Bloody, fucking soirees.
Leo didn’t take exception to every ball. The naughty ones were quite all right, those orgies and masquerades where sinners with souls as black as his spent their night descending into further depravity.
As such, if there was ever a doubt as to his sacrifice for Crown and country, attending the Earl of Waterson’s infernal affair was certainly testament enough to take to his grave. And as if it weren’t chore enough suffering through any of Waterson’s balls, he had discovered that the first one he attended turned out to be the one when the blighter had forgone spirits.
Any kind of spirits: champagne, brandy. By God, he’d settle for a bloody ratafia at this point.
“Tennyson, my boy.” He stiffened at the aged, cultured tones of old Lord Carter. He was as bald as he’d always been. His cheeks were as florid and rounded as when he’d visited Leo’s now, thankfully, departed father. The man smiled. “Unexpected seeing you here. Then, all young men, even the rakes and rogues, settle down and find brides, eh?” The man guffawed at his own jest.
Leo passed his hopelessly bored gaze over Waterson’s guests. Putting to use his disdain, he masked his true interest in the guests circulating around him. As such, the dreadfully dull Earl of Waterson’s ball would have been, at any other time, an event he’d have rather yanked his fingernails out than attend. And yet… the stodgy and boring earl’s conservative political leanings and efforts to wed his unmarried sisters off to equally stodgy Tories had marked him as a suspect in Leo’s investigation.
Leo lazily studied the guests. The crowd consisted of largely proper lords, most vocal members of Parliament… and their equally proper sisters and wives.
He grimaced. With the dearth of rakes, rogues, and scoundrels, he was wholly out of place. Hardly his normal crowd… or event. With his dire financial state, however, none would dare question why a man such as Leo was in attendance. They’d take him as any other rake in dun territory, in need of a fat-dowered, desperate-to-be-wed miss.
“Unfortunate about the lack-of-spirits business,” Carter lamented, still standing at his side.
“Indeed,” Leo drawled, wholly in agreement with the old earl.
Seeming to take that first reply as an invitation, Lord Carter continued on. “Some scandal or such when a fight broke out at Waterson’s last affair. A soiree. Lord Bedford imbibed too many spirits and knocked over a candelabra and—”
And just like that, he’d been provided the means with which to quit the earl’s ballroom and find himself… another place inside the earl’s household. “He still keeps spirits, then?”
The earl scratched his paunch. “Certainly does. Some of the best French brandy, in fact.” He lowered his voice and whispered the way one might about a delicious secret. “I’ve had the opportunity to sample it myself a number of times when we’ve met to discuss business.” So Lord Carter also had business dealings with the Earl of Waterson… as well as like political leanings in his voting record at Parliament. “Not the inexpensive rubbish most of the younger gents your age are drinking these days.”
The earl had two daughters and a son married, but Leo had forgotten the man’s eldest, daughter. Suddenly interested by the earl’s appearance and, more specifically, by each tidbit revealed, Leo shifted closer. “Tell me, then, old chap. If a scoundrel was so inclined to partake in a sampling of this treasure, where might one find such a bounty?”
A glimmer sparkled in the earl’s eyes. “In his office.”
Bloody lackwit. “Where?” he snapped.
At the brief lapse in conviviality, Lord Carter blinked.
“I’m in desperate need of a drink, old chap.”
“Ahh,” the earl replied, thumping Leo on the back. “I remember those days all too well.”
Like an Oxford boy plotting mischief, Lord Carter turned over concise directions as to where Lord Waterson conducted business dealings. Leo neatly filed those details away.
This one’s lips were far too loose to ever effectively engage in subterfuge. Oh, it didn’t mean even lesser men than the one before him hadn’t tried. They had. It was, however, easy enough to size a man up and determine whether he was engaged in anything sinister. “Waterson’s also fat in the pockets,” he put forward in bored tones. “Manner of gent I suspect you’d like to saddle your daughter with.” A few years older than Leo’s thirty years, Lord Carter’s homely daughter had been destined for the shelf the moment she’d made her Come Out.
“Quite true. Quite true.” Lord Carter stuck an elbow in Leo’s side, pulling a grunt from him. “I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried to orchestrate an arrangement between my Mary and the earl.” He screwed his mouth up. “Alas, Waterson has already set his sights on another.”
Leo followed the earl’s stare over to their host… presently in discussion with the Marquess of Waverly.
Lord Carter elucidated, “The marquess’ spinster sister, Lady Chloe.”
Lady Chloe. Leo tried to recall the marquess’ unwed sister. Alas, he’d put his days of dallying with innocents to rest long ago, and only after he’d cemented his place as one of London’s most debauched rakes. His mind quickly worked. “There is talk of a match between them?”
“There has been, for several years now. Pretty filly. A fat dowry. Lovely bosoms. Not overly plump, but sufficient enough to earn notice.”
Leo rubbed at his chin, assessing the two men engrossed in discussion.
Waverly had recently married a bastard-born woman who’d established a school for scandalous offspring. Both his selection in bride and his support of that institution for women outside the nobility had marked him an unlikely participant of the Cato Street Conspiracy.
Useful information from Lord Carter officially at an end, Leo touched his brow in thanks. “Carter.” Abandoning his post at the back corner of the ballroom, he quit the nobleman’s side. With the earl sputtering and stammering in his wake, Leo donned his usual rakish grin and wound his way through the crowd.
Proper mamas yanked their daughters, with dangerous curiosity in their eyes, swiftly closer.
Those daughters, each and every one of them, would ultimately be ruined.
Alas, there would have to be another rake to lift them of their innocence.
Leo took up position beside another pillar, where he was free to study the guests now performing the intricate steps of a country reel. Spirits temporarily forgotten, he surveyed the crowd, now wholly focused on his mission.
Of the two suspects, only Waterson was present. The other, Lord Ellsworth, had yet to arrive. Over the heads of the prancing lords and ladies, Leo’s gaze collided with a hard, glowering one… inconveniently belonging to the very host who’d not issued Leo an invitation.
Lifting his head slightly in a mocking acknowledgment, Leo grinned.
Even with Waterson’s palpable loathing and, no doubt, a desire to toss him out on his arse, the blighter was too polite. Waterson was the manner of man who adhered to the rules of propriety, regardless of how stodgy—as he had with the oppressive Six Acts. Still conversing with the Marquess of Waverly, that equally stodgy bore from Leo’s Oxford days spared barely a passing glance for Leo.
From the corner of his eye, he spied the lady’s approach before she even draped herself against his side.
“Of all the places I’d expect to find you, Tennyson,” she purred. “In my bed, in an alcove, in a stable, I should think this dull affair would be the last place we’d again meet.” She was tall, statuesque, and buxom, and had she been any other woman and had these not been Crown-related circumstances, he’d have offered to meet her in the room of her choosing. But she was not. She was one woman with whom a dalliance would end his tenure with the Brethren.
“Lady Rowley,” he forced in his usual bored tones. “These are hardly your usual haunts.”
She smiled slyly back, curling her lips up in an inviting grin better suited for a bedroom. “I can show you some of them if you wish,” she enticed. Pressing her breasts against his arm, she leaned into him.
Silently cursing, Leo did a quick search. Both his uncle and Higgins’ warnings echoed around his mind. He took a step away from the tenacious beauty.
“Oh, la, Tennyson.” She fingered the plunging décolletage of her dampened silk net gown. “Never tell me you, of all rakes, are nervous of being seen with me?”
“Actually, I am, sweet. Your husband isn’t pleased with me.”
She giggled. “When have you ever cared about displeased husbands, mine or anyone else’s, Tennyson?”
Never. This, however, was altogether different. Another indiscretion with this woman would see him deprived of the only thing he wanted or needed—his work with the Brethren. In desperate need of liquor for altogether different reasons, he searched the room, stiffening when Rowley’s wife cupped him between his legs.
“Bloody hell,” he bit out. He swiftly disentangled her hand from his person. “I said no.”
The woman was unrelenting. “My husband is otherwise occupied at his club,” she cajoled, walking her fingertips back up his thigh. Bloody, bloody hell. She leaned up and placed her lips close to his ear. “Where can I meet you?”
He glanced about and found a number of disapproving stares upon them.
Leo relaxed. With both his exchanges here this evening—first with Carter and now with Lady Rowley—one would never take him as anything other than an indolent rake here for his own pleasures.
“Waterson’s gardens,” he lied, eager to be rid of her.
Triumph lit the viscountess’ eyes. With a sultry smile, she sashayed off.
Staring after her for the requisite prolonged moment, with a suitable degree of pretend interest, Leo then shifted his attention back to the crowd.
Another figure stepped into his path. This time, a servant. Something akin to horror churned in his gut as he stared at the neat arrangement of glasses upon the liveried footman’s silver tray. “What in the blazes is that?”
Puzzling his brow, the servant glanced at his tray. “Lemonade, my lord.”
The expected, rakish response was an instruction of just where Waterson’s footman could take himself. Yet, for Society’s whisperings and statements on his lack of control, Leo had greater restraint than most… when it served a purpose that needed serving.
Wordlessly, he grabbed one of the earl’s ridiculously fragile cups. Glass in hand, he proceeded to take a turn about the floor. All the while, he scrutinized his host’s every movement.
His dealings with Waterson were limited. Together at Oxford, they’d both enjoyed their books. But whereas Leo had always concealed his love of literature, the other man had freely embraced his academic pursuits.
Sniveling, pathetic excuse of a boy… poetry and books… as empty-headed as your mother was… useless… you’re utterly useless…
He tightened his grip upon the cup. Damn that hated bastard for refusing to stay buried in the grave he rightly deserved. After all these years, he still had sway over Leo’s damned thoughts.
How ironic to go through the first eighteen years of his life being thought of and derided as useless… only to have proven with his work for the Brethren that he’d far more value than his father ever had.
From across the ballroom, Rowley’s wife caught his eye. Not even the length of the dance floor could conceal the lusty promise there. Flicking an artful curl over her shoulder, she presented him with her rounded buttocks and slipped out of the gathering.
Leo sprang into movement. Some gents avoided gazes to avoid discourse. There was and always had been little reason to do so where he was concerned. All the proper sorts tended to step out of his path. Never before had that ever been more convenient.
Slipping out the same doorway Lady Rowley had moments ago, Leo set off in the opposite direction.
He’d established a life for himself these past twelve years. And he’d be damned if he sacrificed it for anyone—particularly a woman.