The Harlot Countess (Wicked Deceptions #2)(8)
“As if I’d let you come without me,” Colt told her.
“As if you could stop me,” she shot back. “Besides, tonight we’re here for Simon.”
Simon stifled a groan. He hadn’t wanted company for this errand, but Julia had been insistent after learning his plans. The entire outing might very well be a waste of time if Maggie refused to speak to him. He’d sent her four notes over the past week, asking for an audience, and she’d refused him each time. Therefore, when news of her party reached his ears, he’d decided to approach her here. She couldn’t very well avoid him then.
All he needed was to ask a favor of her, though even he had trouble accepting such a paper-thin excuse. The desire to see her again, to talk to her, had been an uncomfortable itch under his skin since their meeting at McGinnis’s Print Shop. Curiosity, he told himself, nothing more. He’d satisfy that particular need tonight and then be done with her. Of course, there was a slim chance she could help him after all, which would be an additional boon to this venture.
The wood door swung open to reveal an older, plump woman. She gave them a quick appraisal and held the door to allow them in. After accepting their personal effects, she led them up the marble staircase. Simon followed, keeping pace. The interior was far from ostentatious, but well appointed, he noticed. Tasteful art on the walls. Plush carpets. Gold accents. Nothing the least offensive. He hadn’t known what to expect, but he’d hoped for clues on how to reconcile the girl he’d once known with the woman she was now. And while he hadn’t imagined her lodgings a brothel, perfectly bland decor didn’t suit her either.
“My mistress don’t stand on ceremony,” the housekeeper said over her shoulder. “She don’t like her guests announced. Party’s under way through here.”
She threw wide two double doors, and Simon crossed into the ballroom—then stopped.
It was like nothing he’d ever seen. The room had been transformed into a lush haven of nautical life and greenery. Garlands of flowers looped with golden rope hung along the ceiling and the columns, while fat wooden casks were grouped in the corners, some with empty flutes on them. Hemp netting covered one wall, with replicas of various sea creatures tied into the webbing. The dance floor, however, took up most of the space and she’d decorated it appropriately. Intricate chalk drawings of naked mermaids and lusty sailors swirled in brilliant hues on the floor in a blatantly risqué depiction.
A few guests talked and sipped champagne at the edges of the room, but most were gathered near the back. Simon couldn’t tell what they were looking at.
“I’m impressed,” Colt murmured. “I recall a party like this during Carnevale di Venezia one year. We all ended up in the lagoon in the wee hours of the morning.”
“Couldn’t be worse than the time we were caught in the fountain at Cambridge,” Simon noted.
“What wastrels we were,” Colt said fondly before strolling away, Julia on his arm, toward a table stacked with glasses of champagne.
When Maggie’s mourning had ended eight months ago, stories of the unconventional parties at the Hawkins town house had begun circulating. They were infrequent and small, yet quite popular with the male half of the nobility. Hell, White’s fairly tittered the day after one of her events. The respectable Society matrons and unmarried ladies never attended, of course, but that still left the faster set of widows and wives.
Listening to the men recount the previous evening’s debauchery at Maggie’s home never failed to set Simon’s teeth on edge. Was the woman so determined to turn herself into a spectacle? She’d quickly and quietly married Hawkins—no surprise there considering the scandal—and all but disappeared until his death, upon which the she-devil had wasted no time in returning to London and causing a stir.
Simon noted the faces of the men nearby, recognized nearly all of them. These were men he drank and gambled with. Men he debated in Lords. Which one was her lover? He tossed back the glass of champagne, reached for another. Perhaps coming tonight was an enormous mistake.
“What do you suppose is happening back there?” Colt asked, gesturing to the crowd in the corner.
“No idea, but I’d like to find our hostess.” Second champagne in hand, he started toward the swarm of bodies on the far side of the room but was soon waylaid by a few young Whigs. It took upward of twenty minutes to break off from the conversation, which covered the unrest after Peterloo to speculation whether the Regent would successfully bring divorce proceedings against the Princess of Wales.
Simon spotted Julia and Colton in the crowd and came alongside to see what had everyone so enraptured. In a small pool of water, three young ladies were dressed as mermaids and perched on rocks. Each wore a long, colored wig to match the bright hue of her tail—either blue, red, or yellow—and strings of pearls around her neck. Transparent material with a silver shimmer clung to their arms, shoulders, and bellies, with only a scrap of material across the breasts. Simon’s first thought was that they must have been freezing.
He leaned down to ask, “What’s this?”
“A performance of some kind, I’m told,” Julia whispered. “We are waiting for it to begin.”
A raven-haired woman in a blue feather mask stepped forward and clapped her hands for attention. A jolt of unexpected awareness washed through Simon, tightening in his groin. He would recognize her anywhere. Layers of gauzy blue silk comprised her dress, the skirt falling to the floor in waves. The fabric stretched across her small breasts to push the plump mounds up. More enticing was the dazzling smile she wore, the radiance she exuded merely by breathing.