Charlotte Featherstone - Pride & Passion

SUSSEX FOUND BLAKE’S CLUB to be, thankfully, empty at this time of the afternoon. Servants buzzed about, preparing tables in anticipation for the crowd that would shortly arrive and not leave until well into the early-morning hours. Soon, he and Black would depart before they could be observed by anyone who might know who they were, or might find interest in seeing them together.

Part of being a Guardian was not to let anyone know you were one, and that meant keeping a polite distance from one another. As far as anyone in the ton suspected, Sussex, Black and Alynwick were acquaintances through their Masonic Lodge, and through the nature of their peerage. Anything closer would not be assumed, for they took great pains to never be seen socializing outside of any tonnish or Freemasonry events. They especially did not meet at any of the fashionable clubs in Mayfair. For them, it was Blake’s in the remotest part of Bloomsbury. Mostly the clientele were poets and writers, and the odd actor. People whose thoughts were altruistic, not peers who were plagued by ennui and the constant stream of gossip that made the monotony of a title bearable.

“Where the hell could he be?” Sussex snarled before taking a sip of strong, bitter coffee which had grown cold in the half hour they had waited for the recalcitrant Marquis of Alynwick. The brew needed more sugar—he adored sugar. Having never been allowed it as a child he had developed something of a sweet tooth in adulthood. Dumping more spoonfuls into the mug, he stirred it, took a sip and slammed the cup down onto the table once more.

“Where is he?” he growled irritably.

The pressed news sheet across the table from him rolled down, and Black’s blue-green eyes peered out at him from beneath heavy brows. “He’s always tardy. Why are you surprised?”

“Because one would think that the matters we need to discuss would be a bit more important than his damned beauty sleep!”

Black had the nerve to grin before folding the paper and slapping it down onto his thigh.

“Damn him! Does Alynwick treat everything in his life with such indifference?”

“He informed me yesterday afternoon that he had planned to do a bit of reconnaissance work last night. Perhaps it was a late evening.”

Sussex snorted in indignation. “There can be nothing worth exploring at a ball that will aid us in our case to find Orpheus.”

“Oh, I would most certainly disagree with that.”

Sussex glanced up in time to watch the debauched and unshaven Marquis of Alynwick flop inelegantly into a leather club chair. “Coffee,” he groaned as the waiter approached the table. “God, yes. Nectar of the gods, isn’t it?” he said as the waiter poured his cup full of the black brew.

“Cream or sugar?”

“Just black, if you please.”

With a nod, the servant was on his way, leaving them alone.

“Devil of a headache, I take it, then?” Black asked as he raised his own cup to his lips.

“Devil? And a few more metaphors that aren’t fit for priggish ears.” He gave Sussex a meaningful glance. Apparently he was the prig. The thought bristled, especially when he thought of Lucy and her accusations that he was a cold, boring aristocrat with no fire in his soul. What did the bloody pair of them know, anyway? His breast was on fire for want of her, and his soul … it was filled with an unholy lust that would never be satiated. Lucy Ashton would never discover for herself the amount of passion he kept hidden beneath his proper facade.

“You’re late.” His coffee cup hit the table with more force than he intended, but damn it, he was in something of a mood today, and could not shake it. One would think that after being shut out of Lucy’s life for the past two weeks, one would be somewhat more civil. Yet as each day passed he was becoming increasingly more intolerable—and short-tempered.

Alynwick, he surmised, must be used to his outbursts, because he merely raised his dark eyebrow and made a grand show of leisurely sipping away at his coffee. “You have pent-up lust, Sussex. Get yourself a woman. You’ll be right as rain after it, I swear it.”

As usual, Alynwick’s answer to everything was sex.

“I have no need of your solicitation, Alynwick.”

“No?” the marquis said with a grin. “Come now, Sussex, you’re a healthy male, living like a monk. It can’t be healthy.”

He didn’t need any reminders that he hadn’t bedded in a woman in … good God, months! Almost a year, he reminded himself. When Lucy Ashton and her flamered hair had flitted past him, robbing him of breath, speech and rational thought. She’d been a compulsion to him ever since, and every woman he’d seen or met since paled against her.

“Well?” he asked irritably, when he could no longer stomach the marquis’s antics, or his pitiful one-sided longing for Lucy. “What did you find out on this supposed reconnaissance mission of yours?”

Alynwick shrugged and crossed his leg over his knee, while his fingers fiddled with a loose thread on his sleeve. “That the new Lady Larabie has the mouth of a pinched fish, and her bosom, which has been much touted, is nothing but the sham of a rather imaginative, yet very hardworking corset.”

Groaning in frustration, Sussex sent a pleading glance to Black in hopes the earl could knock some sense into Alynwick. Everything was such a damned jest with him. He cared for nothing but frivolities and women, and to hell with anything else.

“Really?” Black drawled. “A feigned bosom? Poor Larabie. To be drawn in and duped by an artfully arranged décolletage.”

“Hang Larabie, and bosoms,” Sussex snarled. Alynwick, with that devil’s twinkle in his eye, slunk deeper into his chair and stared at him.

“Bosoms, Sussex, are the sustenance of the world. How can you not be a devoted follower? I myself find I can be led quite merrily about by a fine pair of—”

“Alynwick …” he warned.

“Is this strange aversion of yours to the discussion of breasts in particular, or is it because the ravishing Lady Lucy has but a rather modest bosom?”

“You ass!” he hissed, and jumped up from his chair with his hand fisted, and his arm pulled back, ready to plant a facer on the marquis. Laughing, Alynwick held up his hands pleading with mock horror.

“My God, you’re like a baited bear. Sit, you oaf, before you spill my coffee. I swear you’ve lost your sense of humor. This girl has all but sucked it out of you—well, not sucked per se—”

“Watch your tongue,” Sussex growled in a deep voice, “or I’ll pull it out of your mouth for you.”

“My, such a strong reaction. I see you’re still moonfaced over the girl. Disgusting what love does to a perfectly healthy and virile man. And what are you smiling about over there?” Alynwick asked, making Black’s grin vanish. “You’re no better, the way you’ve been barricaded in your town house with your new wife.”

“Mmm, yes, and if you dare say anything about my wife’s bosom, I will flatten you right here. Understood?”

“Good Lord, I’m surrounded by prigs.”

“You’ll be surrounded by a pool of blood—your own—if you don’t get on with it, Alynwick,” Sussex growled. He was in no mood for this type of banter before, and he certainly wasn’t now. How dare Alynwick have sized up Lucy, and found her lacking? Damn the man, she had a perfectly lovely bosom, and he should know, he’d spent months staring at it, and wondering how perfect her breasts were beneath her tight-fitting bodices, and if her nipples were coral or pale pink, and how they might tighten with the graze of his thumb, the tip of his tongue …

God, he was unraveling. The sooner he could quit the conversation, the better. Alynwick had always been a terrible influence on him.