Notorious Pleasures (4 page)

The woman certainly knew how to prick a man’s illusions about himself. Once again he was hit with the awful irony that
this
woman out of all the women at the ball should be the one Thomas had chosen as his bride. A woman who made no bones about her displeasure with Griffin. A woman who had seen him at his very worst—and showed no signs of forgetting the sight. A woman who was proud of her snowy-white soul.

Lady Perfect—a perfect lady for his perfect brother.

He eyed her with disfavor, watching as she arched her damned left eyebrow in pointed query. She wasn’t quite a beauty, his brother’s fiancée. Instead she had that sort of elegance that was found sometimes among the upper crust of English society—creamy pale skin, a slightly overlong face, properly neat features, and hair that was red without going so far as to be gauchely ginger.

He’d seen her type a hundred times before, and yet… something about Lady Hero was decidedly different. For one thing, most of the ladies of her rank would’ve simply left him to his fate in the sitting room. Yet she had gone against her own rigid morals to save both him and Bella. Had she acted out of compassion for two strangers? Or merely a stolid code of ethics that superseded even her own distaste for what she’d found in the sitting room?

Griffin looked about. The music had halted, the dance was at an end, and he was supposed to escort her back to stodgy Thomas. Which he would do, of course—just not yet.

He bowed, proffering his elbow in feigned docility. “Sad, isn’t it?”

She looked at his arm with sudden suspicion, but was forced by her own rigid propriety to take it. Griffin tamped down a surge of triumph.

“What is?” she asked, her voice wary.

“Oh, that a woman as pious as you should have to put up with the company of a rake like me merely because of polite convention.”

“Humph.” She lifted her chin as he led her slowly through the crowd. “I hope I know my duty.”

He rolled his eyes. “Buck up. Enduring my presence in your life will surely give you points toward sainthood.”

If he hadn’t turned to look at her at that very moment, he would’ve missed the twitch of her soft, pink lips. Egad. Lady Perfect had a sense of humor! He’d seen her smile, but the expression had been fixed and immobile. What would a genuine smile look like on her face? What would happen if she actually laughed?

Intrigued, he bowed his head toward hers, inhaling the scent of flowers. “If you aren’t marrying my brother for his title, then why?”

Wide gray eyes looked up, startled, into his. She was so near he only had to lean an inch or so closer and his lips would touch hers. He could find out what she tasted like, if she would break under his tongue and run soft and sweet like honey.

Good God!
Griffin jerked his head back.

Fortunately, she seemed to have missed his confusion. “What do you mean?”

He inhaled and glanced away. They were nearly across the room now and moving in the opposite direction from Thomas, though she didn’t seem to notice. He was playing with fire, but he’d always found danger terribly tempting.

“Why marry Thomas?”

“My brother and he are friends. Maximus urged me to make the match.”

“That’s all?”

“No, of course not. My brother would not have considered Mandeville for me if the marquess weren’t well regarded, kind, and a man of substance.” She rattled off his brother’s attributes as if listing the points of a breeding ram.

“You don’t love him?” he asked with honest curiosity.

She knit her brows as if he’d burst into Swedish. “I have no doubt that I will someday have affection for him, naturally.”

“Naturally,” he murmured, feeling again that idiotic triumph. “Rather like a favorite spaniel, perhaps?”

She stopped dead, and if she hadn’t been restrained by her propriety, he had the feeling she would’ve set her hands on her hips like an irate fishwife. “Mandeville isn’t a spaniel!”

“A Great Dane, then?”

“Lord Griffin…”

He tugged her forward, leading her toward the outside edge of the ballroom. “It’s just that I’ve always thought it would be nice.”

“What?”

“To be in love with one’s wife—or in your case, one’s husband.”

Her face softened for a moment, her gray eyes going a little foggy, her sweet lips parting. Griffin found himself drawn to her fleeting emotion. Was this a glimpse of the true Lady Hero?

Then she was back to being Lady Perfect, her spine erect, her lips firm, and her eyes giving nothing away. The change was rather fascinating. What had made her into such a chameleon?

“How romantic,” she drawled in a bored, social voice that set his teeth on edge, “to think that love has anything to do with marriage.”

“Why?”

“Because marriage at our rank is a contract between families—as you well know.”

“But can’t it be more?”

“You’re deliberately being obtuse,” she said impatiently. “You don’t need me to explain society’s rules to you.”

“And you’re being deliberately thickheaded. My parents had it.”

“What?”

“Love,” he said, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. “They loved each other. I know it’s rare, but it is possible, even if you’ve never seen it—”

“My parents, too.”

It was his turn to look confused. “What?”

Her head was bent so that he saw only her mouth, curved down in sadness. “My parents. I have memories of… of a deep affection between them.”

He remembered suddenly—awfully—that her parents had been killed. It had been a cause célèbre over fifteen years before—the Duke and Duchess of Wakefield murdered outside a theater by common footpads. “I’m sorry.”

She inhaled and glanced up, her face unbearably vulnerable for a moment. “Don’t be. Hardly anyone mentions them to me. It’s as if they’d never existed. I was in the schoolroom when they died, but I have a few fond memories of them, before… before it happened.”

He nodded, feeling a protective tenderness for this proud, prickly woman. They strolled in silence for a moment, the crowd surging around them, but making no contact. It was as if they were strangely apart. Griffin inclined his head to one or two people as they met, but he kept walking, forestalling conversation.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she said after a bit. “Marriage with love between the partners is surely the ideal.”

“Then why settle for less?”

“Love may grow between a husband and a wife after marriage.”

“It also may
not
grow.”

She shrugged, looking pensive. “All marriages are gambles of a sort. One tries to even the odds by choosing wisely—a man who is well liked, comes from a good family, and is kind.”

“And the Readings do have a lack of madness in the family that is somewhat refreshing in aristocratic lineages,” he murmured.

She wrinkled her nose up at him. “Would you rather I marry into a family with a history of madness?”

“No, of course not.” He frowned, trying to articulate why her rather cold-blooded decision to marry his brother bothered him. Lord knew he wasn’t worried about
Thomas’s
heart. “You said yourself that a love match is ideal. Why not wait to make one?”

“I
have
waited. I’ve been out for over six years.”

“You’ve been looking for true love all this time?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged, obviously irritated. “Or something like true love. Besides, how long would you have me wait? Months? Years? I’m four and twenty. I have an obligation to marry and marry well. I cannot wait forever.”

“An obligation.” The words were sour on his tongue, though the thought wasn’t new. Didn’t all ladies of her rank have an “obligation” to make a good match?

She shook her head. “What if I met my true love at sixty? What if I never meet him? There is no guarantee that I will. Would you have me remain a spinster on some faint hope?”

He glanced at her curiously. “You believe that you do have one true love?”

“Perhaps not
one
true love, but someone, surely. I think… yes, I think that we are each certainly capable of falling in love—perhaps deeply in love—and that somewhere out there is a person who will reciprocate that love.” She wrinkled her nose, suddenly looking self-conscious. “You no doubt find talk of true love foolish.”

“Not at all. I do know romantic love is real. I’ve seen it, after all.”

“And do you think a rake such as you could fall madly, deeply in love with one woman?” Her words were meant to mock, but her tone was serious.

He shrugged. “Perhaps, though it sounds a deucedly uncomfortable state to find oneself in.”

“Then you’ve never been in love?”

“Never.”

She nodded. “Nor have I.”

“A pity,” he said, pursing his lips. “I wonder how it would feel? To be swept away by a grand passion? To give everything for only one person in the world?”

Her lips curved wryly. “So idealistic for a rake. Really, you do spoil my prior understanding of what the word entailed.”

“This is my social face,” he said lightly. “Don’t confuse it with the animal beneath.”

She looked at him searchingly for a moment before nodding as if coming to a conclusion. “I’m hardly likely to do that considering how I first found you.”

He smiled to cover a twinge of disappointment.

“But if you’re so idealistic, my lord,” she said, “about the connubial state, then why aren’t you happily married with a score or more of offspring?”

“I’m idealistic about
love
, my lady, not marriage. To be tied to one lady for the rest of my life, surrounded by small, grubby urchins?” He shuddered in mock horror. “No, I shall gladly cede the matrimonial state and all its attendant duties to my brother.”

“And if you do one day find yourself in love?” she asked softly. “What then, my lord?”

“Why, then, all shall be lost, my lady. A rake’s life crumbled to ruins, a splendid specimen of the bachelor state brought low by the bonds of matrimony and a delicate hand. But”—he lifted an admonishing finger—“that is, as you yourself have pointed out, very, very unlikely. My one true love may be a lady living in farthest China. She might be a crone of ninety or a babe of two. I may never meet her in this lifetime, and I thank God in advance for that fact.”

He’d teased a slight smile onto those soft lips, and his heart beat faster at the sight. A smile—a genuine smile—from this woman was like total nudity from another. And what a very odd thought that was.

“Why, my lord?”

“Because”—he bent so close that his breath moved a wayward red curl by her ear—“while
I
may be far from perfect in your eyes, I do assure you that my
life
is perfect as it is. I enjoy my rakish ways, my freedom, and my ability to, er,
dally
with as many ladies as I might want. For me, true love would be a complete and utter catastrophe.”

Fortunately, they were interrupted.

“Might I have my fiancée back?” Mandeville said in a voice that was a little too hard-edged to be jovial.

The teasing gleam left Reading’s eyes, taking with it any softness in his face. What remained was an expressionless and rather daunting mask. Without his habitual humor, Reading might have been the type of man others followed into near-hopeless battle: a leader of men, a statesman, a visionary.

What a very odd thought to have about an admitted rake!

Hero blinked and realized that Mandeville was offering his arm. “My dear?”

She smiled, dropping a curtsy for Reading before taking her fiancé’s arm.

Reading swept into a bow so extravagant it verged on mocking. “My congratulations to you, Thomas, on your engagement. Lady Hero.”

He nodded rather more curtly to her and then turned to disappear into the crowd.

Hero let out a breath she did not know she was holding.

“I hope he wasn’t too trying,” Mandeville murmured as he led her toward the dance floor.

“Not at all,” she said, nodding to a passing matron.

She felt more than saw his sharp look. “Some ladies find him very enticing.” His tone was so neutral it might as well have been a warning shout.

“I’m sure they do,” she said gently. “The hint of danger and that wicked grin no doubt have many a feminine breast aflutter. But I’ve always found a man who knows his responsibilities and keeps them far more attractive than one who spends his life playing.”

The arm beneath her hand relaxed fractionally. “Thank you, my dear.”

“For what?”

“For seeing so clearly what others do not,” he said. “Now, would you care to dance with your betrothed?”

She smiled up at him, liking how the lines about his brown eyes crinkled when he looked at her. “I’d be delighted.”

They danced a minuet and a country dance, and then Hero professed herself in need of refreshment. Mandeville led her to several chairs arranged by the side of the room and found her a seat before going in search of punch.

Hero watched him thread his way through the crowd, admiring his wide shoulders and firm stride. As always, he was stopped every few feet by well-wishers and those who merely wanted to be seen talking to the Marquess of Mandeville. She sighed, content. Really, Maximus had made the perfect choice of husband for her.

“There you are!”

Bathilda Picklewood—or, as she was better known in the Batten household, Cousin Bathilda—settled her substantial frame into a chair next to Hero. A distant relation on her mother’s side, Cousin Bathilda had raised Hero and her younger sister, Phoebe, ever since the death of their parents. Cousin Bathilda’s white hair was crimped into tiny curls about her forehead and was topped by a lacy triangular cap. She wore her favorite plum color, and her magnificent bosom was framed by white lace and black ribbons. From the crook of her arm peered a small black, brown, and white face. Mignon, Cousin Bathilda’s tiny, elderly spaniel, accompanied her wherever she went.

“My dear, I must talk to you!”

Since Cousin Bathilda nearly always spoke in exclamations, Hero merely raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“You mustn’t dance with Lord Griffin Reading ever again!” Cousin Bathilda said with as much urgency as if she were importing state secrets. Mignon barked once as if to emphasize her mistress’s words.

“Why not?”

“Because he and Lord Mandeville loathe each other.”

“Hmm,” Hero murmured, absently scratching Mignon behind her silky ears. “I had noticed a certain strain between them, but I don’t know if I would go so far as to call it
loathing
. Perhaps a general dislike…”

“It’s much, much worse than dislike, my dear! Don’t you understand?” Cousin Bathilda lowered her voice to a whisper. “Lord Griffin seduced Mandeville’s first wife!”