An Indecent Proposition by Emma Wildes Read Free Book Online Page A

her day, she still wielded a great deal of social power in all the right circles. Her disapproval of her son’s detached approach to any marriageable young woman was public knowledge.
    Nicholas laughed, openly amused at the reference. “And not even her once I was old enough to avoid it. I’m fond of my mother, but the thought of a week of her constant advice makes me shudder.”
    “Hence my surprise at your suggestion. You don’t know Lady Wynn.” It was so much easier to concentrate on the frivolous bet than Derek’s own state of misery.
    “Are you telling me you’d object to having someone so lovely in your bed for that long?”
    “She’s very beautiful.” Derek obliquely didn’t answer the question, gazing over to where Caroline Wynn sat in a corner with several older ladies, as usual looking remote and unapproachable. She rarely accepted an invitation to dance, but men still tried. Even from a distance the pale perfection of her skin against the lustrous color of her auburn hair was striking. She was all opulent female beauty and he should be looking forward eagerly to the prospect of bedding her.
    Why wasn’t he?
    “I am not prone to long entanglements any more than you are,” Derek remarked in an offhand tone.
    Except one. He could be prone to one long entanglement, but he’d ruined everything.
    It was a lesson in idiocy, but he scanned the room with a restless, searching gaze.
    And found her.
    Of course Annabel would be there, damn all. Derek caught a glimpse among the well-dressed throng of hair a certain shade of gold, a flash of porcelain profile he knew as well as he knew his own face, and his chest tightened.
    Well , he reminded himself with as much pragmatic detachment as possible, you expected to see her . That his uncle’s ward was in attendance was no surprise. Half of London was crammed into this ballroom. It was natural Annabel would attend, and it wasn’t much of a leap to assume she was on the arm of her fiancé.
    Damn the man to hell.
    “How shall we decide who has the privilege of whisking her away first?”
    Nicholas’s question brought his attention back to the topic at hand and Derek forced himself to look away. Since it amounted to torture at the moment to even see Annabel, concentrating on something else had merit. Like a nice passionate interlude with the luscious Lady Wynn. Annabel was lost. Need he turn into a monk?
    No, of course not.
    Yet he hedged. “I suppose it depends on how fast the lady can get away. My schedule this next week includes several appointments I can’t miss, and besides, I need to come up with a similar secluded spot.”
    “I think I can clear things so I can leave in a day or two. Shall we say it’s settled?”
    They had been friends a long time. A decade, since they’d met at Cambridge in their first year at university, and there was an unfamiliar note in Nick’s voice. Derek recalled the younger version of the Duke of Rothay, still stinging from his ill-fated first foray into what he perceived as love, determined in a way only Nicholas could be to shrug off the experience. Derek signaled a passing footman, plucked a glass off the tray, and gave his companion an amused look. “She intrigues you.”
    “A little.”
    It was about time, with all the women who had come and gone in Nicholas’s life, that someone did.
    Derek chuckled. “A lot. Maybe you could fool someone else, but not me.”
    “She’s very attractive.”
    “That’s true enough, but all your entanglements involve gorgeous women.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t use the term entanglement . It makes me think of a poacher’s trap and a wounded animal.”
    In Derek’s estimation, that was an apt description. God alone knew he felt painfully backed against some proverbial wall with little recourse. With neutral inflection, he replied, “Fair enough. Tell me what you’d call them.”
    “Lustful escapades.” Nicholas supplied the phrase with a grin that mitigated the facetious