Adam's Appetite


 
 
 Table of Contents
 
 Title Page
 Legal Page
 Book Description
 Dedication
 Chapter One
 Chapter Two
 Chapter Three
 Chapter Four
 Chapter Five
 Chapter Six
 Chapter Seven
 Chapter Eight
 Chapter Nine
 Chapter Ten
 Chapter Eleven
 Chapter Twelve
 Chapter Thirteen
 Chapter Fourteen
 Chapter Fifteen
 Chapter Sixteen
 Chapter Seventeen
 Chapter Eighteen
 Chapter Nineteen
 Chapter Twenty
 Chapter Twenty-One
 Chapter Twenty-Two
 Chapter Twenty-Three
 Chapter Twenty-Four
 Chapter Twenty-Five
 Chapter Twenty-Six
 Chapter Twenty-Seven
 Epilogue
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 About the Author
 The Bondgate Mysteries
 ADAM’S APPETITE
 NOLAN VANCEY
 
 
 Adam’s Appetite
 ISBN # 978-1-83943-676-5
 ©Copyright Nolan Vancey 2023
 Cover Art by Erin Dameron-Hill ©Copyright April 2023
 Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz
 Totally Bound Publishing
 
 This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
 
 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.
 
 Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
 
 The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork. 
 
 Published in 2023 by Totally Bound Publishing, United Kingdom.
 
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 Totally Bound Publishing is an imprint of Totally Entwined Group Limited.
 
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 Book one in the 
 Bondgate Mysteries series
 He knew what he wanted, and he knew how to get it, but in his search for pleasure, what Adam didn’t know could hurt him…
 
 What a mess! Adam Blythewood’s father had hoped that the young rake would be able to avoid temptation at remote Windmere Hall, but he didn’t know about Lady Windmere’s three daughters, or the lusty servant girls for whom Adam’s arrival is a welcome change of pace. However, the more deeply involved Adam becomes in the Windmeres’ affairs, the more he is shadowed by mystery—what happened to Roderick Utley, previously all but betrothed to Frederica Windmere? Does it have anything to do with Utley’s interest in the renowned Windmere tart and his search for the aphrodisiac herb that the Windmeres’ ancestor may have brought to the area?
 
 Perhaps the answers lie at Bondgate, the estate of charming but eccentric Pamela Bond. When Adam is invited to one of Miss Bond’s masked revels, he discovers pleasures he never imagined, including a night with mysterious and alluring “Zerlina,” whose true identity may help solve the mystery of Roderick’s disappearance!
 
 
 
 Dedication
 Dedicated to the real Adam B., who suggested it.
 
 
 Chapter One
 Adam Blythewood could have hated Roderick Utley. Like Blythewood, Utley was a man who knew what he wanted and had the initiative and resources to take it. Worse yet, wherever Adam turned during his time at Windmere Hall and its environs, he found that Roderick had been there before him, laying claim to everything that Adam would have hoped to have for himself. In another time or under other circumstances, the two might have become deadly enemies. Fortunately for both of them, by the time Adam Blythewood was in a position to meet Roderick Utley, he had gained a mite of sympathy for his rival, and his own goals, indeed his very temperament, had changed.
 On the day Adam arrived at Windmere Hall, a grey, featureless morning, he knew nothing of Roderick Utley. In fact, he had never even heard the name. After the long carriage ride from London to the rocky highlands of the West Country, he would have accepted lodgings much less grand than the estate that welcomed him at the end of his journey. The ride had provided solitude for him to ponder his position. No matter how he looked at it, this was exile, a last chance for him to redeem himself in his parents’ eyes before he would be cut off from his inheritance…a reprieve from the dire consequences of the path he had cut through London society before his father had engineered this abrupt departure. He had every reason to be chastened and humble, but like a keen hunter who could never quite give up the field, he took stock of every feminine creature he had encountered between the city and Windmere Hall.
 Adam could not help himself. His interest in womanly companionship had long ago graduated from idle small talk in the parlour and holding hands while dancing to those pleasures that were by custom limited to marriage but in practice were frequently available by the night or by the hour, if one knew where and how to ask. The joys of Venus were the source of Adam’s greatest delights, but also his downfall.
 So it was that Adam Blythewood, an inveterate rake, cad and seducer, found himself delivered to dwell as a guest at the manor of Lady Adonica Windmere, the widow of one of his father’s old Army friends. According to his father, Lady Windmere had only one son, close in age to Adam, a moral and upright young man whose influence, it was hoped, would rub off on him. Lady Windmere herself was, according to Colonel Blythewood, a stern, pious