all. Her knees hurt like the devil and the balls of her hands smarted. And being held like a bit of china by this man who’d begun work only last month was unsettling. Unnerving. Endearing.

  “No, madam, you are not fine,” her man shot back as he plunked her in the oversized wooden seat which was where he usually sat while waiting to receive or dismiss her guests. Reaching up, he pulled the bell. “I’ll get a maid. You look like the very devil.”

  “Really, Finnley.” She had enough sense in her to chastise him for his blue language, even if she secretly admired his forthrightness—and his scrumptious mouth. “I only need to sit here a minute and catch my breath.”

  He scowled at her as he went to his knees before her. Those pale blue eyes, the color of a clear June sky, locked on her own. “If you are well, my lady, why do you clutch one hand to your bosom?”

  “My chest hurts, Finnley,” she told him on a whisper. At least she hadn’t succumbed to the sob that filled her throat. To cry before him—this creature who seemed so impervious to weather or emotions—would be demeaning.

  Alarm flashed in his cool countenance. He took her hands from her chest. “Where?”

  “Right—“ She pointed to a spot beneath her right breast, enough toward her breast bone that she didn’t blush when she indicated its location. “Here.”

  He looked down and considered the swell of her bosom in her red redingote. “Sit back.”

  She loved the way he dwelled on her overly generous curves. “What?”

  He pushed her to the rear of the seat, her derriere sliding along the polished wood. “Let’s remove your coat.”

  She pushed his hands away from the frog closures at her throat. The heat of his big hands was enough to unsettle her, rouse her, make her breasts…honestly!…tingle. “I can do this.”

  But she fumbled. And frowned.

  He pushed her hands to her lap. “Don’t be a ninny.”

  She snapped her gaze on his.

  “I apologize,” he said with the first humor she’d seen gracing those lips. “Let me do this, madam.”

  She sighed and fell back against the hard wood. The firm mahogany countered the rising desire that shot from her belly upward. Swallowing hard, she shut her eyes and scolded herself for this outlandish attraction she bore her new butler. Madness at first sight, it was. She sighed at her foolishness to desire a man she barely knew and a servant at that!

  She jostled as he undid her coat and spread the wool wide across her shoulders.

  “Let me help you off with this,” he said, so solicitously that it brought frustrated tears to her eyes. Her departed husband, a scoundrel whom she assumed would never rest anywhere in peace, had never assisted her in removing her clothes. Unless he had wished to have her naked. But that had been for only a few minutes while he did his duty by her and depart
ed for his own suite.

  “Of course,” she said, relishing the service of this man whom she’d hired last month on good references from the Earl of Newport. She’d never met Newport though her husband had known the earl and liked him. That aside, to be quite honest, she hired Finnley for other qualities that recommended him to her.

  She smiled to herself and admired the butler’s ministrations while he tugged her coat from her arms and gently urged it over her fingertips.

  No, she had not hired Wallace Finnley for the fine words Newport had written about him. Frankly, rebelliously, deliberately, she’d hired him for his brash looks. Not quite handsome, he was a collection of first-rate attributes that made her mouth water. The coal black hair. The cold blue eyes. The jaw that defied one and all to argue with him. The height, towering. The breadth, oh so comforting. The very sight of him each morning in his fitted black uniform made her catch her breath and hold it until her heartbeat resumed normal rhythms.

  Which now it definitely did not.

  Finnley remained much too close. And his eyes roamed the front of her. Yes.

  He considered her bodice where she was certain her chest heaved. Her cleavage where her overlarge bosom displayed a deep divide. Where her flesh hardened at his appraisal and her nipples peaked and pushed at her chemise.

  And chafed her.

  She cleared her throat.

  “Let me test to learn if you’ve broken a rib.”

  “Test?”

  “Yes.” His icy gaze froze her own. “We can call a physician if you like and he—“

  “No. I detest doctors.” She’d had enough of the charlatans when her husband took ill more than a year ago and died within the month.

  “Fine. I can determine if you’re hurt badly. Sit forward. Arms up a bit like this.” He raised his own in demonstration.

  She imitated him.

  He put his hands to her waist. They were so big, so hot, his fingers so damn long that she swore he could span her entire waistline. But the delicious warmth of his touch set her swooning…and she caught herself. Smiling at him, she winced when he pressed on either side of her ribcage. “Does that hurt?”

  How could it when his strength rippled through her? “No.”

  He slid his hands higher at her sides. “This?”

  She shook her head and licked her lips. Oh, my. His thumbs rested beneath the wealth of her breasts. And her lower body flooded with a surging tide that had her blinking like a flustered debutante.

  “Does it?”

  “What?”

  “Hurt?”

  “No, no.”

  His hands drifted higher and he pushed against the sides of her breasts so that they thrust forward like two ripe melons against the bodice of her gown. “This?”

  “That?” She squeaked at him.

  He glanced down, his thumbs a bare half inch from her nipples. His pressure was firm, but gentle.

  Her heartbeat was fast, but insistent. Her mind went blank and then, her gaze met his.

  “That doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asked, his bass voice, usually of such bold timbre that she could hear him in the hall, on the stairs or greeting her callers. But now his voice held only a fraction of its own resonance.

  She considered his mouth. His wide, sculpted lips that spoke of order and precision.

  “No,” she told him with as much normality as she could summon. “There is no pain.” But something else…

  She put a hand to his and squeezed it. His skin was supple, hot and—

  He dropped his hands.

  She sagged. Her interlude was ended.

  “You’ve not broken a rib. Thank God.”

  “How do you know?” She searched his face.

  “If you had, you would have screamed when I pressed your brea— your chest just now. You’ve badly bruised yourself in your fall.”

  “Good to know. But…how do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “My father’s butler was a medical man. Not trained. But helpful to the tenants in our village.”

  She tipped her head, curious at his words. Often when he spoke, he seemed to be obtuse, his phrases veiled as if he were other than he was. Why did she think that?

  “Here’s the maid,” he said to her as if she needed a reminder of where they were and what they were about. “Mabel, do go to the cellar and fetch us a bucket of ice. A few towels. Long strips of cloth to make bandage rolls.”

  “Finnley,” Alicia said, her voice strange even to herself. “I don’t need ice.”

  “You will. I saw you fall, my lady. If I hadn’t caught you, you would have hit your face. Broken your nose. Your teeth. Don’t be polite with me. I know that your knees must be bruised.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked him in a daze. Was it the nearness of him or her injuries that fogged her brain? To break the spell, she wiggled, and yes, dammit, her knees did pain her. Her shins. Her arms, too.

  “Allow me, madam.”

  The next second, her butler of one month, this veritable mountain of a delicious man, had pushed up her skirts. They draped, bunched up like limp lettuce, over her thighs and her bare knees were quite throbbingly black and blue and very, very large.

  She clamped a hand to her mouth and let out a whimper.

  “Don’t worry, my dea— my lady,” he said. His hands cupped her calves, stroked her skin and soothed her worried mind. He winced at the sight of her injuries, then looked sideways at the maid. “Mabel! That ice bucket! Now!”

  “Aye, Mr. Finnley.” She turned tail and sailed off.

  My dear. Had he attempted to call her his dear? Alicia allowed her delight to curl her lips and to counter that, because it was not appropriate to grin at any endearments from one’s butler, she set her teeth.

  “Let me unlace your boots.”

  She didn’t answer. There was no need. In her heart, she agreed that he could and so why not enjoy the stroke of his hands on her calves and her ankles? The power of him as he tugged off, one by one, her dainty wet boots was soothing. The delicious release was tantalizing as he took her stocking feet in his hands and massaged her chilled and weary little toes.

  “That’s wonderful,” she crooned, going with the pulse of his touch.

  He made some gravelly noise in the base of his throat.

  Yes. That was the way she felt, too. Primal.

  “Ahem,” she said and sat taller in the chair…but only because she should.

  “I’m afraid you are going to have a terrible time walking.” His eyes were on her bare knees. “We’ll take it slowly. Where is that girl with the ice?”

  “She’ll come, Finnley. Don’t be impatient.”

  “The longer we wait, my lady, the greater your disability.”

  “Surely, you are mistaken. I can bend my kn—“ She tried it and gasped. Then dropped her leg, her foot to the tile. “I stand…or rather, sit corrected.”

  “You’ll be fine. Now let’s see.” He bent over her knees, his face so close his breath fanned her fevered, swollen skin. “I wonder if you’ve broken any bones. Shall I touch you?”

  “Dear man,” she said much too quickly for propriety, “you already have!”

  His cool eyes turned to blue flames. “I’ll be gentle.”

  “I’m certain.”

  “I’ll be brief.”

  “Oh, don’t be.”

  He tilted his head as if to ask precisely of what they spoke.

  She cocked a brow at him, aware and unashamed of what they did speak. But she had to camouflage that, didn’t she? Propriety was such a dictator. “Do as you must, Finnley.”

  He put his hands to one of her shins and pressed along her bone. She was tender but nothing stuck out as if it were broken. “I doubt you have suffered more than a bad bruise.”

  “Thank you. I hope so.”

  “Here is the maid,” he said to Alicia as tenderly as he touched her. But to Mabel, he barked, “Where have you been?
”

  “Had to go to the cellar, sir, to get ice. Had to break it up, too, I did.”

  “Fine, fine.” He put his fingers to Alicia’s shin and she wanted to cry joyful tears at his exquisite finesse. Then he stood and stared down at her. “You’re going to bed.”

  “A good idea.” She put her hands to the bench to stand and yelled out when she put pressure on her palms.

  “Enough of that,” he said and scooped her up into his arms, heading for the grand staircase.

  She surrendered to him. He was officious like any butler but his air of authority belied servitude. His very stance exuded power. His words demanded compliance…except when he looked and spoke to her.

  He surveyed her now with that smoldering interest that melted her to the core. “Follow me up, Mabel. Bring all that with you.”

  Alicia relaxed in Finnley’s embrace, reveling in his solicitous behavior. The heat, the comfort, the rapture of being held by such a powerful creature flowed through her like good red wine. And to think, it was her butler, her servant, who did this to her when her husband had never elicited any naughty thoughts. Nor had any of her suitors during her Season. Sad, that. And many had called her a beauty.

  “You must let me walk,” she told him for the sake of the maid and her own decorum. Her arm around his shoulder, she clung to him.

  “Nonsense.”

  He kept on up the stairs.

  Grinning, she rejoiced in his stubbornness. “I appreciate your dedication, Finnley.”

  He glanced at her, his gaze hard blue sky. Then he smiled. And his expression spoke of more than duty or kindness. It spoke of fondness and laughter.

  Her insight was but a flash.

  His long black lashes flickered as he turned away. “You are welcome, my lady. Let us not speak of it again.”

  Chapter Two

  He got the hell away from her as quickly as he could. Closing the door to her bedroom suite, he muttered bright curses and took the stairs down at a jog.