Notorious Pleasures

Hero followed her gaze. Mrs. Tate was watching Mandeville.



GRIFFIN’S EYES NARROWED as he saw Lady Hero note the redheaded woman across the way. What the hell was Thomas up to? Had he arranged an assignation with a mistress with his fiancée present?



Lady Hero casually turned back to the table, her gaze sliding by his. She made no sign, but somehow he could tell: She was upset.



Damn Thomas!



Thankfully the entertainment began at that moment with a troop of brightly clad girls dancing onto the stage.



Griffin watched broodingly, fondling the diamond earring in his waistcoat pocket. What matter to him if Thomas wasn’t quite as perfect as Lady Hero thought him? Their arrangement was surely no business of his. Why, then, did he feel an urgent need to drag his brother into a private corner and with a few choice words—and perhaps a fist or two—show him the error of his ways?



“They’re so graceful,” Lady Phoebe said. She sat beside him, across the dinner table from Thomas and Lady Hero.



“They are indeed.” Griffin smiled at her.



Lady Phoebe was so different from her sister she might have been a changeling. Where Lady Hero was tall for a woman and elegantly slender, Lady Phoebe was of only average height with a buxom figure, softly rounded shoulders, and plump arms. Lady Hero carefully guarded her expression and movements like a miser with a handful of gold coins. Lady Phoebe, in contrast, let every emotion play across her face, her expressive lips parting in wonder or curving wide in surprised amusement at the antics of a clown on the stage.



“But where did he go?” she murmured to herself. “The little monkey?”



Griffin glanced at the stage. The clown had been playing with a monkey, but the animal sat now at his ankles, waiting with trained stillness.



He looked back to Lady Phoebe. She was leaning forward, squinting. Suddenly she laughed. “He’s back.”



Griffin looked at the stage. The clown was making the monkey perform backflips through a hoop. Griffin lifted his wine to his lips, frowning thoughtfully.



The dancers and the clown were followed by a play, Love for Love, which was admirably acted, though Griffin hardly noticed. He was too busy watching Lady Hero from out of the corner of his eye.



As the actors were bowing, Thomas stood. “Shall we stroll the gardens?”



The suggestion was obvious, and Thomas never glanced at the box opposite. Still, Griffin was unsurprised when the red-haired lady stood as well. Grimly, he offered his arm to Lady Phoebe.



The pleasure gardens were cunningly laid out. Tall hedges trimmed into fantastic beasts lined the walkways, obscuring narrower paths leading off it, as well as nooks and grottos tailor-made for sophisticated amusements. As he guided Lady Phoebe, Griffin wondered cynically how many of the other ladies they passed were there professionally.



“Oh, look!” Lady Phoebe tugged at his arm as one of the many set pieces came into sight. “How is it done?”



Before them was a pretty outcropping of rock, decorated with a falls. But the falls in this case was of multicolored lights.



“How clever,” Megs murmured. “I can’t tell how it’s devised. Perhaps one of the gentlemen can educate us?”



“Haven’t a clue,” Bollinger admitted immediately with honest good humor.



Megs laughed. “Huff?”



“Must be mechanical,” Huff said.



“Well, of course it’s mechanical,” Caro said. “But how does it work?”



Thomas frowned. “A pulley system of some sort, I’d wager.”



For a moment they all gazed, transfixed, at the moving lights as they seemed to flow over the barren rock.



Griffin stirred. “I think we’re overlooking the most obvious explanation.”



“Which is, my lord?” Lady Hero raised her left eyebrow.



“Fairies,” he replied gravely.



“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” grumped Caro, and immediately dragged her husband off, despite Huff’s protests.



“Fairies,” Lady Hero repeated. Her lips definitely twitched.



“Fairies.” Griffin stuck his free hand between the buttons of his waistcoat and struck a learned pose, head tilted back, brow furrowed solemnly, foot thrust forward. “In my opinion—which, by the way, is considered an authority on rainbow light falls—each individual light in this falls is in actuality a fairy running quickly over the rocks.”



Megs was grinning, Lady Phoebe was giggling, but Lady Hero nodded as if his nonsense was perfectly possible. “But if they are fairies as you say, why exactly should they run down instead of up?”



“My dearest lady,” Griffin replied with sad pity. “Do you not know that falls only run down and not up?”



Her mouth had widened, her delicate, pale pink lips trembling with laughter, and his heart suddenly sang. Just like that. With no preliminaries or warning, without reason or goal, he was happy. And looking into her clear gray eyes, he had an idea she was happy as well. How odd that such a thing, such a moment, should compound and redouble until the very fact that she was glad made him the most joyful man in the world.



For just a moment in time.



Then Thomas, who if anything should’ve been suspicious of their banter, said rather absentmindedly, “Shall we try this path, my dear?”



And he pulled her away.



“Come on,” Lady Phoebe urged, and they and Megs and Bollinger chose another path.



Griffin strolled along, listening with only one ear to their banter and exclamations. He must’ve interjected enough comments to maintain a normal front, for no one stared at him oddly or pulled him aside to ask just what the devil he thought he was doing flirting with his soon-to-be sister-in-law.



But he knew. Oh, yes, he knew—he was in over his head and sinking fast. He might be irritated by Lady Hero’s calm acceptance of her own perfection, of her condemnation of him without even a trial, even of her fondness for Thomas, but that didn’t change his own body’s inclinations. He was attracted to the lady—and what was worse, the lady was attracted to him. This was exactly what he had vowed to never let happen. He couldn’t let it go further. He must make a firm pledge to stay away from the lady.



Yet, here, tonight, he couldn’t stop himself from peering down alleys and grottos, searching for a glimpse of scarlet and ruby skirts, a gingery head, the elegant turn of a neck. Where had Thomas taken her?



Damnation! Were they embracing even now?



They’d almost made a complete circumference of the gardens when the first pop! exploded overhead.



“The fireworks!” Lady Phoebe pointed.



A glowing red star shot into the night and burst above them, sending green and blue sparks showering down. Their group had stopped in a small clearing, and a crowd of the other guests began gathering about them. Caro and Huff soon joined them. Griffin glanced around but could see neither Lady Hero nor Thomas.



“I say, is that a turtle?” Huff asked beside him.



“No,” came Caro’s exasperated tones. “It’s a spider.”



“Looks like a turtle to me,” Huff said, unperturbed by his mate’s correction.



A flash of scarlet caught Griffin’s eye. He turned and saw Lady Hero disappear down a path. Good God, was she alone? Surely she knew better than to wander a dark path at night by herself?



He excused himself from the small group, making sure Lady Phoebe was with Megs and Caro and their escorts, then strode rapidly to where he’d seen Lady Hero. The popping and cracking continued overhead, and suddenly the path ahead of him was lit in bright orange. There at the far end stood Lady Hero looking around.



She turned as he advanced on her. “Thomas?”



He took her arm, too ridiculously angry to correct her. Where the hell was his brother? He pulled, but she dug in her heels, just as blue and yellow lights burst overhead.



“Why the hurry, my lord?” She tilted her face up to his, her eyes mocking behind the feathered half-mask she wore. “Don’t you think this romantic?”



Suddenly the explosions were in his head. Griffin stared into those innocently seductive eyes and realized very simply that he couldn’t stand it any longer.



He kissed her.



Chapter Six



What a spectacle there was when the three dignitaries arrived in the kingdom! Prince Westmoon came in a carriage made of gold and diamonds and drawn by twelve snow-white horses. Prince Eastsun rode in a palanquin encrusted with rubies and emeralds and hung draperies made of silk. And Prince Northwind arrived in a great gilded ship with sails of crimson and gold. All three men were haughty, commanding, and handsome beyond belief. But only the little brown bird and the stable master knew that the queen retired to her bed that night with a heavy heart….



—from Queen Ravenhair



It was stupid and irrational, but Thomas found he couldn’t stop himself from searching out Lavinia Tate. Not even the difficulty of finding her in the near dark in a maze of paths and side-paths deterred him. Three men? Had she become a sybarite? A woman controlled entirely by her physical desires? Thoughts such as these did not improve his mood, so when he did eventually run Lavinia—and her three beaus—to ground, his temper was perilously on edge.



“Dismiss them,” he barked at her. He eyed the men. Two were barely old enough to shave, but the third was a big fellow with broad shoulders.



Thomas flexed his hands. In his current mood, he was of a mind to take on all three.



“My lord,” Lavinia drawled. She was wearing another flame-colored dress that should’ve clashed horribly with her outlandishly red hair, but somehow didn’t. In fact, the amount of creamy bosom the décolletage displayed was enough to make a man drool.



Thomas scowled. “Tell them to leave, Lavinia.”



She arched an eyebrow at the use of her given name, and for a moment Thomas thought he really would have to choose between retreat and fisticuffs. Then she whispered something to the big fellow, and with a last nasty look, all three turned heel and left.



“Now, then.” She folded her arms across her chest as if bracing herself for an unpleasant confrontation with a bill collector. “What is it, Thomas?”



“Three, Lavinia?” His hands clenched by his sides. “And all merely boys.”



She threw back her head and laughed. “As it happens, my lord, two of those boys are my nephews. And I doubt Samuel would like you calling him a boy.”



So the big man was her lover. Thomas wanted to drive his fist into something. “He’s younger than you.”



“As are you,” she replied softly. “Yet it didn’t keep you from my bed.”



For a moment he merely stared at her hungrily, remembering her bed and what they’d done there.



Then she looked away. “What do you want?”



“What do I want?” He advanced toward her, confused by his own need to be near her. “You’re the one following me.”



“Following you?”



He didn’t know what reaction he’d expected from his accusation—perhaps protestations or even tears—but it wasn’t this. This looked perilously close to pity, her eyebrows drawing together, her lush mouth turning down.



“Thomas, I am not following you.”



“Explain, then, how you happened to be here on the very night I attend with my fiancée?”



She shrugged—actually shrugged!—at his angry words. “Coincidence, I suppose.”



“And your Samuel?” He was close enough to touch her now, but he daren’t. “Deny, if you will, that you brought him here in a pathetic effort to make me jealous.”



He sneered his words, but she looked at him wonderingly. “Are you jealous, Thomas? I can’t think why, since you’re the one who broke it off when you decided to marry Lady Hero.”



He looked away from her too-perceptive face. “I never said we had to quit, only that we wait a decent amount of time after the wedding. A year at most. I could’ve bought you a bigger house if you wanted it. A carriage and team.”