Notorious Pleasures
Mustn’t show fear before the wolf.
She half laughed, but the sound was more a sob. Mickey wasn’t anything like a wild, savage wolf—at least on the surface. The one time she’d seen him, he’d been dressed in velvet and lace, every finger of his hands adorned with jeweled rings. He’d been elegant and suave. But underneath, dear God, underneath he’d been exactly like a ravenous wolf.
Silence was panting by the time they made the home. Her fingers were clumsy with the key, and she nearly dropped it twice before getting it in the door. With a last nervous look over her shoulder, she pushed the girls inside the home and slammed the door shut behind her. Quickly she flung down the bar.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” Mary Evening asked anxiously.
“Yes.” Silence placed a hand over her breast, trying to calm her breathing. Mary Darling munched messily on her apple, unconcerned. At least she hadn’t alarmed the baby. She smiled. “Yes, quite, but I’m dying for a cup of tea, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am!” was the general consensus.
So she marched back to the kitchen with her charges, feeling marginally better.
That feeling stopped, though, when she saw Winter standing in the kitchen, his face grave. Winter never came home before his luncheon at one of the clock.
She frowned. “What are you doing home at this hour?”
Winter looked at the eldest girl. “Mary Evening, please set the marketing on the table and take the other girls with you upstairs. I believe Nell has just made some tea for the children there.”
The girls obediently trailed from the kitchen.
Silence looked at Winter, her chest squeezing, “Winter?”
He glanced distractedly at Mary Darling, still in her arms. “Perhaps we should send the baby upstairs as well.”
“No.” Silence swallowed, laying a cheek against Mary Darling’s soft, black curls. “Let her stay with me.”
Winter nodded. “Will you sit?”
She lowered herself to one of the kitchen benches. “What is it? Tell me.”
“We’ve received word from the owners of William’s ship,” he said gently.
Her head started to spin, Winter’s words becoming indistinct.
Still, when he continued, she heard him. “William’s ship has been lost at sea. There were no survivors. I’m afraid William is dead.”
“YOU SEEM TIRED, my dear,” Cousin Bathilda observed that night as she and Hero rocked in the carriage. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have sat with Phoebe all afternoon.”
They were on their way to a ball. Hero frowned for a moment, thinking. Oh, yes, the Widdecombe’s ball. She might find a lady tonight interested in helping the home if only she put her mind to it. Funny how she’d had trouble concentrating all day.
“My dear?” Cousin Bathilda prompted.
“Phoebe didn’t tire me.” Hero smoothed her brow. “I have a slight headache.”
“No,” Hero said too sharply, then inhaled. “No, it’s quite all right, cousin.”
“Well, I can’t think it’s all right when you use that tone,” Cousin Bathilda said, her feathers all ruffled.
Hero stifled a sigh and made herself smile calmly. “Truly, I’m sorry to have snapped at you.”
“Very well, then,” the other lady replied. “It’s rather late to turn about now anyway; we’re nearly there. Although I do feel bad about leaving poor Phoebe abed at home. Has Maximus talked to you about her yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“He must make a decision soon, I think.” Cousin Bathilda had lines of worry about her eyes. “Thank the Lord the physician said her arm will heal. It would be terrible if she were crippled as well as…” Bathilda’s voice died away as if she couldn’t quite make herself say the word.
Hero sighed and turned to gaze out the window, though there was nothing to see in the dark. How strange she felt! As if she’d become disconnected from her body and the events around her. She should be thinking deeply at this moment, coming to decisions and making things right somehow. Instead, she found it hard to concentrate on anything at all. Anything but thoughts of Griffin and how it had felt to accept him into her body this morning. She could almost smell his skin, hot and salty, feel the hair on his chest rasping against her bare nipples, see his eyes watching her always….
“I do hope Lord Griffin isn’t at the ball tonight,” Cousin Bathilda said, making her start.
Fortunately, her cousin didn’t seem to notice Hero’s wild glance.
“Bad enough that Phoebe seems entirely charmed by him,” Cousin Bathilda huffed. “I cannot believe you invited that man to luncheon!”
“Phoebe doesn’t know the particulars of his reputation,” Hero replied, attempting to move the conversation away from herself.
“Naturally not!” Bathilda was shocked at the mere notion. “A precious, innocent girl like her having knowledge of the extent of Lord Griffin’s scandalous ways—the very thought.”
“He has his good points as well,” Hero said before she could stop herself. “He’s funny, and an interesting conversationalist, and he can be very kind.”
“Funny and kind do not excuse a man’s rakishness.”
“He will soon be part of the family,” Hero replied, and felt like weeping.
“Humph!” was all Cousin Bathilda had to say to that.
Her obvious indignation made Hero smile faintly. “Mignon likes him, remember.”
The little dog raised her head at her name. She was curled up beside Bathilda on the carriage seat.
Cousin Bathilda stared severely at her pet. “She usually has better taste, I must say.”
Mignon decided their conversation was uninteresting, since the topic didn’t involve doggy tidbits. She yawned and laid her head back down again.
Outside, the Widdecombe town house was ablaze with torches. Liveried footmen bowed and ushered them up the steps and inside.
Hero was still trying to remember the debacle in question when they came upon the receiving line.
“Bathilda.” A very thin lady with silvery gray hair leaned forward and almost touched her cheek to Cousin Bathilda’s. “How wonderful to see you again. And you brought your darling dog,” she observed with pursed lips as Mignon rumbled at her.
“Helena.” Cousin Bathilda put a soothing hand on Mignon’s head. “You remember my dear relative, Lady Hero Batten.”
“My lady.” Hero dipped into a curtsy.
“Engaged to the Marquess of Mandeville, yes?” Lady Widdecombe peered at her with faint approval. “A very good match, my dear. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, my lady,” Hero murmured. She felt a suffocating weight, as if a large boulder sat upon her chest. How scandalized everyone here would be if they knew what she truly was beneath her facade. She’d lost her perfection. She’d lost her place. For a wild moment she had the urge to simply turn and flee from the ballroom.
“There’s Mandeville now,” Cousin Bathilda exclaimed.
Hero glanced up and saw her fiancé, looking the same as ever. He was quite elegant tonight in deep brown velvet overembroidered in gold and red.
He made a leg at the sight of her. “Miss Picklewood, Lady Hero. You are the fairest damsel here tonight, I vow.”
“My lord.” She wondered what he would say if she asked him what feature he found so especially beautiful about her? Was it her eyes? Her neck? Her breasts? But then he’d never seen her bare breasts. Only one man had and it wasn’t her fiancé.
She looked away, biting her lip as guilt battered against her.
“I hope your dear sister is better?” Mandeville asked gravely.
“As well as can be expected, my lord,” Cousin Bathilda answered. “The doctor has prescribed bed rest, but he thinks the arm will knit.”
“I am so glad.”
“I see my good friend Mrs. Hughes over there,” Cousin Bathilda said. “If you young people will excuse me?”
“Of course,” Mandeville murmured. He held out his arm to Hero without really looking at her. “Shall we stroll?”
“Please,” she answered sedately, calming the hysterical voices in her head.
She laid her hand on his sleeve as he led her into the crowd. The room was too hot, it seemed. Lady Helena had chosen to decorate the ballroom with hundreds of roses, and the scent of the wilting flowers was almost overwhelming. She nodded her head and murmured inanities to passing people until she thought she might scream. Her world had tumbled off balance, and she didn’t know how to right it again.
And then, suddenly, Griffin stood in front of them, dressed elegantly in blue and gold, his wig snowy white. His arm was crooked, as he idly fondled something in his hand. His green eyes flicked from her face to her hand, laid on Mandeville’s sleeve, then rose slowly to his brother’s face.
Hero tried to swallow, but her throat was dry. Surely he wouldn’t say anything, do anything, here?
Griffin bowed stiffly. “Good evening, Thomas, Lady Hero.”
She nodded, unable to speak.
“It’s amazing the places where I’m welcome.”
She lifted her eyes at his cynical tone. His green eyes clashed with hers, his expression grim.
She caught her breath.
“What have you got there?” Mandeville asked.
Griffin raised his eyebrows and opened his hand. Hero inhaled silently. Her diamond earbob lay on his palm—the one she’d thrown at him in the sitting room at her engagement ball.
He smiled thinly. “A trinket I found upon the floor. Do you think it becomes me?”
He held the earring to his ear as Hero widened her eyes in warning. Surely Mandeville would recognize it as hers!
“Or perhaps it’s better suited to a lady,” Griffin drawled. He reached out, and Hero felt the heat of his fingers as he dangled the earring near her ear.
Mandeville frowned, looking confused. “Don’t be an ass.”
“No?” Griffin’s smile had disappeared as he looked at her. “Well, maybe I’ll make it a keepsake.”
He pushed the earring into his waistcoat pocket.
Hero stared at him, her chest aching as if she’d been weeping. She’d lost him, she suddenly realized. They could never again be friends now.
Griffin looked at Mandeville. “With your permission, I’d like to offer your fiancée a dance.”
“Certainly,” Mandeville replied.
And just like that, she was handed from one man to the other, rather like a prize pony at a country fair.
Hero waited until they’d strolled some distance from Mandeville. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I know,” Griffin replied low. “You seem to only want to do, er, other things with me.”
“Hush!” she hissed desperately.
In any other man, the look he gave her might be mistaken for hurt. “I’m not going to disgrace you here in front of everyone, never fear.”
She didn’t know how to reply to that, and while she was contemplating it, he led her swiftly through a pair of French doors and outside.
She looked around the lovely paved balcony with wide steps that led into a shadowed garden and turned to him accusingly. “You told Mandeville we were to dance.”