“Why not?” Furry Teeth shrugged. “Let us be done then. And on to more pleasant pursuits.”
Apprehension finally flickered within her eyes. The emotion was visible for just a moment through the eyeholes of her scarlet domino. Now she feared she might have overstepped, did she? When it might be too late. Fool. Did she expect him to save her? Blast her, he should leave her to hang herself. Let the brute take her upstairs.
Furry Teeth fanned his cards out before him with a flourish. Applause erupted around them. Max stifled a curse and flung his cards down on the table. He’d lost.
Furry Teeth chuckled and wagged a finger at him. “You, my friend, best undress yourself whilst I take this little morsel upstairs and collect my winnings.” Rising, he extended a hand toward Aurelia. “Come, sweetings. A wager is a wager, after all.”
Aurelia lifted her bowed head just as Max started to rise. Not to undress himself but to stop that filth from touching her. Wretched girl or not, he would not let this vermin take her. He could not. Even if that meant reneging on a bet. His friendship with her kin demanded he protect her.
“Do you not wish to see my cards?” She queried softly.
All eyes turned to the table as she spread her cards in an arc. Surprised gasps rippled all around them.
She’d won.
Furry Teeth let out an oath.
She leaned back in her chair in the manner of a victorious queen and leveled her gaze on him. “A wager is a wager,” she echoed. “I believe I’ll collect my winnings now.”
Furry Teeth began stripping off his clothes in angry movements, revealing his pale skinny limbs. Entirely naked, he quickly sank back down in his chair and sat there sulking much like the other two men who had already shed their clothes.
Aurelia lifted an eyebrow at him. “Well, my lord? Do you not honor your bets?”
“Honor?” He chuckled low and deep, the sound raw and prickly in his throat. “That is not a word I expect you to understand.”
Her smile turned brittle. “Are you delaying on purpose? The hour grows late, my lord.”
Max shoved himself to his feet, sending the chair skidding backward. He yanked off his jacket, cravat and vest, his eyes never leaving her face. Reaching behind his neck, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside in one smooth move.
A woman nearby made a hissing sound of approval.
The corner of his mouth kicked up in acknowledgment. He knew he was well-formed. He spent a goodly amount of time riding, fencing, swimming, fighting. He was not ashamed of his body. That said, he did not appreciate being forced to undress so that he could be ogled and made a spectacle of.
Anger, hot as molten rock, poured through him. It was in his every hard movement. The crowd fell silent around him as he removed one boot, then the next. His hands went to the front of his trousers and hesitated.
She watched him, her throat working as she swallowed.
“Is this what you want?” he demanded.
The color rode high in her face, crowding the edges of her domino. She was getting more than she bargained for. She realized that now.
He leaned across the table, flattening his palms on the baize surface and bringing his face inches from her. “This is what you’ve been so curious about? Is it not?”
Her breath escaped in a sharp hitch. “You flatter yourself.”
“You set the stake, not I. Shall I satisfy your curiosity at last?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Now you can infuse some reality into your artwork. That will be a refreshing bit of change, won’t it?”
Her nostrils flared. Her words escaped in a low hiss for his ears alone, “There is truth in my drawings.”
Her words struck him like steel striking flint. She was that same little witch who’d created that caricature and left it for public ridicule. He laughed once, hard and unforgiving. “You’re about to witness the truth. Pay close heed so next time I expect you to get it right.”
“I’ve drawn you once. No need to repeat the task.”
He tsked. “Come now. I fascinate you as a subject. You know it. I know it.”
“Rubbish,” she spat, her gaze sparking fire through the eyeholes of her domino.
“Shall I prove it?” Shoving back off the table, he dropped his hands to the front of his trousers. Tearing loose the buttons, he shoved them down and stood naked before the room. Unlike the other men, he did not sink into his chair. He let the room have a long look. He let her drink her fill.
Her mouth popped wide in a little o. Those eyes of hers traveled over him, missing nothing. She looked everywhere. Especially there.
Those big brown eyes of hers grew larger yet. She looked for so long and so intently that his cock stirred. He knew he should have felt a stab of embarrassment as he grew before her eyes. Or perhaps not. This was Sodom, after all, where all manner of illicit activity happened before all manner of audience. Nothing was too shameful. Nothing private.
His response to her irked him. The stroke of her gaze shouldn’t make him randy as a green lad. Any other female, fine. Only not her.
“Gor,” a woman clucked from the crowd. “I wouldn’t mind a ride on that.”
Fire lit Aurelia’s cheeks.
She had failed. She might have won the wager, but he was the victor. She had planned to embarrass him and failed. Satisfied, he sank down in his chair.
The crowd dissipated around them. The men hastily redressed and retreated, but he remained where he was, naked in the chair, holding her gaze for a moment.
“Not so cockless. Am I?” he queried lightly.
“You’ve proven that well enough,” she replied evenly, the color in her face becoming less red and more pink.
“Do well to remember it in your spinster bed tonight,” he flung out. “Or perhaps someday you will wed and have but a puny rod to take between your thighs. You’ll think of me often then, will you not?”
“You’re vile.” She surged to her feet and started past him, but he grabbed her wrist, squeezing the delicate bones in his grip. She looked down at him, her brown eyes luminescent within her mask.
He rolled his thumb against the inside of her wrist, feeling her pulse flutter there as wild as a moth’s wings. “Don’t ever come here again.”
“You do not command me.”
“But that is what you need. A strict hand to lead you.” His gaze raked her. “Look at you. Look where you are.” He waved a hand about them.
“I command myself.”
“Do you? Very well, then,” he sneered, flinging her from him as though he could not stand the feel of her a moment longer. “Next time I’ll let any manner of man take you upstairs and claim your virtue. If, in fact, you’re still in possession of it—”
His words hit the mark. A stricken look crossed her face before disappearing and giving way to a cheery smile. “You forget yourself, Camden. You did not rescue me. It is you who lost the wager to me.”
Still wearing that bright smile, she turned away, her hips moving in a way he had never noticed before, swaying as she took small, tight steps in her black gown. A gown that he suddenly envisioned wadded up in a ball at the foot of his bed. That would be one way to command her, he thought, watching hungrily as she disappeared through the crowd of Mrs. Bancroft’s sitting room. Indeed, he could command her in his bed. Beneath him. If he didn’t find her so detestable, that would be the perfect place for her.
Chapter 2
One year later . . .
“Come, Aurelia. Must you dawdle? Usually you are the one urging me to make haste, but here you sit staring into space with half our guests gathered belowstairs.”
Aurelia feigned an innocent expression and met her mother’s blue-eyed gaze through the dressing table mirror. She had been lost in one of her drawings—a depiction of Lord Edderton with the body of an octopus manhandling several young girls w
hilst munching iced biscuits. She had been on the receiving end of his attentions once, during her first season out, and decided to make him the subject of one of her caricatures when she spotted him up to his old tricks a few evenings ago.
Edderton would not be the first to find himself featured in one of her notorious caricatures. What happened all those years ago with Camden, however accidental, had led her to this vocation. Cockless Camden. She winced, knowing she was to blame. His caricature had started it all, however inadvertent. It was talked about for years and had earned her his eternal enmity.
True, she did the drawing in a fit of impulse, but she had not meant it to be discovered. She couldn’t change that day, but she hoped using her talent for good, to give those without a voice a voice . . . perhaps it was atonement of some sort. Now her sketches appeared all over London. They turned up at balls, the opera, the dressmaker’s shop. She deliberately deposited them in the most public place. For the edification and titillation of the ton.
She adjusted her weight on the bench in front of her dressing table, hoping her skirts hid the pad from view. She’d barely had time enough to shove her sketch pad beneath her before Mama stormed into the chamber. It wouldn’t do for the Earl of Merlton’s sister to be unveiled as the artist responsible for the ribald cartoons that poked fun at so many members of the ton.
“Go on without me, Mama. I’ll be down directly.”
Mama gave her a lingering look before nodding. “Very well.” In a whisper of amber-gold skirts, she turned and left Aurelia alone in her chamber.
Aurelia returned her gaze to her reflection. Her dark eyes stared back at her pensively. She looked nothing like her fair-haired mother. Or her brother, for that matter. With her dark eyes and hair and skin, she looked more like a foundling her family had adopted into its fold. The bloodlines of her Spanish grandmother ran strong and true within her—a fact that did not win her much favor among the ton. Even her mother bemoaned her swarthy looks, though she had never been so unkind to voice such criticisms openly. No, she was more discreet than that. Instead she constantly supplied Aurelia with various powders to help dim her countenance.
Smiling wryly, she reached for a beaded bracelet and then set it back down with a sigh. A bracelet would make no difference to the night’s outcome. Another dinner party filled with empty chatter. And tomorrow morning she would wake to yet another day of activities planned by her mother. Luncheon with the ladies from one of Mama’s many charitable societies. Teas. Shopping. A ball or the opera or a dinner party in the evening. Her days stretched out before her in familiarity. All planned in the hopes that she would make a good match for herself. For the family. Even if she had not succeeded yet, it was expected she would.
Without her drawings, she would go mad. Her work gave her more than comfort. It gave her purpose.
Aurelia turned from her mirror and stood up from the dressing table, smoothing out her pale yellow skirts and trying not to think how poorly the color complemented her. Mama still tried to pretend she was a pale English rose who looked ethereal in all things pastel.
At least they needn’t travel from home tonight. If she grew weary of it all, she could simply escape upstairs to her chamber, change into her nightgown, climb into bed with her sketch pad. There was solace in that.
She glanced at her bedchamber window. Rain sluiced down the mullioned glass. Abysmal weather plagued London this season—even more than usual. Another advantage for staying in tonight.
Squaring her shoulders, she departed her chamber before Mama sent someone to drag her down to dinner like a recalcitrant child and not a woman full grown. Lifting her skirts, she descended the staircase. Voices and laughter floated up from the drawing room. Hopefully, she was not the last to arrive. It would make her goal of slipping inside and finding a chair in the corner to observe the guests Mama had seen fit to invite all the more difficult. She liked watching people, listening to them, memorizing their characteristics to later catch on paper.
It was a safe assumption that Mama had selected the guests. Her brother was a married man now. His wife was the new countess and, thereby, the new hostess over all events taking place beneath this roof. Only Mama sometimes forgot that fact.
Living in the same house with her brother and his wife—no matter how much she liked Violet—was awkward. Under normal circumstances, she and Mama would have taken up residence at another property . . . a dowager estate or town house. Only her brother had sold the additional town house in London. He had, in fact, sold all properties that were not entailed, to help satisfy the nasty debts Papa had left behind after his death.
Papa had ruined them. It was a burden made only more onerous when Will fell in love with a woman who brought no dowry to the marriage. Aurelia couldn’t begrudge him, however. He was brilliantly, ridiculously, in love with Violet. Aurelia was happy for both of them. And when Will assured her that his investments would soon reap benefit, she pretended to believe him. Perhaps he was correct and not merely delusional.
In the meantime, they all lived under one roof. She and Mama guests in the home that had once been their own. Her mother was merely the Dowager Countess now. And she was the unwed, cheeky sister. One breath from spinsterhood. No one knew of her secret vocation. Nor did anyone know that she secretly longed for more. For adventure.
She’d had a taste of it with her friend Rosalie, before she went off and married Declan. Now Rosalie was no longer a fit companion for illicit activities. There would be no more sneaking out in the middle of the night together. No more visits to Sodom, where she engaged in scandalous card games. Her face heated as she recalled Max that night. The vile man with his vile words and his impossibly wicked body had made her feel achingly alive.
Aurelia stopped outside the drawing room, listening to the hum of voices and clink of glasses as libations were dispersed and consumed. With a bracing breath, she entered the room to find that it was, indeed, brimming full. Declan and Rosalie were present, as well as Violet’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Howard. Mama’s good friend, Lady Agatha, and her son, Lord Buckley—or Freddie to his familiars.
Aurelia fought a smile at the sight of Freddie’s expression. He always wore a grin even when he stared vacantly into space. As boys, Will, Declan, and Max had pranked him mercilessly—nothing mean-spirited, just foolishness. A hidden shoe. A frog in his bed. Freddie had smiled through it all. Now, Freddie’s gaze landed on her. He sat up straighter on the sofa and looked at her in that puppy dog manner of his, patting the space beside him for her to occupy. The fact that he resembled a hound dog with his long face and loose jowls only added to the visual. He would make an excellent subject for a caricature, but Aurelia wouldn’t dream of depicting him in a less than flattering fashion. He was a kind soul. Once upon a time, Mama and Lady Agatha had anticipated a match between Freddie and herself.
Aurelia’s lack of a dowry had put an end to that notion. Lady Agatha might be her mother’s best friend, but she was as mercenary as any other dame of the ton. At least one good thing resulted from their family’s indigence. As much as she liked Freddie, Aurelia could not imagine spending the rest of her life with him.
Sinking down upon a chaise opposite of him, she accepted a proffered drink from a tray that appeared before her. “Thank you, Cecily,” Aurelia murmured, lifting the cup to her lips.
Cecily winked. Only a year older than herself, the servant was like family. When they were forced to reduce the staff by half, Cecily had remained. Not only did she act in the capacity of her and Mama’s maid, she helped in the kitchens and lent a hand when entertaining guests. She did whatever was required with no complaints.
Cecily gave a slight nod at something beyond Aurelia’s shoulder and released a dreamy sigh. “Lord Camden is looking very fine tonight,” she whispered.
Sipping her punch, Aurelia frowned and resisted looking. She didn’t need to. She need only close her eyes and she could envision him perfe
ctly standing naked in the middle of Sodom.
“Aurelia!” Rosalie cried, making her way across the drawing room with Violet at her side. “I did not see you arrive. You’re quiet as a church mouse tonight.”
Aurelia rose to her feet and returned Rosalie’s embrace. “I did not want anyone to notice that I was the last to arrive.”
“You? Not want to draw attention to yourself?” Rosalie leaned in close to whisper. “This coming from the female who challenged me to don a domino and sneak into Sodom?”
“Well, that was a year ago.” Heat crept over her face at the memory of their late night visit to Sodom. With a tight smile, Aurelia looked away.
Her gaze drifted over the room—and collided with Max’s gaze.
Their gazes locked. She wondered how long he had been staring at her. His gray-blue eyes were brilliant and piercing even across the distance. Set deeply beneath the slash of brows a shade darker than his chestnut hair, those eyes of his looked her up and down. He was probably hoping she stayed far from him. They tread warily around each other these days. Ever since the night at Sodom things had been tense. Even more than before.
To everyone else in the world, Camden was all charm. Not a serious bone in his body as he stood flirting with Freddie’s sister. Aurelia considered the brunette. Henrietta was comely enough, and yet not to his precise taste. She knew he was fond of petite, golden-haired beauties.
Aurelia was neither dainty nor golden-haired.
She squeezed her eyes in a tight blink, reprimanding herself for caring how he might perceive her. Every once in a while it shocked her to remember that they had been friends. So many years had passed with each making war on the other.
She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Perhaps it would have been easier if he was not such a handsome package. His good looks had not lessened over the years. His hair had not thinned. Nor had his chin begun to disappear into his neck.
Rosalie and Violet laughed then. Aurelia turned and joined in, feigning awareness of their discourse.