God, how she despised balls.
All of them.
The soirees. The masquerades. The intimate, formal affairs thrown by her friends or family.
All of them.
Nor was it simply the six Seasons’ worth of those affairs that accounted for her apathy, but rather her family’s unrelenting efforts to see Chloe married off.
There was the fortunate end that after so many London Seasons, no one paid Chloe much attention. Seated on the edge of the Earl of Waterson’s ballroom, she surveyed the crowd. Couples twirled past, ladies in their white skirts and manufactured smiles waltzed about by respectable gentlemen.
She stared blankly off.
“There you are!”
Chloe looked to the owner of that familiar voice and hopped up from her shellback chair. “Jane,” she greeted with a smile that threatened to shatter her cheeks. This was the first exchange they’d had since earlier that morn when Jane had gently but firmly denied Chloe’s request for employment. Chloe was… at a loss for how to be around her friend.
Fortunately, Jane had always been one to command situations.
“He is plotting,” Jane explained in a whisper. Her sister-in-law motioned with her hand, and Chloe followed that subtle point.
Conversing with their host, the Earl of Waterson, her brother moved his less-than-subtle stare in Chloe’s direction and back to the earl.
Lord Waterson looked in her direction, lifting his head in slight acknowledgment, a pained look on his face. One that surely matched her own.
She lifted her fingers in a small greeting. “Dead,” she muttered under her breath. “I am going to kill him dead.”
“Well, that would certainly eliminate the possibility of a match with him,” Jane put in, her lips twitching.
It was easy enough to be amused and amusing when one was mistress of her own universe. “I meant my brother,” she said sardonically.
Jane winked. “I know.”
At least one of them could find amusement in Gabriel’s tenacious efforts at matchmaking. Since she’d made her Come Out, Gabriel had done everything within his power to attempt to coordinate a match between Chloe and his best friend. “I have no intention of relinquishing control of my life.” Her father had control enough until he’d, thankfully, turned up his evil heels and gone to meet the devil. “And I’ll not cede that power to Gabriel.” Their sister, Philippa, had meekly stepped into the respectable match that Gabriel had encouraged… and what had that gotten her? Nearly killed trying to produce a male heir for her honorable husband.
Jane sighed. “He means well.”
Where in the past Chloe would have vehemently debated that point, now she remained silent, in concurrence. Gabriel, as he’d been before marriage, had made it his life’s mission to see all of his siblings—Chloe, Philippa, and Alex—properly wed. Since he’d fallen in love, his motives had shifted—somewhat. “He wants to be free of his responsibility of me,” she predicted, moving her gaze to her sister-in-law.
Jane made a sound of protest. “He wants you to be happy.”
“And he expects it is a husband who will do that?” she asked dryly. Though she and Jane had never spoken about the abuse the Edgertons had suffered as children, she’d no doubt Gabriel had shared those darkest secrets with his wife.
Jane nibbled at her lower lip, carefully weighing her words. “He expects the right husband will.”
“Do you believe a man who supported the suppression of people’s voices, movements, and freedoms makes for a safe choice?” she shot back.
To Jane’s credit, she shook her head instantly. “No. No, I do not.”
The other woman only grew all the more in Chloe’s esteem. Having introduced Chloe to the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, she had ultimately opened her eyes to injustices and the possibility of not only having a voice, but being heard. “I believe the earl is a good man.” She grinned wryly. “Just with bad political leanings.”
Frustration needled at her, and she put a question to Jane. “What makes a man the right husband?” It was a question she’d never asked because, for her, there had been no traits, qualities, or characteristics that could have persuaded her to relinquish what little independence she had.
“Love,” Jane said simply. “A gentleman who loves you and appreciates your mind and encourages you to take on whichever causes you wish. Who sees you as a partner and not as a prisoner.”
Warmth suffused Chloe’s breast. She recalled all over again why she’d come to view Jane as close as a sister—mayhap closer than she’d ever been with Philippa. “Not all ladies are fortunate enough to find that manner of husband,” she said softly. That was as elusive as a pot of gold at the proverbial end of the rainbow, and Chloe hadn’t even wasted a girlhood hope on one.
Jane stole a furtive glance in her husband’s direction. “I want you to find love,” she said in hushed tones. “If you do not wish to marry, I’ll not allow your brother to maneuver you into a match… or even a dance.”
“A dance?” she repeated, horror creeping into her voice. To most, a dance simply represented the polite movements all lords and ladies invariably went through. With Gabriel, however, it always began with a carefully coordinated pairing at a formal ball.
Sure enough, Gabriel and the earl now wound their way through the ballroom—to where Chloe and Jane stood.
Catching the lace adorning the bottom of Chloe’s gown with the tip of her slipper, Jane dragged it until it snagged, tearing.
Both ladies stared down at the dangling fabric.
A twinkle lit Jane’s eyes. “Oh, dear. My apologies. Go, see to that.” She bussed Chloe on the cheek in a show of affection that earned several side-eyed stares from the stodgy lot invited by the earl. “I will keep your brother and the earl distracted.”
With a murmur of thanks, Chloe gathered her skirts and started in the opposite direction of her rapidly approaching brother. Although Lord Waterson had long been a friend of Gabriel, he would never do as a husband for the very reasons she’d given Jane. After all, as Mrs. Wollstonecraft had once written, every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil. A man who’d been one of the greatest supporters of the Six Acts, Waterson would never grant the freedoms Gabriel had Jane… and Miles had Philippa.
Chloe sneaked from the crowded ballroom and did not break her stride as she continued down familiar halls she’d visited many times before. With only a handful of sconces lit, there was an ominous feeling to the darkened corridors. Do not look. “You are not a helpless child scared of a shadow,” she whispered, needing to hear some hint of sound in the growing silence.
Despite those reminders and assurances, she glanced at the blood-red satin wallpaper. Eerie shadows flickered and danced upon the walls. A cold sweat broke out on her skin, and she frantically glanced about. There were doors, and the halls were wide and… those silent, desperate reminders fell away. Her breath rasped loudly in her ears, blending with the distant pleas of the past. No… please… I will be good… Do not lock me in here… please…
Her slipper snagged the dangling lace. Crying out, Chloe crashed forward. She shot her hands out, landing hard on her knees.
She sat. The hum of silence buzzing in her ears melded with her rapidly drawn breaths. When he, the monster who’d sired her, slipped back in, in he remained. Chloe clamped her hands over her ears, moaning. “He is dead.” She whispered the familiar reminder she so often needed. “He cannot hurt you.” She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to five.
She opened them just as a tall figure exited the earl’s offices.
Chloe made herself go absolutely motionless. It was a skill that had saved her many times, and one she’d been forced to perfect in order to spare herself a beating.
Something white flashed in his hand as he reached inside his jacket—
Which will it be, gel… the rod or my fist…?
A scream tore from her throat, and she struggled to stand. Her leg instantly crumpled. Pain throbbed from her ankle and radiated up her leg.
“Bloody hell, shut your damned mouth, or you’ll have us caught—together.”
The gentleman pulled Lord Waterson’s office door quietly shut. That faint click yanked her from the fog of confusion.
What in the blazes? She’d always prided herself on being ready with a sharp retort. Her mother had long lamented that her quick tongue would be the death of her. Yet, in this instance, indecently sprawled upon the earl’s floor, she couldn’t think of a single reply. In the darkened space, she squinted, attempting to bring the owner of that unfamiliar baritone into focus, praying the man would leave. Praying the floor would open up and swallow her.
And then, it appeared the Lord was real, after all.
The gentleman moved at a brisk clip and continued past her.
Chloe briefly closed her eyes, giving thanks for small favors.
Then he stopped. With an inventive curse that sent color rushing to her cheeks, he turned back and swiftly returned to her side.
She inched her horrified eyes up, from a pair of immaculate, gleaming, black boots, to muscular legs encased in cream satin, gold-striped breeches. Boots with formal wear? Who in thunderation wore boots to a soiree?
Craning her neck back, she met the flinty gaze of the Marquess of Tennyson, one of the wickedest scoundrels in England. A lady could be ruined by nothing more than a look from him. Of course, that was who’d wear boots to a ball. With a crop of closely clipped, golden curls, he’d the look of a fallen Lucifer. Yet, there could be no doubt the gentleman before her was all seven of the deadliest sins rolled into one towering figure of a man. “You,” she groaned.
Irritated eyes did a cursory search of her. “Have I tupped you?”
“Tripped me?” Chloe shook her head once. “You startled me, is all.” Because she’d let the demons back in… her stomach twisted. Mayhap the vicious remembrances this night would not take root. Mayhap the headaches would stay back. It had been nearly two months since she’d suffered one. But they were always there and always would be. “I tripped on my hem,” she explained, gesturing to the offending garment. She sighed. To think it had seemed like such a grand idea when Jane had shredded it.
The marquess dashed the back of his hand over his face. “Tupped,” he said coolly. “Have I tupped you?”
She opened and closed her mouth several times and then gasped. “You are loathsome.” She’d never been one to listen to the gossips, and yet, with a handful of sentences, he’d proven himself as vile as they said.
“Undoubtedly.” He spoke in bored tones, glancing past her.
Good. She was glad to be rid of the bounder rumored to be a debaucher of innocents and one who drank too much, wagered often, and whored even more. She’d already encouraged far too much discourse. And yet… bloody hell, she’d not have him thinking she would ever dare give herself to one such as him. “You most certainly did not… did not…” Chloe cursed the pathetically weak quality to that incomplete rebuttal.
The marquess winged a golden eyebrow. “Tupped, miss. The word is tupped.”
What man didn’t recall the women he’d… he’d… tupped?
Annoyed at having been so unsettled, she tilted her chin up. “Nor am I a ‘miss.’” Misses were innocent debutantes in white, who simpered and preened before wicked men such as him. She’d never simpered, and she was three years past wearing white. “I am a lady. Lady Chloe Edgerton.” It was a good deal less impressive to deliver a setdown sprawled on one’s buttocks as she was.
Interest briefly flickered in his apathetic gaze, but then was gone so quick she might as well have imagined it. “So, you are Waterson’s future wife.”
Society was talking, then. “I am certainly not…” Chloe promptly closed her mouth. By way of explanation, she owed this man nothing.
Like the wolf all girls were warned of in folklore, the marquess waggled his golden eyebrows. “Marrying a stuffy bore like Waterson? Ahh,” he said with a dawning understanding.
“What?” she asked before she could call the question back.
He searched about. “I take it you were sneaking off to meet a different gentleman, then?”
He would take it that way. And a reprobate such as he would never believe, for all her protestations, that she’d actually been avoiding a gentleman. Furthermore…
“What manner of man does not recall whether or not he—”
“Are you all right?” he bit out, wincing as though the question had cost him a pound of flesh.
And yet, the unexpectedness of both his return and question brought her up short.
He jerked. Was he startled by his own concern? In one fluid movement, he bent and scooped her up.
Chloe squeaked at the familiarity of his bold touch. Perhaps all the rumors and writings about a rake’s touch had merit, because the heavy weight of his hand singed her through her dress.
He promptly set her down.
She gasped as her leg gave out. Reflexively, she gathered the lapels of his sapphire jacket, catching herself. Despite his wiry frame, there was a surprising breadth to his chest that belied his image of indolent lord.
“An injured ankle?” he drawled. “Cliché, love. Very cliché.”
Unnerved by her body’s reaction, she released him.
“You needn’t put either of us through this show. You are on… your seventh Season now?” He flashed a rakish smile, displaying two perfect rows of pearl-white teeth, and then lowered his lips close to her ear. The unexpected hint of lemons, a wholly innocent scent, filled her senses.
But then he spoke. “Certain freedoms are permitted more seasoned women.”
She sputtered. The arrogance of him. “I assure you, I would not ever let a bounder such as you tup, let alone touch, me.”
Brava.
Leo had neither bedded nor seduced an innocent in ten years. A peculiar ache tightened his chest, a reaction that would have been remorse and regret in another man.
The person Leo had been had died in that library with the woman he’d intended to make his bride. From that moment, he’d carefully cultivated his image as a worthless rake, and he’d dallied only with wicked widows and unhappy wives.
But if he’d been of an inclination to revisit his younger days as a debaucher, Lady Chloe Edgerton was certainly the manner of spitfire he’d have met in a darkened corridor.
He passed an experienced gaze over her. Flawless, golden curls, a nipped waist only enhanced by the generous curve of her hips… a woman such as she would be wasted on a bore like Waterson. Mayhap a traitorous one, at that.
No, the lady was fire and needed a like blaze in her bed.
Continuing his study, Leo lingered his stare on her modest décolletage. Smaller than he generally preferred, but—
“Did you have a good look?” she snapped.
He grinned. “I hadn’t finished.” He followed the cheeky retort with a wink.
Luminescent blue eyes formed round saucers, and he braced for a stinging rebuke.
And yet, this brief exchange alone should have proven that Lady Chloe neither said nor did what one might expect. With her lean arms stretched out, the lady hopped over to the wall. Then, borrowing support, she inched toward the nearest doorway.
He stared after her. Let her go. She is hardly your concern. In fact, he’d found what he’d come for—a list of meetings and appointments regarding controversial legislation was copied, dried, and tucked inside his flask. He was free to quit Waterson’s dull affair and seek out his naughty clubs, as all Society expected. It didn’t matter that he’d begun to tire of—
The lady stumbled. An inventive curse better suited to a sailor spilled past her lips. Language no lady of his acquaintance had ever uttered. Not even the rakes and scoundrels, for that matter.
And he, who’d believed himself incapable of any real expressions of mirth any longer, felt a smile pull. It instantly withered. Giving one last look of longing down the opposite hall, he sighed.
In three long strides, Leo closed the minimal distance she’d put between them.
Blue eyes filled with a proper wariness followed his every movement. “You again,” she muttered, laying her back to the wall.
Leo fell to a knee beside her. “Me again.”
She gasped. “What are you doing?” she demanded, indignation rich in her voice as he lifted her skirts.
Trim ankles. Delicious ones. Even with the left one’s swelling.
With the lady’s protestations ringing around the hall, Leo gently slid her slipper free. “I assure you,” he said drolly, “I’ve seen flesh of far more interest than your ankles.” It was the requisite rakish response, and yet, he’d sooner announce himself an agent for the Crown than confess to this inexplicable need to caress that innocent flash of skin.
Leo probed for a break.
A hiss exploded from Lady Chloe’s teeth.
He quickly stopped, looking up.
The young lady slumped against the wall. “In addition to more interesting flesh, do you have very much experience with assessing an injured ankle?” Her breath came in little spurts, as though they’d engaged in an evening of naughty pursuits in his bed. The thought conjured all manner of wicked pleasures he’d like to explore with the lady.
He took in her tense mouth and strained eyes. “Enough to know yours is, in fact, sprained, my lady,” he evaded, reassessing her left foot.
“It was a minor fall,” she protested. “Hardly significant enough to do any real dam—ahh,” she cried softly as he applied an assessing pressure.
Yes, badly sprained. “I’ve seen many a man shatter limbs from the slightest stumble.” He directed that very point to her lower limb.
“Many?”
He paused.
Bloody hell.
“Where would you see men shatter their limbs?” Curiosity wreathed the lady’s voice, and he slowly lifted his head.
What was it about the spitfire that made him careless? Or was it simply that the manner of women he kept company with didn’t notice details contained within one’s speech? He shuttered his expression. “On a dueling field,” he finally supplied. “I’ve known countless fools who’ve shown up drunk to a duel and didn’t have the wherewithal to keep steady on their feet.” It was a lie anyone in Polite Society would believe, and yet…
For all the times he should have been dueled at dawn and left with a bullet between the eyes for his sins, he’d never faced an angry husband. The extent of his chasing had been of suspects, in the darkest streets of London.
Lady Chloe made a noncommittal grunt.
“May I?” Not awaiting permission, he refocused on the lady’s ankle.
He’d learned back in his university days the manner of delights a man could know from a woman’s perfectly arched, delicate foot. He’d be wise to leave, and yet, as the expected scoundrel, he was free to stay.
Leo trailed his fingertips up the sole of her silk stocking-clad foot.
She giggled. “I-I did not hurt my foot,” she assured between her little gasping laughs. “Merely my ankle.”
Ignoring that declaration, he continued his search higher, ever higher. Leo guided Lady Chloe’s satin gown up about her knees, the noisy sound of ruffled satin as headily erotic as it had always been as he worked his exploring hand up her thigh.
The lady gasped. “My God, you are incorrigible,” she snapped. Laying her palms against his chest, she gave a firm shove.
Leo toppled back on his buttocks.
“Ascertaining if there was a sprain, my arse,” she muttered, dipping her tones into a pretend baritone that only husked her voice.
He briefly closed his eyes. The lady’s low contralto personified the perfect bedroom tones, a lush whisper that encouraged a man onward with his wicked designs. You bloody, pathetic fool. Lusting after a proper lady in the middle of a hallway where anyone might stumble upon you. Disgusted with himself, with this night, he let her skirts flutter back into place. “There is… a sprain,” he said tightly. And the tart-mouthed lady’s problem was her own. Abandoning her for a second time, Leo stalked down the hall, ready to put this damned night and the insolent slip behind him. When had he ever been a man to query after an injured miss? His work was reserved for the Crown, and nothing more commanded his attentions. The work he did was also what had sharpened his senses over the years, heightening his ability to see that which was around him… and hear.
That was why, as he turned into the next corridor, that the lady’s quick, rasping breaths reached him. Keep walking… keep walking…
Leo slowed his steps and then stopped. A battle raged in a conscience he’d erroneously believed had died long ago. He scrubbed his hands over his face. This is not the time to discover the last shred of morality in your worthless soul.
Bloody, bloody hell.
Wheeling around, he retraced his steps to the intersecting corridor.
Her shoulders slightly slumped and her fingers on the Earl of Waterson’s door handle, the lady borrowed support from the oak panel.
“You are determined to enter that room,” he called out, ringing a loud gasp from Lady Chloe.
The lady nibbled at her lower lip… her enticingly plump lower lip. “You again,” she said, the resignation meeting with that in her expressive eyes.
“Yes, me. Again. And now it would seem… again.” Because the world had gone insane. His returning not once, but now twice, was an incongruity that, at any other time, would have been easily explained as a product of too much alcohol and a hope to land a place in her bed. But with his last drink a single brandy that morn, there was no accounting for this madness. Leo stopped beside her. Reaching past her, he pressed the handle of the earl’s office. “Who was he?” He infused as much dry boredom as he could into the query. At her furrowed brow, he added, “The gentleman you are so determined to meet.” He glanced past her into the darkened room. “I didn’t take Waterson as one who’d dally with innocents in his offices, in the middle of his own ball, no less,” he said, more to himself.
Annoyance settled in his belly at the thought of that pairing. Only because it was an unlikely one. Because the vixen deserved a real man between her legs and not a nobleman who might or might not have been involved in a plot to overthrow the prime minister’s Cabinet.
“I already told you before. No. One.”
He snorted.
Lady Chloe angled her slightly too-pointy chin a notch. “Not every woman sneaking about is seeking an assignation.” His ears would have to be stuffed with cotton for him to fail to hear the lady’s stiff rebuke.
“That is precisely the only thing ladies,” regardless of station or degree of innocence, “seek.” That wasn’t altogether true. There had been one lady… his first, last, and only virgin, who’d desired more from him. His stomach muscles tightened as an unwanted and unwelcome remorse filled him… for a second time that night. What was it about Lady Chloe Edgerton that dragged forth those long-buried memories? Memories that he’d kicked ash and dirt upon until they were as black as Leo’s own soul?
As though the lady before him had followed the dark path his thoughts had traveled, she favored him with a frown. “If that is true—”
“It is,” he mumbled.
“Then you, my lord, have simply been keeping company with the wrong sorts of ladies.”
He looped an arm around her slender waist. “For the uses I have of them,” he said smoothly as he scooped her up, “I’ve been keeping company with the very perfect ones.”
The lady’s body trembled against his, and he reflexively drew her closer. “Wh-what are you doing?” she demanded, faintly breathless as she struggled against him.
“Worry not,” he drawled as he carried her inside Waterson’s office. “For all my sins, forcing myself upon uninterested ladies has never been one of them.” He’d enough black crimes to his name. Though the heart-shaped birthmark upon her neck, where her pulse raced, spoke of a lady more aware of him than fearful. “You need to stay off your foot, and I suspect… someone will eventually come for you.” And he intended to be far away when that proverbial search party went out for the missing lady. Or rather, he needed to be. The only thing that could make this night any more of a bloody disaster was Leo being discovered sneaking about.
The taut, white lines at the corners of her mouth and the strain in Lady Chloe’s eyes bespoke the pain she now silently suffered. That uncharacteristic quiet from one who’d chattered like a damned magpie earlier only stood as further proof of her misery.
Steadying his hold under her knees to keep from further jarring her injured ankle, Leo eased her into the folds of Waterson’s leather button sofa.
The lady clenched her eyes tightly and drew in slow, jerky breaths.
Leo hovered over her, hesitating, immobile. Why do I want to continue holding her close, dip my head, and explore the plump contours of her lips? His stomach lurched as unease churned low in his gut.
Because you are a damned rake. It would go against every code of being a scoundrel he’d ascribed to if he didn’t yearn for more from the warm, tempting beauty in his arms.
Lady Chloe’s endlessly long golden lashes fluttered open, revealing cerulean blue irises. “You should go,” she whispered, gathering his lapels. Was it a bid to push him back? Pull him closer? And why did he so very much want it to be the latter?
She remained motionless, her delicate palms upon him.
He swallowed hard. “Do you want that?” he asked, intending the rakish purr he’d perfected long ago. Instead, that question came guttural and pleading to his own ears. After all, what manner of rake would he be if he left without tasting her mouth? Why, word of his chivalry and chasteness would raise questions about his reputation… and…
With a groan, Leo lowered his head—
“My God, Tennyson, you damned scoundrel. Take your bloody hands off her.”
He froze, brow touching Lady Chloe’s. With a sickening dread slithering around his belly, Leo glanced from the corner of his eye to the doorway—to the crowd of four now gathered.
Oh, fuck.