Notorious Pleasures (3 page)

“Naturally.”

“Liar.”

Her middling smile became a bit rigid as she hissed under her breath, “Don’t you dare cause a scene!”

“A scene? Me?” His eyes narrowed, and she realized that she might have made a tactical error.

Hero tried to retrieve her hand, but the awful man tightened his hold as he straightened unhurriedly. “How delightful to finally meet my new sister. You don’t mind if I call you ‘sister,’ do you, my lady? I feel as if we already know each other. Soon we’ll be rubbing shoulders at every family gathering—dinners, breakfasts, tea, and the odd snack here and there. The prospect simply takes my breath away, dear little
sister
. What a jolly family we’ll be.”

He grinned wickedly at her.

Hero’s soul revolted at this rogue using such a familiar term. He was in no way
fraternal
to her. “I don’t think—”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” he murmured.

She grit her teeth and surreptitiously yanked on her hand. His grip held firm.

“Lord Griffin, I—”

“But pray will you dance with me, my lovely new sister-to-be?” he asked with jaw-dropping innocence.

“I don’t—”

He raised his eyebrows at her words, his green eyes sparkling with sly mirth.

“—
believe
,” she gritted, “that would be a good—”

“Of course.” He bowed his head, his eyes downcast. “Why would such a proper lady wish to dance with a wastrel such as I? I’m so sorry to have importuned you.”

His lips actually trembled. Hero felt her face heating. Somehow he had made
her
the villain of this piece.

“Well…” She bit her lip.

“It’s a pretty offer, Hero. What do you say?” Maximus rumbled beside her.

She started, just a little bit, but Reading squeezed her fingers in warning. Good Lord! She’d almost forgotten they were in the midst of a crowded ballroom. Such a thing had never happened to her before. No matter where she was, Hero was always completely conscious of being a duke’s daughter, completely conscious of how she should act.

She looked at Reading in consternation and saw that he had lost his mocking smile. In fact, there was no expression at all on his face as he turned to his brother. “With your permission, of course, Thomas.”

Standing together, she could see now the similarities between the brothers. They were of the same height, but beyond that they both tilted their square chins in a certain way, as if challenging any other man in the room. Studying the brothers, Hero thought that Reading’s countenance looked the older of the two, though she knew he was the younger by several years. Lord Reading’s eyes were deeper set, more lined, and much more cynical. He looked as if he’d experienced lifetimes more than Mandeville.

Mandeville had not answered his brother, and the pause was growing awkward. The dowager marchioness stood between the men and was looking anxiously at her elder son. Perhaps she communicated something silently to him.

Mandeville nodded abruptly at his brother and smiled, though only his lips moved.

Reading immediately turned and started leading her toward the dance floor. His pace seemed unhurried, but Hero found herself halfway across the room before she knew it.

“What are you about?” she hissed.

“A minuet, I believe.”

She gave him a speaking glance at the childish witticism.

“Now, now, dear sister, mine—”

“Stop calling me that!”

“What,
sister
?”

They were on the dance floor now, and he pivoted to face her as other couples took their places around them.

Hero narrowed her eyes. “Yes!”

“But you will soon be my sister,” he said slowly and patiently, as if talking to a not-very-bright toddler. “The wife of my elder brother, above me in rank if not in age, always to be deferred to. What else should I call you but sister?” He widened his eyes so guilelessly she nearly laughed.

Fortunately she was able to restrain herself. Lord knew what Mandeville—let alone her brother—would think if she giggled like a schoolgirl at her engagement ball. “Whyever did you ask me to dance?”

He feigned hurt. “Why, I thought to celebrate your wondrous engagement to my brother, of course.”

She raised her left eyebrow, sadly ineffective though it was.

He leaned toward her and whispered hoarsely, “Or perhaps you’d like to discuss the particulars of our meeting in front of both our families?”

The music began and Hero sank into a curtsy. “Why would I mind? It seems to me that you have more to lose than I should the circumstances of our meeting be made public.”

“One would think so,” he replied as they circled each other. “But that supposition does not take into account my brother’s incredibly stodgy personality.”

Hero frowned. “What are you trying to insinuate?”

“I’m
stating
,” Reading murmured, “that my brother is a narrow-minded ass who, if he had discovered you in that sitting room with Belle and me, would have immediately leaped to several unfortunate and wrong conclusions.”

The movements of the dance parted them for a moment, and Hero tried to grapple with the notion of a man with a mind so blackened he would think the absolute worst of his own brother.

When they again met, she said softly, “Why are you saying these things to me?”

He shrugged. “I merely speak the truth.”

She shook her head. “I think not. I think you strive to alienate my affections from your brother, which is a very wicked thing to attempt indeed.”

He smiled, though a muscle jerked under his right eye. “Lady Perfect, we meet again.”

“Stop calling me that,” she hissed. “I do not think Mandeville is as ill-willed as you seem to believe.”

“I hesitate to contradict a lady, of course, but you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She glared. “You are insulting, sir, both to your brother and to me. I cannot think what your brother has ever done to you to deserve such infamous treatment.”

He leaned over her, so close she caught the scent of lemons and sandalwood. “Can’t you?”

She couldn’t repress a shiver at the implied threat of his proximity. She wasn’t a small woman—in fact, she stood taller than many of her female acquaintances—but Reading was male and loomed at least a foot over her. He was using that physical fact to intimidate her.

Well, she wasn’t so easily intimidated. She snorted softly and turned to look him in the eye. “No. No, I can’t conceive of a wrong so terrible that you would vilify your brother’s character to me.”

“Perhaps, then, your imagination is defective,” he said, his eyes hooded.

“Or perhaps it is
you
who is defective.”

“In your eyes I probably am. After all, I do not possess the perfections of my brother. I am not a leading member of parliament, and I do not have his beauty or his grace. And”—he leaned close again—“I do not have his lofty title.”

For a moment, she stared at him in disbelief; then she laughed softly under her breath. “Are you so jealous of him that you think I’m marrying your brother only for his title?”

She was gratified to see him jerk his head back, a scowl on his face. “I am not
jealous—”

“No?” she interrupted him sweetly. “Then perhaps you’re merely a fool. Mandeville is an honorable man. A good man. And, yes, a man respected by his peers and by everyone he deals with, as well as my brother’s friend and ally. I am proud to be his fiancée.”

The dance broke them apart, and when they rejoined, he nodded stiffly. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I’m merely a fool.”

She blinked, caught off guard. The rogue she’d thought him would not admit so readily to a human failing.

He glanced at her, a corner of his mouth quirking up as if he knew her thoughts. “Will you tell Thomas about our meeting?”

“No.” She didn’t even have to think about it.

“That’s wise. As I’ve said, my brother would not think the better of you for your involvement.”

Uncertainty whispered in her mind. As much as Hero didn’t want to believe it of Mandeville, her fiancé might just jump to the wrong conclusion.

She shook off the thought and looked Reading in the eye. “It’s
your
reputation that I seek to preserve with your brother.”

He threw back his head and laughed, the sound rich and masculine, drawing stares from the other dancers. “Didn’t you know? I don’t have a reputation to preserve, my Lady Perfect. Put away your shield and sword; lay down your shining armor. There is no dragon to slay for me. Nothing to protect at all.”

“No?” she asked, sudden curiosity making her speak without forethought. She’d heard a few whispered rumors about her fiancé’s mysterious brother, but they’d been maddeningly vague. “Are you so irredeemable?”

“I am a veritable blackguard.” He circled her, pacing slowly to the music, whispering so only she could hear. “A seducer, a rake, the worst sort of profligate. I am notorious for my pleasures—I drink too much, wench with abandon, and belch in mixed company. I have no discretion, no morals, and no desire for either. I am, in short, the devil himself, and you, my dearest Lady Perfect, would do well to avoid my company at all costs.”

“Your brother seems to be enjoying his dance with my sister,” Wakefield murmured.

Thomas looked at the duke and met cool brown eyes. It was always deucedly hard to puzzle out what Wakefield was thinking, but at the moment the man could’ve modeled for a male sphinx.

Thomas grunted and turned his gaze back to where Griffin paced about his intended bride. “He does indeed.”

Wakefield folded his arms across his chest. “Hero has been sheltered all her life—as is proper for her station—but her personal morals are of the highest. I know she will not fall even if presented with temptation.”

Thomas nodded, feeling a flush of mortification creep up his neck. He had an urge to tug at his neckcloth at the duke’s veiled admonition. “I believe you, Your Grace. Lady Hero has my complete faith, and I shall never treat her in any way other than with respect.”

“Good.” Wakefield clasped his hands behind his back and was silent a moment as they both watched the dancers. Then he said quietly, “The clause is ineffective.”

Thomas glanced at him sharply. In an effort to act against the scourge of gin drinking among the poor of London, they’d attached a gin clause to parliament’s Sweets Act last June. The clause gave a bounty to informers who brought in illegal gin sellers.

“Every day more gin sellers are hauled before the magistrates,” Thomas said slowly. “How is this ineffective?”

Wakefield shrugged. His voice was low and controlled, but his ire was plain. “They drag in the poor women who sell that devil’s drink in wheelbarrows. Wretches who make only pennies a day. What we need is to catch the men distilling the gin. The powerful ones who hide in the shadows growing rich off the backs of those poor women.”

Thomas pursed his lips. On the dance floor, Lady Hero was frowning at Griffin and the sight relieved him. “Catch enough of the gin sellers and it will impact the makers as well—I assure you. The clause is only months old. We must give it time, my friend.”

“I haven’t time,” Wakefield replied. “London is wasting under this plague. More citizens die than are born in our great city. Bodies litter the streets and garrets of the East End. Wives are deserted by their drink-destroyed husbands, babes killed by their drunken mothers, children abandoned to die or prostitute themselves. How can England prosper if the workers deteriorate in mind and body? We will wither and fail as a nation if gin is not eradicated from our city.”

Thomas knew that Wakefield was concerned about the gin problem, but to care so deeply about this one cause? Such passion didn’t fit the man he knew.

A movement from the other side of the dance floor caught his eye and scattered his thoughts. A woman stepped to the edge of the crowd. Her skirts were a flaming orange over primrose petticoats. Her hair was a deep, impossible wine-red, her lips and cheeks artificially rouged. Every man on that side of the dance floor watched her as she flirtatiously rapped her male companion’s arm with her folded fan. He said something, and she arched her white throat and laughed, making her breasts jiggle.

“… only if a man of substance is brought to account for gin making,” Wakefield said.

Thomas blinked, realizing that he’d missed most of what his companion had said. He turned his head to the duke, but out of the corner of his eye he could still see the woman playfully drawing her fingers across the slopes of her breasts. “Wanton baggage.”

“Who?”

Damn, he’d spoken aloud and now Wakefield waited for an answer.

Thomas grimaced. “Mrs. Tate.” He jerked his chin to indicate the woman across the room. “Every time I see her, she has a different beau, all younger than herself. The woman should be hauled up on indecency charges. Anyone can see that she’s five and thirty if she’s a day.”

“Eight and thirty,” Wakefield murmured.

Thomas turned to look incredulously at him. “You know her?”

Wakefield’s eyebrows rose. “I believe most of London society knows her.”

Thomas glanced back at Mrs. Tate. Was Wakefield speaking of biblical knowledge? Had the duke bedded the woman?

“She has a quick wit and an easy manner,” Wakefield was saying lightly. “Besides, she married a man three times her age. I don’t begrudge her a little merriment now that she’s widowed.”

“She flaunts herself,” Thomas gritted. He could feel Wakefield’s look.

“Perhaps, but only with unmarried gentlemen. She is careful not to dally with a man otherwise engaged.”

As if she’d heard the word
engaged
, Lavinia Tate suddenly looked up, her eyes meeting his across the distance that separated them. He knew, even though he could not see them now, that her eyes were a plain brown. That, he thought with satisfaction, was something she couldn’t change. Her eyes were and always would be ordinary brown, no matter how much paint she employed.

She held his eyes and lifted her chin in a challenge that would bring any red-blooded man to attention. It was a look as old as Eden, as old as Eve daring Adam with a bit of over-ripened fruit.

Thomas deliberately looked away from her proud gaze. He’d tasted that fruit once, and though it had been difficult, he’d weaned himself from its heady sweetness. The woman was a jade, plain and simple. And if there was one thing he’d had enough of in this lifetime, it was jades.