Notorious Pleasures (Maiden Lane #2)(83)

“And to your wife, you mean.” The strange spell that had been between them broke. She shook her head. “I’d not take well to being a kept woman, I’m afraid, Thomas.”

“I can’t marry you, damn you,” he snarled.

He knew he wasn’t charming anymore. Wasn’t anything but ugly, but he couldn’t prevaricate. The emotion welled up in him too strongly.

“I know you can’t marry me,” she said, sounding almost bored. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t marry some other gentleman.”

His head jerked back, the blow more painful than his brother’s fist. “You will not!”

She raised her eyebrows. “Whyever not? You have no claim on me.”

“Damn you,” he hissed. He threw aside the silly cloth and grabbed her close. “Damn you!”

And he kissed her with all the desperation of a man with a torn and bloodied heart.

She tore her mouth away even as he delved beneath the amethyst silk wrapper. “This won’t solve anything, Thomas.”

“Might not,” he grunted as he licked her neck. “But it sure as hell will make me feel better.”

“Oh, Thomas,” she sighed, and since that didn’t sound like a rejection of any sort, he went ahead and did what he’d been wanting to do for months now.

Make love to Lavinia.

GRIFFIN WAS DOZING in one of his brother’s chairs when the front door of Mandeville House opened and closed. He jerked awake, rubbing at his face groggily.

He’d tried Thomas’s house the night before—after seeing the Duke of Wakefield—but Thomas had been out. When it was clear that his brother wasn’t returning home any time soon, Griffin had decamped to St. Giles.

This morning he’d come directly to Thomas’s house to catch his brother before he left for the day. Except Thomas, that most staid of bachelors, appeared to have spent the night out.

Curious.

Griffin peered into the hall.

There was Thomas, looking damnably grumpy, and with a nose the size of a turnip, speaking sharply to his butler. “I don’t care who has come to call. I’m not at home.”

“Not even for blood relations?” Griffin drawled.

Thomas swung violently in his direction and then winced and lifted a hand to his head as if it ached. “Especially not to bloody blood relations!”

He turned toward the stairs in dismissal.

Griffin was beside him in a couple of strides. “That’s just too damn bad, brother mine. You and I are overdue for a heart-to-heart.”

“Damn you,” Thomas started.

“No.” Griffin leaned into his brother’s face. “Not unless you want me hanging out your dirty laundry here and now and within earshot of the servants.”

Thomas eyed him sourly for a moment, then jerked his head toward the stairs and began climbing without a word.

Since this was a better reception than Griffin had hoped for, he followed.

They ended up in a study on one of the upper floors. Griffin prowled around the room while Thomas crossed to a crystal decanter and splashed amber liquid into a glass.

Griffin raised his eyebrows. “Bit early in the day, isn’t it?”

“Not for me,” Thomas replied moodily.

Griffin grunted as he studied a medieval etching on the wall. “This was father’s study, wasn’t it?”

Thomas looked up as if surprised. “Yes. Don’t you recognize it?”

Griffin shrugged. “I didn’t come in here much.”

“Father used to call me in every Sunday evening,” Thomas mused. “Before I went away to school. Then when I was home, we’d retire here after dinner.”

“What did you do?” Griffin asked.

“Talk.” Thomas shrugged. “He’d ask me about my studies. Have me recite my Latin lesson when I was younger. Discuss politics when I was older.”

Griffin nodded. “He was preparing you to be the marquess.”

“I suppose he was.” Thomas looked at him. “Didn’t he do the same with you?”

“No. I wasn’t invited,” Griffin said without heat.

Thomas stared at him a moment as if baffled, then looked down at his glass. “What do you want with me, Griffin?”

“I want you to decline to marry Hero.”

“She’s already declined me.”

Griffin looked at him. Apparently he hadn’t heard yet from Wakefield. “Her brother wants her to marry you this Sunday.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes. “Does he indeed?”

“Yes.” Griffin grit his teeth. “I want you to refuse to marry her.”

Thomas snorted angrily. “Of course you do. I suppose you want her for yourself, just as you wanted my first wife for yourself.”

“This has nothing to do with Anne,” Griffin said as calmly as he could.

“Oh, no?” Thomas sneered. “Poor, poor Anne! What would she do if she knew her lover had forgotten her so easily? But then you do go through women fast enough. I suppose there’s little point in learning their names, much less remembering them when dead. Have you told Hero about Anne?”

“Yes.”

The reply pulled Thomas up short. He blinked before recovering. “What? That you make a habit of seducing your brother’s women?”