Winter had come around twice asking in his easy, patient way for her help with the foundling children, but—
There was a thump at her door.
Silence turned in the direction of the outer room. It had been quite a loud thump for her to have heard it in the bedroom. Who could it be? She owed no tradespeople and wasn’t expecting anyone. It might be Winter come to cajole her again. She scrunched down in the covers. If it was Winter, she didn’t want to see him. She had just decided to pretend to not be at home when she heard it: a faint mewling.
Well, that was odd. Was there a cat at her door?
She got up and padded to the door, cracking it only slightly because she was still in her chemise. No one was there—or so she thought until she heard the sound again and looked down. A baby lay at her feet in a basket, like Moses, only without the rushes. She frowned at him and he frowned back, stuffing a fat fist into his mouth and growing rather red in the face. She didn’t know much about babies, but she did know when one was about to bawl.
Hastily she bent, scooped up the basket, and closed the door behind her. She set the basket on the table and lifted out the baby, inspecting him—or rather her, as it turned out. The baby was dressed in a gown and stays and was quite pretty, with dark eyes and a wispy curl of dark hair peeking from her cap.
“I don’t receive visitors before two of the afternoon,” Silence muttered to the little girl, but the baby simply waved a fist, nearly catching her in the nose.
Silence looked in the basket and found a worn silver locket in the shape of a heart.
“Is this yours?” she asked the babe as she opened it awkwardly with one hand. Inside was a slip of paper with the word darling written on it. That was all. She searched the basket, even taking out and shaking the blanket the baby had lain on, but there were no more clues to the baby’s identity.
“Why would someone leave a baby on my doorstep?” she wondered aloud as the baby gummed her fist. The child seemed happy enough now that Silence was holding her. Perhaps the unfortunate mother knew of her connection to the foundling home?
“Well, then I’d best take you to Winter,” Silence said with decision. Suddenly she had a reason to get up this morning. She felt almost excited. “And since I found you, it seems only right that I be the one to name you.”
The baby raised her eyebrows as if in query.
Silence smiled at her. “Mary Darling.”
Just when Lady Hero Batten
has decided to settle for a proper
society marriage, she meets
Griffin Remmington, the most
infamous rake in London…
Please turn this page
for a preview of
Book Two of the
Maiden Lane series,
Notorious Pleasures
AVAILABLE IN MASS MARKET IN
FEBRUARY 2011.
Chapter One
LONDON, ENGLAND
OCTOBER 1737
The daughter of a duke learns early in life the proper etiquette for nearly everything. What dish to serve roasted larks in. When to acknowledge a rather risqué dowager countess and when to give her the cut direct. What to wear while boating down the Thames, and how to fend off the tipsy advances of an earl with very little income at the picnic afterward.
Everything, in fact, Lady Hero Batten reflected wryly, but how to address a gentleman coupling vigorously with a married lady not his own.
“Ahem,” she tried, whilst gazing fixedly at the molded plaster pears on the ceiling overhead.
The two people on the settee appeared not to hear her. Indeed, the lady gave a rather loud series of animal squeals from under the skirts of her atrocious puce-and-brown-striped gown, which had been flipped up to cover her face.
Hero sighed. They were in a dim little sitting room off the library, and she was regretting choosing this particular room to fix her stocking. Had she picked the blue Oriental room, her stocking would be straight by now and she’d already be back in the ballroom—far away from this embarrassing predicament.
She lowered her eyes cautiously. The gentleman, wearing an anonymous white wig, had discarded his embroidered satin coat, laboring atop the lady in his shirtsleeves and a brilliant emerald waistcoat. His breeches were loosened to facilitate his endeavors, and every now and again, a flash of muscled buttock was visible.
Sadly, she found the sight quite mesmerizing. Whoever the gentleman was, his physical attributes were quite… astonishing.
Hero tore her gaze away to look longingly at the door. Really, few would find fault with her should she turn and simply tiptoe from the room. That was exactly what she would’ve done when she’d first entered had she not passed Lord Pimbroke not two minutes before in the hallway. For, as it happened, Hero had noted the atrocious puce-and-brown-striped gown earlier in the evening—on Lady Pimbroke. Much as Hero was loath to embarrass herself, her own feelings were not, in the end, as important as the prospect of a possible duel and injury or death to two gentlemen.
Having come to this proper and right conclusion, Hero nodded once sharply, took off one ruby ear bob, and lobbed it at the gentleman’s backside. She’d always quietly prided herself on her aim—not that she used it much in everyday life—and she was rather gratified to hear a yelp from the male.
He swore and turned, looking at her over his shoulder with the most glorious green eyes she’d ever seen. He wasn’t a handsome man—his face was too broad across the cheekbones, his brows too prominent, and his mouth too cynical for true masculine beauty—but his eyes would draw any female, young or old, from across a room. And once drawn, their gaze would linger on the look of arrogant male virility he wore as naturally as he breathed.
Or perhaps it was merely the, er, circumstances that gave him the look.
“D’you mind, love?” he drawled, the anger in his expression having changed to faint amusement when he’d caught sight of her. His voice was deep and completely unhurried. “I’m busy here.”
She could feel heat suffusing her cheeks—really, this was an impossible situation—but she met his gaze, making quite sure hers did not wander lower. “Indeed. I had noticed, but I thought you should know—”
“Unless you’re the type who likes to watch?”
Now her face was aflame, but she wasn’t about to let this… this wretch get the verbal better of her. She allowed her gaze to drop swiftly and scornfully down over his rumpled waistcoat and shirt—fortunately the tail hid his open breeches—and back up. She smiled sweetly. “I prefer entertainments in which I’m not in danger of falling asleep.”
The rogue tutted. “Happens a lot to you, does it, sweetheart?” His voice was solicitous but a sly dimple appeared beside his wide lips. “Falling asleep just as the fun’s about to begin? Well, don’t blame yourself. Like as not it’s the gentleman’s fault, not yours.”
Good God, no one spoke to her like this. Slowly, awfully, Hero arched her left brow. She knew it was slow and awful because she’d practiced the movement in front of a mirror for hours on end at the age of twelve. The result was a look that made seasoned matrons tremble in their heeled slippers.
The devilish man didn’t turn a hair. “Now as it happens, my ladies don’t have that problem. Stay and watch—it’ll prove instructive, I guarantee. And if I have any strength left over after maybe I’ll demonstrate—”
“Lord Pimbroke is in the hallway!” she blurted before he could finish his dastardly thought.
The mound of puce-and-brown-striped skirts quaked. “Eustace is here?”
“Quite. And heading this way,” Hero informed Lady Pimbroke with only a touch of satisfaction.
The gentleman exploded into action. He was up and off the lady and throwing down her skirts to hide her pale, soft thighs before Hero could even blink.
He caught up his coat, made one swift appraising glance about the room, and turned to Hero, his voice still unhurried. “Lady Pimbroke has torn a ribbon or lace or some such thing and you’ve kindly c
onsented to help her.”
“But—”
He placed his forefinger against her lips—warm, large, and quite shockingly inappropriate—and at the same time a male voice called from the hallway.
“Bella!”
Lady Pimbroke—or Bella—squeaked in fear.
“There’s a good girl,” the rogue whispered to Hero. He turned to Lady Pimbroke, bussed her on the cheek, and murmured, “Steady on, darling,” before disappearing under the settee.
Hero had only a moment to watch Lady Pimbroke’s pretty, insipid face go ashen as she realized fully the peril she was in, and then the door to the sitting room crashed open.
“Bella!” Lord Pimbroke was big, reddened, and quite obviously intoxicated. He glanced belligerently around the room, his hand on his sword, but he froze in confusion when he saw her. “My lady, what—”
“Lord Pimbroke.” Hero casually stepped in front of the settee, obscuring a large masculine heel with her wide skirts.
She employed her left eyebrow.
Lord Pimbroke actually backed up a step—quite gratifying after the reception her eyebrow had received from the rogue—and stammered. “I… I…”
Hero turned to Lady Pimbroke, touching lightly the horrid yellow braiding on the elbow of her gown. “That’s fixed, I think, don’t you?”
Lady Pimbroke started as if poked. “Oh! Oh, yes, thank you, my lady.”
“Not at all,” Hero murmured.
“If you’re all done here, m’dear,” Lord Pimbroke said, “then perhaps you’re ready to return to the ball?”
His words may have been a question, but his tone of voice most certainly was not.
Lady Pimbroke took his arm rather sulkily. “Yes, Eustace.”
And with a perfunctory good-bye the two left the room.
Almost immediately, Hero felt a tug upon her skirts. “Hist! I can hardly breathe under here.”
“They may come back,” she said serenely.
“I think I can see up your skirt.”
She moved back hastily.
The rogue rolled out from under the settee and stood, towering over her.
Nonetheless, she glared down her nose at him. “You weren’t—?”
“Now, now. If I was, do you really think I’d tell you?”
She sniffed, sounding rather like Cousin Bathilda at her most priggish. “No doubt you’d boast of it.”
He leaned over her, smiling. “Does the thought have you all hot and bothered?”
“Is your wig growing tight?” she asked politely.
“What?”
“Because I would think your swollen head would make it quite uncomfortable.”
His smile became a trifle grim. “My head isn’t the only thing out of proportion, I assure you. Maybe that’s why you came in here? To sneak a peek?”
She rolled her eyes. “You have no shame, do you? Most men at least pretend to be abashed when caught in wrongdoing, but you—you strut about like a feckless cockerel.”
He paused in the act of donning his coat, one arm thrust out, the sleeve half on, and widened his beautiful green eyes at her. “Oh, of course. Moralizing. Naturally you must hold yourself superior to me when—”
“I saw you engaging in adultery!”
“You saw me engaging in a pleasant fuck,” he said with slow emphasis.
She flinched at the crudity but stood her ground. She would not flee from a man such as he. “Lady Pimbroke is married.”
“Lady Pimbroke has had numerous lovers before me and will have numerous lovers after me.”
“That does not forgive your sin.”
He looked at her and laughed—actually laughed—slow and deep. “And you are a woman without sin, is that it?”
“Naturally.”
His mouth twisted cruelly. “Such certainty.”
She stared, affronted. “Do you doubt me?”
“Oh, no, far from it. I believe absolutely that the thought of sin has never once crossed your perfect little mind.”
She tilted her chin, feeling a thrill of excitement—she’d never before argued with a gentleman, let alone a strange one. “And I begin to think that any thought of righteousness has never crossed your shameless little mind.”
He watched her a moment, a muscle twitching on his jaw. Then he bowed abruptly. “I thank you for going against your own inclinations and saving me from having to kill Lord Pimbroke.”
She nodded stiffly.
“And I hope most fervently that our paths never cross again, my Lady Perfect.”
Unaccountably, Hero felt a pang of hurt at his dismissive words, but she made sure not to let the weak emotion show. “I will certainly pray that I never have to suffer your presence again, my Lord Shameless.”
“Then we are in agreement.”
“Quite.”
For a moment, she stared at him, her breasts pressing against her stays with each too-fast breath, her cheeks hot with emotion. They’d drawn closer in the heat of their argument and his chest nearly brushed the lace of her bodice. He stared back, his eyes very green in his loathsome face. His gaze dropped to her mouth.
Her lips parted and for a moment she forgot to breathe.
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 hair was still elegantly coiffed, her 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.
Nodding, 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 yes, perfect aspect. 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?