Diane Gaston - Rumours in the Regency Ballroom - Scandalising the Ton / Gallant Officer, Forbidden Lady

Dear God, she could not possibly want to couple with him again, not when she was hiding that this child was his.

“You need not have an attack of conscience or duty or whatever it is that men have,” she said to him in an angry voice, although the anger was at herself for her weakness, not at him. “It is quite all right with me if you forget this matter.”

He met her gaze and she thought she saw a wounded look in his eyes. “I have done nothing to deserve your bitter tone.”

Her cheeks flamed at the truth of his statement, but she recovered quickly. “Nothing?” She hit him with the one dishonourable thing he had done. “I asked you not to call upon me again, and you break into my home like a thief.”

“I did it to find out about the child,” he shot back, taking a step towards her, coming so close she caught the clean scent of lime soap on his skin.

She held her ground with difficulty. “Is it so hard to believe that this baby is my husband’s?”

His voice turned so low it vibrated inside her. “It is when I know there is a chance it is mine.”

“Believe me, Adrian,” she whispered, “it is not so easy for me to conceive a child that I would conceive after one time.” At least it had not been that easy with Wexin. She softened her tone. “Take your leave. You have done enough by coming here. There is nothing I need from you.”

To her surprise, he reached out to her and gently touched her arm. “Forgive me for not knowing. I have been abroad. They say you have been a recluse. Are you not going out at all? Is there no one who has renewed acquaintance with you?”

She was startled by his concern. Besides Lord Levenhorne calling today, and the occasional bank representative, no one but Adrian had called upon her. “No member of the ton wishes to see their name in the newspapers, I suspect.”

He frowned. “You must not allow the newspapers to make you a prisoner in your house. Go where you please and ignore them.”

He could say that with ease. He was not the one followed about, or stopped on the street and asked rude questions.

She glanced at his hand, still upon her arm, then back at him. “I am not certain I should heed advice from an intruder.”

He did not take the hint and release her. “Then accept the advice as from a friend,” he said. “Our connection may be brief and…unusual, but enough for me to be concerned for your welfare. I am here, if you need me. I will come, if you need me to.”

She held her breath.

His words felt like a proposition, an invitation to seduction. His touch melted her like a flame melts wax. She felt she would only have to put her arms around his neck and her lips against his and in a moment they would be making love on the settee. God help her, she did need him. She needed to feel him hold her with strong arms, needed to run her hands up his firm chest, to dig her fingers into his hair. She needed to feel him fill her again, as a man fills a woman. She trembled with need.

But she backed away. “I need nothing from you.”

He stared at her, a hint of pain in his angry eyes. Her guilt escalated. Obviously he had not shared her carnal thoughts.

He swung away and started walking towards the door. It felt the same as when he had left her before, loneliness engulfing her.

He reached the door and turned back to her. “I will trouble you no further.”

As he disappeared into the dark hallway, she collapsed in her chair and placed her hand over where his baby grew.

Adrian went straight to Madame Bisou’s, a gaming hell he knew on Bennet Street. He and Tanner had often spent a night at the tables there, and Adrian had been known to flirt with the pretty girls Madame Bisou employed.

When he walked into the gaming room looking more for a drink than a seat at a table, a voice greeted him. “Pomroy!”

A flaming red-haired young woman wearing a dress of ice blue ran over to him and grabbed his arm.

“Katy Green.” He kissed her on the cheek. “But it is not Pomroy. It is Cavanley.”

She laughed. “I forgot. Sir Reginald told me about you being called lord now.”

She released him and examined him with her elbows akimbo and a line creasing her forehead. “I declare, you look healthy enough. I thought you must be very ill. You have not been here in an age.”

He had not been to Madame Bisou’s since the previous spring, and it seemed a lot had happened since then. “I’ve been in France.” France was as good an explanation as any.

She grinned at him and winked. “Wait until Madame Bisou hears. You will make her homesick.”

The closest the madame , born Penny Jones, had come to France had been drinking a bottle of champagne and he and Katy both knew it.

Katy took his arm again and escorted him through the room where the tables were covered with green baize. Three of the walls were lined with faro and hazard tables. Against the fourth wall one of the girls served drinks.

“What are you looking to play tonight?” Katy asked him. “Faro? Hazard?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fool’s games.” Luck, not skill, made winners in hazard and faro, and luck always favoured the house. “What I really want is a brandy.”

“Brandy!” she cried. “Come with me.”

He was soon sipping the burning liquid, but it failed to ease the hard rock of emotion inside him.

He’d done his duty by offering to marry Lydia. He ought to be glad he’d escaped marriage. The parson’s mousetrap, he and Tanner used to call it, but it nagged at him that she did not think him worthy of marrying. A libertine , she had called him. And she wanted nothing to do with him.

It also nagged at him that she’d not actually denied that the child was his. He only knew she did not wish him to be her husband. Why had she not accepted his proposal? He was wealthy. He came from a good family.

Adrian finished the brandy, took another, and answered his own question. She had no wish to be married to a libertine .

He could not blame her for that opinion of him. He’d cultivated the reputation of a rake, even if it had never been entirely accurate. He did not trifle with women’s hearts. His liaisons with women involved mutual desire, and their partings were mostly amicable.

He finished the second brandy in one gulp and asked for another.

Katy’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, ho, you are thirsty tonight.”

He extended his glass again for the girl to refill. “Very thirsty. Thirsty enough to get thoroughly drunk.”

“Oooh. That must mean a problem with the ladies.”

He downed the third glass and thrust his hand out once more. “Have you not heard, Katy Green? Libertines do not have problems with ladies.”

At a proper morning hour, Samuel Reed waited in a small parlour off the hall of Lord Levenhorne’s townhouse, a place where, undoubtedly, tradesmen and other men who toiled for a living waited for his lordship. Samuel did not resent it. He was only grateful that he had not been summarily ejected.

After at least a quarter of an hour, a footman entered. “Lord Levenhorne will see you now.”

Samuel was led to the library, where Lord Levenhorne sat behind an elegant desk with thin carved legs and made of some dark wood—mahogany or oak, perhaps.

“Mr Reed, m’lord,” the footman said before bowing and leaving the room.

When Levenhorne looked up, Samuel bowed as well. “Thank you for seeing me, my lord.”

“What business do you have with me, Reed? Your card tells me you are from that New Observer paper.” Lord Levenhorne sounded none too pleased.

But he had agreed to see Samuel, so that gave him courage. “If you read my paper, sir, you will know that I am following the story of Lady Wexin—”