Seven Secrets of Seduction (23 page)

“Mmmm. Where would you like to sit, my lady?” the viscount asked, gesturing around the empty theater.

“Well, one can hardly resist the King's box, can one?” she said, unwillingly looking forward to the spectacle. And to being with him.

It seemed the moth never learned.

He smiled and held out his arm.

The King's box was in the prime viewing spot at stage left. Perfect for overlooking the melee on the boards. And with the acrobatics, quite close while at the same time maintaining an illusion of privacy.

She touched the fabric on the chairs. Such an odd thing. To be sitting here like a true princess.

She couldn't let his spell overwhelm her. She shook her head and turned her attention to the stage.

Women and men in different costumes—some in full dress, and others in undershirts and hose, just enough
to cover them—strode in from all sides, assembling in place. The jovial man who had met them stood below, raising his hand to initiate the spectacle.

The cues took shape as the curtain was pulled to the side, nothing hidden from view like it might have been during the main performance. A beat of a drum rolled, and a wave of the orchestra crested with the man's hands. Then stopped. He yelled at someone in the back, then began again. They restarted three times, and the man sent a nervous look up toward the box.

And then the performance began in earnest, nothing hidden as the production took shape.

The men pulling the ropes stood in plain sight, taking away some of the mystery, but replacing it with curiosity and interest. How they pulled and caught, their muscles straining under their rolled-up shirtsleeves. The black garb they normally wore hid them mostly from view during performances—and some theaters' hands were better at it than others. She should probably be scandalized by the show of skin, but then she wasn't a courtier or a lady. And she didn't have to pretend to be the dour daughter of a schoolmistress here. No one knew her or cared.

The performers were incredible yet again. Here in this temporary home, they had all of the sets and tricks ready and waiting. None of the freedom was lost, it was simply changed. The wonder at what might happen if an acrobat slipped on a wet patch of grass or how they navigated the crowd, blending in, threading through, was absent, but their performance was more daring because of the risky new twists and flips they attempted.

Players flinched when an occasional compatriot landed with a thwack on the floor. Yells accompa
nied successfully completed starring moves. The well-rehearsed acrobatics and air of joy were intoxicating. They obviously loved what they did. And had no problem showing it. Grabbing the bar and swinging. Jumping into the air without long, drawn-out thought. Letting out a shout when a new trick was properly executed.

It was lovely, she thought a bit wistfully.

“You like it,” his voice said at her ear.

“I do.”

“What do you love?”

“The freedom. The joy.”

“You do not seek such for yourself often, do you, Miranda?”

“I have a nice life. There is happiness.”

“Contentedness. The joy and freedom you wish for is there for you to grasp.”

She turned toward him, his lips so close to hers. “I think you call me a coward, your lordship,” she murmured, eyes on his mouth.

“Do I? About some things, perhaps.” His thumb stroked her lower lip. “But about others, no. You have so much passion and life brimming in you. You just have to be freed to show it.”

“Are you volunteering for the task?” she asked as lightly as she could over the heavy beat of her heart.

“Volunteering? Never. I am simply appointing myself to the role.”

“Quite high-handed of you.”

“As I've already confessed, it's a failing of mine.” He smiled lazily, his fingers curling into her nape. “Do you forgive me?”

“Do you ask forgiveness? I can't credit that you do.” Her lips curled beneath his thumb, her heart beating more wildly, but she was determined to duplicate his
expression of lazy regard and ease. “I think you rarely ask for it, in truth.”

“Ah, that too, I confess, is a failing as well.”

“You have many.”

His fingers stroked her nape. “But you so few. A good prospect for us to balance each other, don't you think? You will be my conscience, and I will be your shame.”

“I do not find happiness shameful,” she said quietly. “It is simply fear that I fear.”

His fingers paused, then he drew her forward. “And that is why you are a lure I can't resist.”

Her eyes closed unwillingly, feeling the draw. “Because of the fear?”

“No, because you are emotionally willing to experience the thrill yet so physically reluctant to grasp it. So often it is the opposite. Hence, I find it intoxicating.”

And yet, she couldn't keep the thought to herself. “You hardly seemed intoxicated with your absence after the gardens.” Her eyes opened.

There was a moment's pause. “You do not know the pain it caused for me to stay away.”

“I do not.”

A low laugh vibrated from his chest. “Someday perhaps I will explain it if I can explain it to myself.”

And there it was again. A pointer that there was some future between them. Confusing and provocative.

The red flash of an acrobat flipping through the air showed in her periphery. A shout of accomplishment.

“Someday perhaps I will demand it from you.” His eyes darkened at her words. Desire turning them black.

The wonderful and heady feeling of feminine power beat in her. She wondered if she could bottle the feeling and clutch it to her in the darkness of the night. Under her frayed bedcovers and simple nightgowns.

His thumb traced her lips. “And someday perhaps I will beg your forgiveness in earnest.” He leaned into her, his lips a hairbreadth from hers. “But not today. Today I still seek to take.” And his lips claimed hers, dominant and overwhelming.

The colors and shouts, the flips and twirls were sucked from the outside of her world and sent swirling beneath her skin. Bursting from within.

“Will you let me take you, Miranda?” he whispered against her lips.

She nearly replied that he could take her anywhere as long as his lips continued to do those lovely things to her, to produce those overpowering sensations within. A taste of the finest liquor. Of something that could cause one to be drunk with one sip.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Excellent. Tonight?”

Tonight. The Mortons'. With Georgette. “I am to attend a dinner party tonight.”

“A dinner party?”

“Yes. With a friend.”

“Cancel it,” he whispered, eyes hidden from her as he traced the curve of her tilted jaw with his mouth.

“But—”

He drew back so he was looking into her eyes, his voice even more like the smooth-edged aftertaste of whiskey. “I promise I will make it well worth your sacrifice.”

Considering the invitation, Georgette would hardly mind if she canceled. Putting herself forward at the
Mortons' suddenly seemed like extending a formal handshake rather than opening herself to light flirtation. The viscount's fingers played at the ties of her dress, making her skin burn beneath. It seemed obvious that
opening up
was something the man at her side was very keen to do to her.

She looked toward the stage. An acrobat flipped through the air and landed precariously on the shoulders of another. He tottered for a moment before gaining his balance and raising his arms in triumph.

“Very well,” she whispered, hoping her own actions wouldn't cause her to crash instead.

“Excellent. We will stop by Madame Galland's on the way back.”

“I have a number of dresses already.” They had all been hanging there, waiting for her to run her fingers wistfully down their silk. Some of them doomed never to be worn. At least by her.

Because while this thing with the viscount was exciting and exhilarating, it would soon ebb—again—and she would go on to other pursuits, hopefully with her heart intact.

She couldn't see herself in the role of a mistress, discovering more about a man as mysterious as the viscount, falling in love with someone she could never claim. Always guarding her heart, waiting for him, or some other paramour, to lose interest.

It was also why she never wanted to meet Mr. Pitts. The man completed a part of her that she'd never known was missing. Invigorated her in a way no one else had. She knew nothing about him physically, but oh so much about the deeper self he held within.

But she would never meet him. Never need to reconcile any wish that the crotchety man on the other side
of the page could be someone who could spark her in other ways. In the same way she didn't need to discover if the viscount was someone who would touch her more deeply and make her lose herself in the end.

“You do not desire another?”

“No,” she said calmly, as he tucked her loosened hair behind her ear.

“There is nothing that could entice you?”

“Were you planning to take me to the Hannings' masked ball?” she joked. The invitations and responses had all been generated long before. The coveted vellum secured in hands across London. In fact, why wouldn't the viscount be going? She would have assumed he would be.

“As a matter of fact,” he said lazily, twirling her hair. “Yes, I am.”

 

He watched her face, full of color as she pressed her hands to her waist and examined the dress from the side. Not as animated as when she was arguing over books—when her face was overflowing with passion—or on paper—her pen creasing the page just an extra touch when she was debating—but in a purely female, satisfied way.

It made the purely male side of him purr.

She'd make the perfect mistress. She really would.

The curving lines on the paper in his pocket were etched in his mind. He touched the correspondence and removed it. Looking at the soft slopes, he smiled and looked back up as she gave a small twirl, the dress curling around her just as the end of her salutation curled on the page.

If control were something that he always sought, then tempting fate had always been his fatal flaw. A
piece of his father that he had never stamped out of his own personality.

He fingered the expensive necklace in his right-hand pocket, caressing the lovely stones and simple setting.

She ducked back into the dressing room. He reached with his left hand and lifted Madame Galland's pen from its pot. He tapped it against the side and set it to a loose piece of paper, his natural sloping scrawl allowed to scritch without outside regard.

She emerged in a peacock blue that would set off her eyes, making them blazing sapphires. The swan who had never imagined herself as such.

The perfect mistress. One he could keep, well, forever, quite possibly.

Secret #5: Some are more ripe for seduction than others. But the sweetest fruit is the woman who doesn't realize she is plump on the vine. The one who bursts upon your tongue as soon as you set lips to her.

The Seven Secrets of Seduction

 

T
he equally grand but rented carriage rolled to a stop. Miranda touched the drawn shade. She'd drawn it upon entering and felt no urge to panic—at least not about being inside the carriage. She had plenty of unrelieved tension about her destination. But surely they weren't yet at the Hannings'? The viscount was meeting her at the ball. He'd sent his primary carriage team with the rented carriage though, so she wasn't alarmed at the sudden stop, just curious.

The viscount had said he would find her at the ball. That it would be part of the fun.

She was a little surprised, truth be told, that he wanted to meet her there. As if he was courting her. The first day she had met him, she would have said that he was the type to flout convention and enter a
society ball, scarlet woman on his arm. And after she'd discovered he was Viscount Downing, she would have expected it.

But he'd been adamant about meeting her there.

The door opened, and an excited voice met her ears. “Thank you, kind sir. What strong shoulders you have.”

Miranda's eyes widened, and she leaned forward to see the crown of a perfectly coiffed head duck into the interior. Benjamin's goofy grin disappeared behind the door as it closed, and the entering figure of Good Queen Bess thumped onto the seat.

“Ooh, cushion comfort.”

“Georgette!”

“Miranda! Imagine seeing you here.” Her eyes sparkled as she put a hand to her bosom. “You are a vision of Artemis. Oh! Look at your arrows.” She touched the gilded set on the seat.

“What—I thought—you were—”

“Going to the Mortons'? With you? I was.” She patted her hair, her smile undimmed.

“I apologize again for canceling—”

“Good gads, Miranda.
Whatever for?
I was excited for you when I read your note. I was thrilled for you when I thought of your fate. Exhilarated for the adventure you'd experience, and that was all
before
I saw the very nice carriage that was waiting to take me shopping. And the stupefying explanation as to why it was taking me.” She happily looked around the interior. “And now, well, I think I might just love you forever.”

“You are coming then? To the Hannings'?” She wouldn't have to arrive alone. Nor brave the lofty crowd of the event with only the viscount for comfort.
The viscount not a very
comfortable
man. Exciting, thrilling, exhilarating—all of the words Georgette had used—but not comfortable.

“I am.” Georgette's smile threatened to split her face as she held up a gilded invitation. “I've been practicing my Russian all day in case you cause too big a stir.
Nyet!
No dance!”

Miranda stared at her for a moment, then couldn't contain the grin that spilled into laughter.

She touched her friend's hand when her laughter finally subsided. “I'm so glad you are coming.”

Georgette squeezed her fingers back. “Me too. You can't imagine how hard it was to keep it to myself and not fawn all over a reply to you. And that charming viscount of yours…” She waggled her brows, obviously forgiving him all of his sins. “Well, if I don't see you for a time at the party, I assure you that I will be
fine.
”

Miranda colored. “I—”

Georgette smirked. “I love that you can still blush.”

They exchanged excited chatter for the rest of the long ride, the Hannings living on the outskirts of London proper.

As they drew closer, they both craned to peer through the window as surreptitiously as they could because there was a small crowd of people moving slowly along the curbside. Trying to catch a peek as the grand carriages moved slowly up the drive.

The house sparkled at the top of the curved drive. Lit by what looked like more lights than all of Vauxhall contained.

“Oh, Miranda.” Georgette's face shone.

Miranda looked at her, shining in the interior. Staring out at the lit facade, face nearly pressed to the glass.

The viscount had done this. Maximilian. Had probably deduced it from their earlier conversations that not only would Miranda love to attend, but that it would absolutely be her friend's dream.

“I think I love your viscount,” Georgette whispered. “I hope you don't mind.”

Despite her best reservations, at the moment Miranda had to admit to feeling just a tad in love with the man herself.

Lights brimmed from the entryway. The viscount's house was grand, but the Hannings' house, lit the way it was, was magnificent. The entire scene was something out of a fairy tale.

As they entered the house, only Georgette's excited hand upon her arm persuaded her that this was real. People were milling everywhere, though the overwhelming crush that was likely to attend had not yet arrived. They were early, and many would come fashionably late.

Those that wanted to set up their stations early were already doing so. Some wanted prime viewing spots while others preferred to be the ones in prime view. The mixture of attendees was part of what made the spectacle intriguing. One didn't know if one was stepping onto the floor with a duchess or an actress, a prince or a dancing master.

Tales would run for weeks in the papers of simple folk who had brushed elbows with royalty. Or a countess seduced by her own husband, unknowingly. It made the whole spectacle possible for them to attend without too much of a concern.

They walked into the main ballroom and immediately everyone seemed to look their way. Georgette looked lovely, her figure on fine display in the queenly gown
draped about her. And Miranda had to admit that she was quite pleased with her own appearance. Galina had been given free rein and done a wonderful job.

There were enough people entering with and around them that it made their own entrance mostly unremarkable. Too many people were trying to establish themselves in the crowd, though a few glances were sent their way. Groups established their spaces, then turned to watch the throng. To attempt to determine who was who by the way they held themselves or by what they were wearing.

Next to her, Georgette was nearly vibrating in excitement. She kept a running, whispered commentary every time a new couple, group, or person entered the main corridor through the throng. Some attendees were easily identifiable. Others were masked quite well. Goddesses, jesters, kings, puckish spirits, fictional characters, and darkly masked villains roamed the parquet floor as the space filled.

But where was the viscount?

The murmurs of the crowd suddenly rose. A woman walked into the thick of the room on the arm of a dark man. Georgette was avoiding the temptation to crane her neck, though she looked as if she wanted to do nothing short of standing on her tiptoes to see. “Who is it?” she whispered.

Currently in a better vantage spot due to the movements of the crowd, Miranda watched the woman, half of the pair of Romeo and Juliet, and the way she tried to smile gaily at those around her. The way the lines of her body were just a little too tight. “The Marchioness of Werston.”

Georgette's neck craned slightly. “Really? Who is Romeo?”

Miranda shook her head, observing the rakish way the man sauntered. A decidedly scandalous sort as he began undoing his mask. “You would know better than I.”

She wondered what the viscount would have to do tonight to cover this one up, she thought somewhat cynically, then shut down the thought, determined to enjoy herself without restraint.

“Werston has nerve,” a woman muttered near them.

Miranda blinked and watched the man with greater interest as he sauntered forward, the mask dangling from his fingertips. So this was the viscount's father. He was quite dashing.

And he was with his wife. As doomed star-crossed lovers.

At the moment they were creating more of a scandal together than apart.

Voices grew in volume. Miranda watched as a very familiar figure stepped into the room behind the couple wearing a simple masked outfit. He was dressed entirely in black, and though he was surrounded by outrageous costumes, he somehow commanded all attention. One hand was at his pocket, another held a glass. He looked bored as he gazed absently around the room, but then his eyes stopped on her, and a slow smile curved his lips.

“Oh, dear. I must harness my jealousy. That look.” Georgette fanned herself. “And he is heading this way.” Her friend lifted her skirts for flight.

“Georgette,” she hissed. “What are you doing?”

Her friend smiled mischievously. “Leaving you to your villain, dear. I am off to find a white knight. Ta!”

And her friend—well, she'd considered her a friend
two minutes ago, but perhaps she ought to rethink it—took off, leaving her in the middle of the floor as a dark overpowering presence stepped beside her.

“That didn't take very long,” she said as lightly as she could about his quick progress through the crowd, then turned to look up at him. His eyes caressed her face, lighting her on fire all the way down to her toes. Lord, he looked marvelous. “Good evening, your lordship,” she breathed.

He smiled—the smile that always did strange things to her insides. That mysterious, lovely pull of lips. He bowed over her hand, his eyes never leaving hers as the first notes of a waltz lifted into the air from the orchestral floor. “May I have this first dance, dear lady?”

And every dance thereafter, her heart nearly answered. “Yes.”

He spun her onto the floor, the lights a glowing halo above them as they moved. The faces in the crowd melted together. The onlookers became a simple backdrop in the pages of a storybook.

He was a wonderful dancer and made it easy to follow. She had taken many dancing lessons, but dancing with the viscount was a completely different experience. She had been taught the correct steps in order to be able to teach them in turn. But she had never danced with someone like the viscount. Someone who affected her in such a sensual way.

The waltz ended, and a new one began.

Her breath caught as his eyes met hers over touched fingertips. “I thought it improper to dance together again so soon.”

“At this ball, nothing is improper as long as one remains anonymous.”

“I don't think you can be anonymous.”

His lips curved. “Anyone can be anonymous should it suit him.”

She shook her head. “No, I don't think you could ever be.”

He looked away. “Then you might be surprised. I hope that should it happen, you will not be too displeased.”

She raised her brows.

He twirled and twirled her, taking her breath away, making her forget anything but the way they moved together. The music came to a close, and he opened his lips to say something, but they tightened as he looked at something over her shoulder.

His eyes met hers, darker and more focused. “I had meant to wait to greet you, to perhaps do so in some darkened hallway or behind a closed door, but I just couldn't help myself.” He looked back into the crowd. “As always, when it comes to you.”

She tried to read his expression, but he quickly wiped it free.

“Don't take off your mask, now that I've paid you attention,” the viscount said casually. Too casually. “Lest you be mobbed. The ton likes nothing better than a mystery. They'll avidly try to discern your identity from afar until you slip and make it known. Messerden will want to speak nonsense for a few minutes without pause, trapping you here. Walk around the room, if you need to escape. I charged your friend with watching out for you.”

She startled at that piece of information but followed his eyes to a man in a dark cape drawing closer, another man in his wake. Onlookers gazed between them and the oncoming men, fascinated. Hoping for a bit of gossip.

“Leave if I can no longer stand the considering stares?” she asked.

The lines about the viscount's mouth tightened farther. “I apologize.”

“Why?” she tried to say lightly. “It is a grand adventure, isn't it? To be mistaken for a princess?”

His shoulders loosened minutely. “As long as you let me save you later from the wicked king.”

“I may, should I require aid.” She squared her shoulders as Messerden and the slighter man reached them. Both men eyed her but greeted the viscount first, as propriety dictated. Messerden turned to her, and she braced herself for the conversation.

Suddenly, the flowing silks of Juliet materialized in her view, at her side, stepping just a hair in front of her. Greeting Messerden in a twinkling voice.

Then she felt a presence near her back and turned to see a rakish, dark man bowing to her, lifting her hand with so much practiced ease.

Dressed as Romeo.

The viscount's posture tightened, but he was busy answering his mother and the other two men. From his actions at Vauxhall, she had the feeling that he would easily ignore the two men to retrieve her, but the same couldn't be said of ignoring his mother.

And his father had neatly and precisely cut her from their circle. She was somewhat relieved, truth be told. There was just something about Messerden and his continued appearances that put her on edge.

That didn't mean that facing a marquess, even a decidedly scandalous one, was somehow an easy task. A marquess. Might as well be the King for all of the space between them socially.

“Good evening, dear lady.”

“Good evening,” she replied softly, unsure of a proper response in such a situation.

He smiled charmingly at a couple walking toward the dance floor and stepped backward and to the right, causing her to mirror the action as he hadn't yet let go of her hand, allowing the couple to pass between their two groups, drawing her a little farther from the foursome now a few paces behind her back.