Chapter One
Once upon a time, in a land quite on the other side of the world, there lived a queen both beautiful and wise. She was called Ravenhair….
—from Queen Ravenhair
LONDON, ENGLAND
OCTOBER 1737
The daughter of a duke learns early in life the proper etiquette for nearly everything. What dish to serve roasted larks in. When to acknowledge a rather risqué dowager countess and when to give her the cut direct. What to wear while boating down the Thames, and how to fend off the tipsy advances of an earl with very little income at the picnic afterward.
Everything, in fact, Lady Hero Batten reflected wryly, but how to address a gentleman coupling vigorously with a married lady not his own.
“Ahem,” she tried while gazing fixedly at the molded plaster pears on the ceiling overhead.
The two people on the settee appeared not to hear her. Indeed, the lady gave a series of loud animal squeals from under the skirts of her atrocious puce-and-brown-striped gown, which had been flipped up to cover her face.
Hero sighed. They were in a dim little sitting room off the library of Mandeville House, and she was regretting choosing this particular room in which to fix her stocking. Had she picked the blue Oriental room, her stocking would be straight by now and she’d already be back in the ballroom—far away from this embarrassing predicament.
She lowered her eyes cautiously. The gentleman, wearing an anonymous white wig, had discarded his embroidered satin coat and was laboring atop the lady in his shirtsleeves and a brilliant emerald waistcoat. His breeches and smallclothes were loosened to facilitate his endeavors, and every now and again a flash of muscled buttock was visible.
Sadly, she found the sight mesmerizing. Whomever the gentleman was, his physical attributes were quite… astonishing.
Hero tore her gaze away to look longingly at the door. Really, few would find fault with her should she turn and tiptoe from the room. That was exactly what she would’ve done when she’d first entered had she not passed Lord Pimbroke not two minutes before in the hallway. For, as it happened, Hero had noted the atrocious puce-and-brown-striped gown earlier in the evening—on Lady Pimbroke. Much as Hero was loath to embarrass herself, her own feelings were not, in the end, as important as the possibility of a duel and subsequent injury or death to two gentlemen.
Having come to this conclusion, Hero nodded once, took off one diamond earbob, and lobbed it at the gentleman’s backside. She’d always quietly prided herself on her aim—not that she used it much in everyday life—and she was rather gratified to hear a yelp from the male.
He swore and turned, looking at her over his shoulder with the most glorious pale green eyes she’d ever seen. He wasn’t a handsome man—his face was too broad across the cheekbones, his nose too crooked, and his mouth too thin and cynical for true masculine beauty—but his eyes would draw any female, young or old, from across a room. And once drawn, their gaze would linger on the look of arrogant male virility he wore as naturally as he breathed.
Or perhaps it was merely the, er, circumstances that gave him the look.
“D’you mind, love?” he drawled, the anger in his expression having changed to faint amusement when he’d caught sight of her. His voice was gravelly and completely unhurried. “I’m busy here.”
She could feel heat suffusing her cheeks—really, this was an impossible situation—but she met his gaze, making quite sure hers did not wander lower. “Indeed. I had noticed, but I thought you should know—”
“Unless you’re the type who likes to watch?”
Now her face was aflame, but she wasn’t about to let this… this wretch get the better of her verbally. She allowed her gaze to drop swiftly and scornfully down over his rumpled waistcoat and shirt—fortunately the tail hid his open breeches—and back up. She smiled sweetly. “I prefer entertainments in which I’m not in danger of falling asleep.”
She expected her insult to anger him, but instead the rogue tutted.
“Happens a lot to you, does it, sweetheart?” His voice was solicitous, but a sly dimple appeared beside his wide lips. “Falling asleep just as the fun’s about to begin? Well, don’t blame yourself. Like as not, it’s the gentleman’s fault, not yours.”
Good God, no one ever spoke to her like this!
Slowly, awfully, Hero arched her left brow. She knew it was slow and awful because she’d practiced the movement in front of a mirror for hours on end at the age of twelve. The result made seasoned matrons tremble in their heeled slippers.
The devilish man didn’t turn a hair.
“Now, as it happens,” he drawled obnoxiously, “my ladies don’t have that problem. Stay and watch—it’ll prove instructive, I guarantee. And if I have any strength left over after, maybe I’ll demonstrate—”
“Lord Pimbroke is in the hallway!” she blurted before he could finish his dastardly thought.
The mound of puce-and-brown-striped skirts quaked. “Eustace is here?”
“Quite. And heading this way,” Hero informed Lady Pimbroke with only a touch of satisfaction.
The gentleman exploded into action. He was up and off the lady and throwing down her skirts to hide her pale, soft thighs before Hero could even blink. He caught up his coat, made one swift, appraising glance about the room, and turned to Hero, his voice still unhurried. “Lady Pimbroke has torn a ribbon or lace or some such thing, and you’ve kindly consented to help her.”
“But—”
He placed his forefinger against her lips—warm, large, and quite shockingly inappropriate. At the same time, a male voice called from the hallway.
“Bella!”
Lady Pimbroke—or Bella—squeaked in fear.
“There’s a good girl,” the rogue whispered to Hero. He turned to Lady Pimbroke, bussed her on the cheek, and murmured, “Steady on, darling,” before disappearing under the settee.
Hero had only a moment to watch Lady Pimbroke’s pretty, insipid face go ashen as she realized fully the peril she was in, and then the door to the sitting room crashed open.
“Bella!” Lord Pimbroke was big, reddened, and quite obviously intoxicated. He glanced belligerently around the room, his hand on his sword, but froze in consternation when he saw Hero. “My lady, what—?”
“Lord Pimbroke.” Hero casually stepped in front of the settee, obscuring a large masculine heel with her wide skirts.
She employed her left eyebrow.
Lord Pimbroke actually backed up a step—quite gratifying after the reception her eyebrow had received from the rogue—and stammered. “I… I…”
Hero turned to Lady Pimbroke, touching lightly the horrid yellow braiding on the elbow of her gown. “That’s fixed, I think, don’t you?”
Lady Pimbroke started. “Oh! Oh, yes, thank you, my lady.”
“Not at all,” Hero murmured.
“If you’re done here, m’dear,” Lord Pimbroke said, “then perhaps you’re ready to return to the ball?”
His words may have been a question, but his tone of voice most certainly was not.Lady Pimbroke took his arm rather sulkily. “Yes, Eustace.”
And with a perfunctory good-bye, the two left the room.
Almost immediately, Hero felt a tug upon her skirts. “Hist! I can hardly breathe under here.”
“They may return,” she said serenely.
“I think I can see up your skirt.”
She moved back hastily.
The rogue rolled out from under the settee and stood, towering over her.
Nonetheless, she glared down her nose at him. “You weren’t—”
“Now, now. If I was, do you really think I’d tell you?”
She sniffed, sounding rather like Cousin Bathilda at her most priggish. “No doubt you’d boast of it.”
He leaned over her, grinning. “Does the thought have you all hot and bothered?”
“Is your wig growing tight?” she asked politely.
“What?”
“Because I would think your swelled head would make it quite uncomfortable.”
His smile became a trifle grim. “My head isn’t the only thing out of proportion, I assure you. Maybe that’s why you came in here? To sneak a peek?”
She rolled her eyes. “You have no trace of shame, do you? Most men at least pretend to be abashed when caught in wrongdoing, but you—you strut about like a feckless cockerel.”
He paused in the act of donning his coat, one arm thrust out, the sleeve half on, and widened his beautiful green eyes at her. “Oh, of course. Moralizing. Naturally you must hold yourself superior to me when—”
“I saw you engaging in adultery!”
“You saw me engaging in a pleasant fuck,” he said with slow emphasis.
She flinched at the crudity but stood her ground. She was the daughter of a duke, and she would not flee from a man such as he. “Lady Pimbroke is married.”
“Lady Pimbroke has had numerous lovers before me and will have numerous lovers after me.”
“That does not forgive your sin.”
He looked at her and laughed—actually laughed—slow and deep. “And you are a woman without sin, is that it?”
She didn’t even have to consider the matter. “Naturally.”
His mouth twisted cruelly. “Such certainty.”
She stared, affronted. “Do you doubt me?”
“Oh, no, far from it. I believe absolutely that the thought of sin has never once crossed your perfect little mind.”
She tilted her chin, feeling a thrill of excitement—she’d never before argued with a gentleman, let alone a strange one. “And I begin to wonder if any thought of righteousness has ever crossed your shameless little mind.”
He watched her a moment, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Then he bowed abruptly. “I thank you for going against your own inclinations and saving me from having to kill Lord Pimbroke.”
She nodded stiffly.
“And I hope most fervently that our paths never cross again, my Lady Perfect.”
Unaccountably, Hero felt a pang of hurt at his dismissive words, but she made sure not to let the weak emotion show. “I will certainly pray that I never have to suffer your presence again, my Lord Shameless.”
“Then we are in agreement.”
“Quite.”
“Good.”
For a moment she stared at him, her breasts pressing against her stays with each too-fast breath, her cheeks hot with emotion. They’d drawn closer in the heat of their argument, and his chest nearly brushed the lace of her bodice. He stared back, his eyes very green in his loathsome face.
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
Her lips parted and for an endless second, she forgot to breathe.
He turned and strode to the door, disappearing into the dim hallway beyond.
Hero blinked and inhaled with a shudder as she looked dazedly around the room. There was a mirror hanging on the wall, and she crossed to it to peer at her reflection in the glass. Her red hair was still elegantly coiffed, her lovely silvery-green dress properly in place. Her cheeks were a little pinkened, but the color was becoming. Strangely, she didn’t appear all that changed.
Well. That was good.
She threw back her shoulders and swept from the room, her step graceful but quick. Tonight of all nights, it was important she present a serene, lovely, and perfect aspect, for tonight her engagement to the Marquess of Mandeville was to be announced.
Hero tilted her chin at the remembered sneer of the stranger as he’d mouthed the word perfect. What could he possibly have against perfection anyway?
GODDAMN ALL SELF-SATISFIED, perfect women—and that red-haired wench in the sitting room in particular!
Lord Griffin Reading, strode toward his brother’s ballroom in a foul mood. Damnable chit! She’d stood there disapproving and priggish and dared to look down her narrow nose at him. She’d probably never felt an honest human urge in her entire, too-sheltered life. The only sign of her embarrassment had been the pink blotches climbing her delicately pale throat as she stared at him. Griffin grunted. That censorious face should have caused any man’s pride to wilt.