Kisses and Scandal (A Survivors Series Anthology ) - Shana Galen Page 0,109

sober when hearing it. With a sigh, Neil rose, threw the brandy in the fire, and prepared for the worst.

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Here’s an excerpt from An Affair With a Spare.

RAFE ALEXANDER FREDERICK Beaumont, youngest of the eight offspring of the Earl and Countess of Haddington, had often been called Rafe the Forgotten in his youth. He’d had such an easygoing, cheerful personality that he was easy to forget. He didn’t cry to be fed, didn’t fuss at naptime, and was content to be carried around until almost eighteen months of age when he finally took his first steps.

Once, the family went to a park for a picnic, and Rafe, having fallen asleep in the coach on the ride, was forgotten in the carriage for almost two hours. When the frantic nanny returned, she found the toddler happily babbling to himself and playing with his toes. When Rafe was three, he had gone with his older brothers and sisters on a walk at the family’s country estate. It wasn’t until bedtime, when the nanny came to tuck all the children in for the night, that the family realized Rafe was not in bed. He’d been found in the stables sleeping with a new litter of puppies.

In fact, no one could recall Rafe ever crying or fussing. Except once. And no one wanted to mention the day the countess had run off, leaving four-year-old Rafe alone and bereft.

By the time Rafe was nine, and quite capable of making himself so charming that he could have gotten away with murder (although Rafe was far too civilized to resort to murder), his new stepmother had pointed out to the earl that Rafe did not have a tutor. Apparently, the earl had forgotten to engage a tutor for his youngest. When the first tutor arrived, he pronounced Rafe’s reading skills abysmal, his knowledge of history and geography nonexistent, and his mathematical ability laughable.

More tutors followed, each less successful than the last. The earl’s hope was that his youngest son might enter the clergy, but by Rafe’s fifteenth birthday, it was clear he did not have the temperament for the church. While Rafe’s knowledge of theology lacked, his knowledge of the fairer sex was abundant. Too abundant. Girls and women pursued him relentlessly, and no wonder, as he’d inherited the height of his grandfather, a tall, regal man; the violet eyes of his great-aunt, who had often been called the most beautiful woman in England and was an unacknowledged mistress of George II; and the thick, dark, curling hair of his mother, of whom it was said her hair was her only beauty.

Rafe had been born a beautiful child and matured into an arresting male specimen. While academics were never his forte, men and women alike appreciated his wit, his style, and his loyalty. He was no coward and no rake. In fact, it was said Rafe Beaumont had never seduced a woman.

He’d never had to.

Women vied for a position by his side and fought for a place in his bed. Rafe’s one flaw, if he had one, was his inability to deny the fairer sex practically anything. In his youth, he might have found himself in bed with a woman whom he’d had no intention of sleeping with only because he thought it bad form to reject her. Eventually, Rafe joined the army, not the navy as two of his brothers had done, primarily for the respite it offered. His time in service did not make it easier for him to rebuff a woman, but he did learn evasive maneuvers. Those maneuvers served him well after he joined Lieutenant Colonel Draven’s suicide troop, and his unwritten assignment had been to charm information out of the wives and daughters of Napoleon’s generals and advisers.

Back in London, Rafe was busy once again charm-ing his way in and out of bedchambers. One of only twelve survivors from Draven’s troop of thirty and an acknowledged war hero, Rafe had little to do but enjoy himself. His father gave him a generous allow-ance, which Rafe rarely dipped into, as charming war heroes who were also style icons were invited to dine nearly every night, given clothing by all the best tailors, and invited to every event held in London and the surrounding counties.

But even Rafe, who never questioned his good fortune, was not certain what to do about the overwhelming good fortune he’d been blessed with at his friend Lord Phineas’s ball. Rafe, bored now that the Season was over, had