Later that evening

When Lord Alaric entered the drawing room, Lavinia’s eyes got round. “He’s even prettier than his prints,” she breathed.

“Pretty?” Willa took a look at the man, who was immediately surrounded by a circle of ladies. To her, he looked like a tiger someone was trying to fence in with rosebushes. It wasn’t going to confine the beast.

“No, not pretty,” Lavinia agreed, ogling Lord Alaric without shame. “He’s too large to be pretty. His chin is too strong.”

“Strong” was one word for it. Willa thought his chin looked stubborn. That was a quality she’d made up her mind to avoid in a husband. Stubbornness led to uncomfortable marriages.

Lord Alaric was enthralling in much the same way that tigers in the Royal Menagerie were. She liked to observe them, but wouldn’t dream of taking one home.

She leaned over and said in Lavinia’s ear, “Personally, I think the imminent demise of his pantaloons is more striking than his chin.” Lord Alaric’s thigh muscles were straining the silk in a manner that was remarkably eye-catching.

Indecorous, but eye-catching.

“Wil-la!” Lavinia said, choking with laughter. All the same, she flipped open her fan, and from behind its shelter, her eyes dropped below his waist. “If that’s the fashion in Russia, I approve,” she whispered back.

“I never before gave much thought to thighs,” Willa observed, “except perhaps those frog legs your mother served at her last dinner.”

“Frogs?” Lavinia yelped. “He’s no frog. Frogs are green and slimy.”

“With large thigh muscles,” Willa pointed out, laughing.

“I simply can’t believe Lord Alaric is under the same roof as I am,” Lavinia said breathlessly. “Just last week, The Morning Post reported that he was lost in the Russian Steppes. I knew it wasn’t true. He’s far too experienced a traveler to succumb to bad weather.”

“I remember the print you have of him caught in an Arctic ice storm,” Willa said.

“I left that at home,” Lavinia said. “I only brought one with me, showing him at the wheel of a ship, pursued by another flying the Jolly Roger. It’s a representation of Wilde Latitudes.”

Willa wrinkled her nose. “That title is a good example of why I haven’t read his books. What does that mean? He’s a latitude, all to himself?”

“No, just that his ship roamed the islands where pirates make their home.”

Willa laughed. “We should take out the print and make a close comparison. Perhaps we could ask Lord Alaric to stand in profile, holding a wheel, to make certain that your money hasn’t gone to waste.”

“We’d have to beat off his admirers.”

“And that’s far too much work.” Willa linked her arm with Lavinia’s and drew her in the opposite direction from Lord Alaric and his thorny tangle of admirers.

She disliked the hungry expression that had swept the room like a contagion when he walked in. Many ladies had clearly dressed for a hunt: Bodices couldn’t go any lower without a display of bellies better kept private. Patches had been applied to women’s faces with such abandon it was as if the skies had showered scraps of black silk.

Rather surprisingly, Lord Alaric didn’t seem to be basking in all that adoration. In fact, if she had to guess, she’d think he hated it.

She refused to be part of the frenzy—or allow him to think of Lavinia in that light either. What if Lavinia made up her mind to marry him? Not that Willa thought it was a good idea, given Lavinia’s infatuation. In her opinion, no woman should adore her husband; it led to flagrant abuses of power.

“Good evening, Mr. Fumble,” she said, smiling at the young man who stepped into their path.

He bowed. “Good evening, Miss Ffynche.” And, with a yearning look, “Miss Gray. I hope you are quite well.” When they’d met the day before, he’d promptly succumbed to Lavinia’s charms.

Lavinia, meanwhile, was making a half-hearted pretense at being overheated, so she could stare at Lord Alaric from behind her fluttering fan.

“Did you chance to read the Morning Chronicle at breakfast?” Willa inquired. “It was dated several days ago, but there were copies at the table this morning.”

Mr. Fumble blinked at her uncertainly. “His Grace invited us to a hunt this morning, but I read the first page. Most of it. Some of it.”

Willa brought up the proposed Act for the Prevention of Vexatious Proceedings touching the Order of Knighthood, but it was clear that Mr. Fumble had no interest. He was, however, fascinated by the habits of red foxes. He was still lecturing them about fox tunnels when Lavinia interrupted.

“Lady Knowe is behind you, Willa,” she cried. “She has Lord Alaric with her, and I believe they are coming to speak to us!”

“I beg your pardon,” Willa said to Mr. Fumble, turning about. Lady Knowe, the duke’s sister, was a large-boned woman with a wry wit and an infectious laugh; since the duchess was expecting a child in the not-too-distant future, Lady Knowe was acting as her brother’s hostess. She had the family’s slashing eyebrows and height.

She was using that height to cut through a froth of ladies trying to cling to Lord Alaric. She looked like a mother duck striking out for land with a cluster of ducklings in tow.

When they all reached Willa’s side, Lady Knowe gave Miss Kennet and Lady Ailesbury such a hard-eyed glance that they actually fell back a step. Lady Helena Biddle seemed to be of tougher stuff, because she clung obstinately to Alaric’s other arm.

“Lady Biddle,” Lady Knowe said in an awful voice, “I trust that you will unhand my nephew. I am waiting.”

“We are reuniting,” she replied, with a touch of desperation. “I haven’t seen Lord Wilde for such a long time!”

“Lord Wilde is a fictional character,” Lady Knowe retorted. “As such, you may reunite in your imagination, which doubtless is the wellspring of many such enthralling encounters. I wish to introduce my nephew, Lord Alaric, to these young ladies.”

Lady Knowe was the closest thing there was to a queen at this distance from London, so Lady Biddle acknowledged herself beaten and fell back a few steps.

“Miss Willa Ffynche and Miss Lavinia Gray,” Lady Knowe said. “May I introduce Lord Alaric Wilde? Alaric, these are two of my favorite young ladies, other than our family members.”

“Good evening, Lord Alaric,” Willa said and, to his aunt, “I was fortunate enough to meet your nephew over tea, Lady Knowe.”

“It is a true pleasure to meet you, Lord Alaric,” Lavinia said. “I find your work most enthralling.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Lord Alaric didn’t assume the glazed look of admiration most men got when Lavinia brought her most dazzling smile into play, but perhaps he was a slow starter.

It would help to give him the full force of Lavinia’s charm and beauty.

“Mr. Fumble was just giving us an account of this morning’s hunt,” Willa said to Lady Knowe, turning her shoulder and leaving Lavinia to dazzle the explorer.

“We were all very sorry,” Lady Knowe said to Mr. Fumble. “I blame it entirely on your mount. The duke should clear his stables of horses that are so difficult to handle.”

It seemed Mr. Fumble had taken a tumble. Willa managed to keep that poetic sentence to herself. For some reason, she was wrestling with a rebellious streak as regards ladylike conversation. Likely it was just a response to the Season.

She and Lavinia had presented a resolutely ladylike front for months, saving all commentary, ribald and otherwise, for home. Or, if it couldn’t wait, for whispered conversations in the ladies’ retiring room.

Now she felt like sighing, shrugging, disagreeing, and disobeying all the self-imposed rules that had turned their first Season into such a success. But to give in to that impulse would be disastrous. The “real” Willa would be an unwelcome shock to most of her suitors, who wouldn’t have imagined that she wore spectacles while reading—or that she loved bawdy jokes.

“I agree,” Mr. Fumble said stiffly. “My mount was deaf to all persuasion and refused to take a hedge that any decent pony could have managed.”

“I trust you weren’t injured?” Willa asked, putting on a sympathetic expression.

“He went arse over teakettle into a stream,” Lady Knowe answered. “Which broke his fall, no doubt.”

This proved such a terrific insult that the gentleman gave her a huffy scowl and stomped off.

Glancing at Lavinia, Willa saw that things were not going as well as they might. Her friend was gazing at Lord Alaric precisely as one might imagine Pygmalion gazed at his statue before it came alive.

Silently.

The statue likely didn’t notice, but Lord Alaric was looking restless.

Lady Knowe obviously came to the same conclusion. “Your older brother tells me that you claim to have never met a single cannibal, Alaric,” she said. “I meant to tell you that Wilde in Love is riveting. I enjoyed every moment of it.”

Lord Alaric’s eyes darkened. “While I am sorry to disappoint you, Aunt, I am unacquainted with cannibals.”

“Oh, come, come,” Lady Knowe cried. “You could find a cannibal if you tried hard enough. I would chase one down, were I you. Wilde in Love has led your readers to expect just such an account. Explorers mustn’t be cowardly.”

Looking at the brutal contour of Lord Alaric’s jaw, Willa thought it most unlikely that cowardice played a part in his decisions, or for that matter, that a cannibal would be able to catch him unawares.

Lavinia was staring dreamily at his profile, ignoring the conversation.

Willa gave her a surreptitious pinch. The man was only a man, no matter how many books he had written.

No matter how beautiful and powerful and rich he was.

Or dazzling.

He was only a man.

“Lavinia and I had a diverting conversation about that subject this very afternoon,” she said. “We were wondering whether cannibals from different tribes would be allowed to marry if one had previously enjoyed a feast that included a relative of the other.”

“How grisly,” Lady Knowe exclaimed. “I can say categorically that I would never marry someone who had ingested a relative.”

“If we believe Hamlet,” Lavinia said, coming to life as if she were Pygmalion’s statue, “the dust of our ancestors is everywhere. We’re likely drinking it in these glasses of sherry.”

“That’s most unlikely, considering that our ancestors were not Spanish,” Willa pointed out. “I’m pretty sure this is Amontillado wine.”

“I have a Spanish great-aunt,” Lady Knowe said, grinning. She raised her glass. “I’ll have to change my mind about eating relatives. To Aunt Margarida!”

“But what if your relatives were more corporeal than dusty?” Willa asked.

Lord Alaric’s eyes glittered under their heavy lids but he said nothing. Willa hadn’t the faintest idea what he was thinking.

“Lord Alaric,” she asked—again—“what do you think about the possibility of a union between members of warring cannibal tribes?”

“The likelihood would change from tribe to tribe,” he answered. “The respective reasons for the practice of cannibalism would be important. For example, some cultures view dog meat as a delicacy, while others view eating it as unthinkable.”

“Are you saying that for some tribes, cannibalism might be just an efficient way to dispatch of an enemy while putting supper on the table?” Lavinia asked. “That wasn’t my understanding.”

“You are both morbid!” Lady Knowe exclaimed. “What has happened to young ladies? In my day they understood a great deal about needlework and hardly anything else.”

“In some cultures, sacred animals are never eaten because they are believed to be incarnations of gods,” Lord Alaric put in. “In another, the same animal might be eaten daily.”

Willa was in the grip of an overwhelming urge to prove him wrong—somehow, anyhow. Unfortunately she knew nothing about sacred animals.

“My father viewed his hunting dogs as sacred,” Lavinia said, “but my mother could not abide the way they would cluster around his chair at supper. Talking of sacred objects, Lord Alaric, I gather this locket is not symbolic of a lost love? Lady Knowe was kind enough to give me one.” She held up her locket.

“I’m afraid no meaning can be attached to that object, other than my aunt’s reckless inclination to part with money.”

Lady Knowe gave an exaggerated sigh. “Your lockets are beautifully designed, decorated on both sides, and so pretty, Alaric darling. Everyone adores them.”

“Do you have a locket as well?” he asked Willa, his voice forbidding.

She had the idea that people usually quaked in fear at the mere hint of his disapproval. If so, she was just the person to acquaint him with a new emotion.

“I didn’t qualify,” she answered, giving him a sunny smile.

He frowned. “What were the qualifications?”

“Devotion,” Willa said. “When Lady Knowe disclosed her purchases, there was very nearly a squabble.”

“Like bulldogs fighting for territory,” Lavinia put in, her eyes gleaming with laughter. “I assure you, Lord Alaric, that my possession of this locket was hard won.”

“I had to establish rules,” Lady Knowe explained. “Every locket went to a true devotee. Though some people had already bought their own.” She coughed delicately. “Helena Biddle owns a replica made from true gold.”

“What were the rules?” Lord Alaric was definitely grinding his teeth.

Almost … almost Willa felt sorry for him. But if he disliked his own fame that much, he shouldn’t have written books about himself.

“Lady Knowe held a contest,” Lavinia explained. “The questions were all drawn from your work. Oh, and the play, of course.”

“You surprise me, Aunt,” he said. “I didn’t have the idea that you read my books so carefully.”

“Oh, I didn’t come up with the questions,” Lady Knowe said blithely. “I went to the nursery for that. The children are forever acting out your adventures. They know the books by heart.”

He looked even more taken aback. “The children are reading my work? I visited the nursery this morning, but no one said a word.”

“Your father commanded that they not pester you on your first day home. Believe me, they have memorized every sentence. Their poor long-suffering governess has read the books over and over at bedtime. In fact, that might be one of the reasons why she left. We haven’t found a new one yet.”

Willa swallowed another grin. Lord Alaric had the look of a man contemplating a flight to the nearest port, perhaps to set sail for cannibal country.

“The children haven’t seen the play, but Leonidas gave them a thorough account on his last trip home from Oxford,” Lady Knowe continued. “Betsy does a fine, if somewhat histrionic, rendition of the missionary’s daughter declaring her love just before she is captured by the cannibals.”

Lord Alaric subtly shifted his weight. Willa guessed that he was irritated to the bone by the whole discussion, by the news about his siblings, by the lockets, and most of all, by the play itself. Every mention of it put a deep furrow on his forehead.

But he was too polite to explode before his aunt. It was rather adorable, actually.

“Are you more nettled by Wilde in Love, or by the missionary’s daughter’s untimely death?” she asked.

“They are one and the same,” he answered. “Both of them sprang up like a weed while I was abroad.”

“That makes the play sound like a black eye,” she commented, enjoying the way a muscle was jumping in his jaw. “As if it happened when you weren’t noticing. Explained by running into a door in the dark, that sort of thing.”

“It did happen while I wasn’t noticing—or rather, not even in the country. My brother tells me that the wretched playwright hasn’t even had the courage to acknowledge the piece. No one knows who he is.”

“Are you planning to shut down the production?” Lavinia asked. “I would appreciate advance notice, because my mother hasn’t allowed us to see it yet.”

He looked to Willa inquiringly.

“Lady Gray disapproves of the fact that your enthusiasm for your beloved is expressed in heated terms,” she told him.

It was clear Lord Alaric had no trouble interpreting what she meant because he scowled. “It’s reprehensible to stage a play about a living person, especially one that’s no more than a mess of inaccuracies and apparently lewd ones at that.”

Lavinia turned to Willa. “We must insist on attending it as soon as we return to London.”

“You’ll pay upwards of ten guineas for each ticket,” Lady Knowe warned.

“We could just visit the nursery,” Willa pointed out. “Request a command performance from actors with true knowledge of the hero.”

“It’s not fair to call the play entirely inaccurate,” Lady Knowe said to her nephew. “Act One begins with two boys playing at sword fighting. You and North, pretending to be a king and a warrior. I remember those bouts quite well.”

“I see.”

A quiet voice, Willa was discovering, did not necessarily mean that the man who possessed that voice was less dangerous than a man who bellowed.

She had thought that Lord Alaric was irritated by the play, but now—on hearing that true details of his life were playing out on the stage—his expression became truly forbidding.

“How cross you look! You oughtn’t to be,” Lady Knowe said. “Wilde in the Andes sold every single copy on the first day, and everyone says that part of its success must be put up to the triumph of Wilde in Love.”

Ouch.

“I suppose it is taxing to have so many admirers,” Willa said, changing the subject.

At that moment she made the unsettling discovery that not only was Lord Alaric outrageously handsome, but his eyes were nearly … irresistible.

The very idea made her feel a little ill.

The man was notorious.

Notorious. Whereas she was an adamantly private person.

Yet here she was, smiling at him with practically the same fervor that had driven Lavinia to spend her pin money buying those prints.

“I expect Lady Gray is looking for us,” she said.

Lord Alaric didn’t glance around the room, but his expression suggested that Lavinia’s mother would have appeared at their side if she wished to interrupt the conversation.

Likely he was unaccustomed to women cutting a conversation short.

“Are you disappointed?” Willa asked Lavinia, when they were out of earshot of Lord Alaric and his aunt. “So often an idol turns out to be unsatisfactory in person. You remember what a shock Mr. Chasuble, the Oxford philosopher, was.”

“You were put off by the luxurious black hair growing from his ears,” Lavinia agreed. “But did you see a single objectionable physical detail about Lord Alaric? Because I did not.”

“No,” Willa admitted. In fact, she still felt the shock of his raw earthy charm in her whole body.

It wasn’t something she would have anticipated, but—she reminded herself—it simply meant she was a member of the female sex.

And if she told herself that a few more times, she might actually believe it.

“Alas, I think he’s too masculine for me,” Lavinia said thoughtfully. “Too perfect.”

“He’s not perfect,” Willa objected. “He has a scar on his forehead as well as the one on his cheek; did you see it?”

“I don’t mean physically. He’s intelligent and yet there’s something almost brutal about him. I’ve lost the desire to love him madly.” She looked disappointed.

“Isn’t it more comfortable this way?” Willa inquired. “It’s not as if you’d want to become an explorer’s wife, Lavinia. Remember how seasick you became from rowing on the Thames.”

“True!” Lavinia said, her natural optimism asserting itself. “I’ll have to find someone to take my collection of prints. I don’t want them, now that I’ve met him.” She wrinkled her nose. “It would be odd to have him on my bedchamber wall.”

Willa had never, ever thought of buying a print of Lord Wilde. Or rather, Lord Alaric.

Of course she didn’t want Lavinia’s prints. “Right,” she said, “they should be easy enough to give away. Let’s find your mother.”

“He knew that that was an excuse,” Lavinia said. “I know you don’t think much of his books, but I promise you that Lord Wilde’s accounts are more captivating than you have assumed.”

“I am sure you are correct,” Willa said. Leaving it at that.

A footman presented a tray with glasses of sickly sweet ratafia. “I wish that young ladies were allowed to drink more than a single glass of sherry,” Lavinia said with a sigh.

“The Season is over,” Willa pointed out. “We can allow ourselves some leeway.” She sent the footman off for sherry instead.

“It’s a good thing Mother didn’t overhear you,” Lavinia said, very entertained.

“You’re not alone in your aversion to ratafia. I feel the same way about the drink as Diana does about Lord Roland.”

“Just look at Diana now,” Lavinia said. “She is in anguish.”

Willa’s imagination was a pale, stunted twig in comparison to Lavinia’s bountiful creativity, and as such she tended to discount Lavinia’s more fanciful opinions. But she obediently turned to look across the drawing room at Diana, trying to decipher signs of anguish.

They had spent a good deal of time together during the Season, since Diana and Lavinia were distant cousins, but somehow Willa never felt she got to know Diana. At the moment, she looked pale, but then Diana had a porcelain complexion. After Lord Roland fell in love at first sight, general opinion declared that her complexion must have played a signal role.

“She may have slept badly,” Willa suggested.

Lavinia shook her head. “It’s monstrously unfair that she caught Lord Roland when she obviously doesn’t want him. I wish a future duke would fall in love with my complexion. It’s such a pure emotion. I suspect most of the men who offered for me have far more indelicate inclinations.”

Willa agreed. Lavinia’s suitors had trouble keeping their eyes off her chest, and for good reason. “I watched Lord Roland talking to Diana at breakfast, and his motives are definitely not pure. His eyes were quite desirous.”

“Thank you!” Lavinia said to the footman, who had returned with sherry. “We can’t rule out the possibility that he was experiencing lust for her wig rather than her person,” she told Willa, with a wrinkle of her nose. “I don’t think I could bear to be with a man who took his attire so seriously.”

Lord Roland was certainly a peacock, from his golden heels to his tall wig. This evening he was wearing a coat of silver silk with cherry twill. The combination would have made most men look effeminate, but the violent black slashes of his eyebrows saved him. In fact, in an odd way that bouffant wig just made him more masculine.

“I have the impression that he wears lip rouge,” Lavinia added.

His lordship had a deep ruby lip, but it might be natural. “He has the courage to do so,” Willa acknowledged. “I’ve never seen a man in a wig that high.”

“He must have acquired it in Paris,” Lavinia said. “Mother doesn’t approve—although if he’d fallen in love with my complexion she would have changed her mind—but I must say that he carries it off.”

Lord Roland was a beautiful animal, and any woman in his vicinity would find her eyes resting on him pleasurably.

His brother was just as beautiful. But Lord Alaric was rougher. Untamed. Their features were equally pleasing, she supposed. But somehow the same jaw on Lord Alaric looked harsher, more stubborn.

More troublesome for anyone in his life, such as his wife. It was just as well that she hadn’t the faintest wish to audition for the role.

“We can’t join my mother until we finish the sherry, so we ought to talk to Diana,” Lavinia said. “Since she’s over there by herself. Again.”

Sure enough, Diana was standing with her shoulder turned to the room, staring out the darkened window with passionate interest. Enough to make it clear that she did not care for company.

“I’ll join you after a visit to the ladies’ retiring room,” Willa said. “Just imagine what a fuss there will be if she changes her mind about the marriage, given that this entire house party is in honor of her betrothal.”

“You may be a natural philosopher, Willa—and I’m still not certain what that entails—but I can read faces,” Lavinia said. “I could make a fortune if I set up a stall at the fair. My cousin is in despair.”

Diana’s expression was indeed curiously tragic, as if she’d prefer wearing sackcloth and ashes to a Parisian gown covered with ruffles and bows … to say nothing of all the fruit pinned to the top of her wig.

“Her eyes resemble a basset hound’s,” Willa said thoughtfully. “A basset looks glum even if given a bone all to itself.”

“Lord Roland undoubtedly has a very fine bone,” Lavinia said, deadpan.

Willa choked with laughter. “You have no knowledge on that subject. He might have a twig, for all you know.”

“I’m telling you now, Willa, that if Diana breaks her engagement, I mean to see what that man has to offer. Under his wig, I mean, of course.”

“A shaved head,” Willa said blandly. “As bald as a nut. To go with his bone, of course.”

“Wil-la!”