Notorious Pleasures (Maiden Lane #2)(3)

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.

Except, as it happened, he’d had just the opposite reaction—and it wasn’t because he’d not reached completion with Bella, either. No, the prospect of being discovered by an irate husband, followed speedily by a bloody duel at dawn had cooled his ardor quite thoroughly, thank you. By the time he’d rolled out from under the settee, he’d been calm in both body and mind. Until, that is, he’d exchanged heated words with that holier-than-thou madam. His cock had seemed to look upon the argument as some kind of bizarre preamble to bedsport, despite the lady’s obvious respectability, her hostility to him, and his own instant dislike of her.

Griffin paused in a shadowed corner, trying to calm himself as he fingered the diamond earring in his pocket. He’d found the thing under the settee and had meant to give it back to Lady Perfect before her tart tongue had made him forget the trinket altogether. Well, served her right to lose her pretty earring if that was how she talked to gentlemen.

He rolled a shoulder. When he’d entered the ballroom half an hour ago, he’d not even had time to greet his mother and sisters before Bella had waylaid him with her naughty suggestion. Had he known her husband was attending the ball as well, he’d never have let himself be drawn into such a dangerous tryst.

Griffin sighed. But it was too late now for self-recriminations. Better to simply file the embarrassing episode under Things Best Forgotten as Soon as Possible and move on. Megs and Caroline probably didn’t care one way or the other that he’d disappeared, but Mater would no doubt be keeping an eagle eye out for him. No use in putting it off. With a last tug at his neckcloth to make sure it was straight, Griffin entered the ballroom.

Lights blazed from crystal chandeliers high overhead, illuminating a veritable crush. This would be the event of the season, and no member of London society wanted to miss it. Griffin began to weave his way through the mass of colorfully dressed bodies, his progress made slower by the frequent need to greet old friends and curious acquaintances.

“How kind of you to attend, darling,” a dry voice said at his elbow.

Griffin turned from a duet of simpering young matrons blocking his way and leaned down to kiss his mother on the cheek. “Ma’am. It’s good to see you.”

The words were rote, but not the sudden emotion behind them. He hadn’t been to London in almost a year, and it had been over eight months since his mother had visited him at the family estate in Lancashire. He tilted his head, studying her. Her fine hair, knotted elegantly under a lace cap, might have a few more gray threads, but otherwise her dear face was unchanged. Her brown eyes, bracketed with crinkled laugh lines, were far too intelligent, the soft-bowed mouth pursed to hide a fond smile, and the straight eyebrows were faintly arched in a perpetual amusement that matched his own.

“You’re as brown as a nut,” she murmured, reaching up to touch one finger to his cheek. “I suppose you’ve been out riding the lands.”

“Perceptive as always, my dear mater,” he said, offering his arm.

She linked her elbow with his. “And how is the harvest?”

A point of pain throbbed in his temple, but Griffin answered cheerfully, “Well enough.”

He felt her worried look. “Truly?”

“It was a dry summer, so the harvest was smaller than anticipated.” A pretty gloss on what in fact had been an abysmal harvest. Their land was not particularly fertile to begin with—something his mother already knew—but there was no point in making her fret. “We’ll do well with the grain, never fear.”

He was deliberately vague about what exactly he’d be doing with the grain. That was his burden to bear for his mother and the rest of the family.

His answer seemed to reassure her. “Good. Lord Bollinger is showing interest in Margaret, and she’ll need new gowns this season. I don’t want to overstretch our funds.”

“That’s not a problem,” he replied, even as he swiftly calculated in his head. It would be a near thing as always, but he should be able to get the monies—providing he suffered no further losses. The pain in his temple intensified. “Buy Megs all the fripperies she wants. The family purse can stand it.”