Knaves' Wager by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page B

your voice."
    "Did I? My senses must have been disordered. I am struck all of a heap to find you so… very..near."
    Though he had not moved, the space between them seemed to vibrate.
    "You are silent," he said. "Dare I hope the feeling is mutual?"
    "I will not be the butt of your crude humour, sir." With a strength born of anger and desperation, she pushed her way past him.
    Her shoulder struck a muscular arm, her hip an equally hard limb. The shock of contact, brief though it was, caused Lilith to drop her book. She did not pause to retrieve it, but, palms perspiring and heart thumping, marched off in search of Cecily.
    He did not follow her.
----
    4

    On the day Lord Brandon had reached Town, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg had arrived as well. She put up at the Pulteney Hotel; or rather, was put up, for it was the Lievens who paid the two hundred ten guineas a week; or rather, was put up with, for the Czar's sister was a difficult guest, having promptly declared her own private war upon the Prince Regent.
    On this same day, Czar Alexander and the King of Prussia had entered the French capital at the head of their triumphant troops. Immediately thereafter, the Czar and Talleyrand met to settle Buonaparte's fate. Within five days, the news had burst upon London, to drive the populace into a frenzy of celebration.
    Nonetheless, these and other international sensations took second place one evening in early April to weightier issues: that is, the appearance — at an informal gathering of two or three hundred of the Countess Lieven's dearest friends — of the Marquess of Brandon and his cousin, Lord Robert Downs.
    Lord Brandon's notoriety had not at all dimmed in the seven years of his self-imposed exile. True, he had returned from time to time, but only briefly, and rarely to good company. He had become a shadowy figure, occasionally glimpsed among the more infamous of the demimonde , like a dark Lucifer among a host of lesser fiends.
    One might wonder then, on this particular evening, why the virtuous did not shrink from him in fear and revulsion.
    Instead, they crowded about his tall, athletic, black-coated figure as though he were Baal and they the idol worshippers. Perhaps virtue was a commodity in short supply in the ton, as Elise had hinted, or perhaps virtue was no match for an unimpeachable bloodline, a strikingly handsome face, a powerful masculine figure, a devastating charm, and an obscenely large income. In any case, there was scarce an individual at the gathering who did not talk either to or about the Marquess of Brandon.
    Lord Robert was a lesser light. Still, he had some claim on the company's attention, for he had not been seen at a Society affair since he'd commenced one of his own with a French-born courtesan.
    Even the most jaded of the countess's guests could not resist speculating what had brought these two elusive prizes back into the Great World.
    Lord Robert, at the moment, was equally perplexed.
    In the blaze of thousands of candles, the glitter and flash of jewels was nearly blinding. Dashing silks and satins of every tint mingled with fragile white muslins, like a bouquet of vivid summer blooms set off by delicate sprays of baby's breath, amid the darker foliage of expertly tailored superfine and velvet. The affair, in short, was as insipid as every other.
    Lord Robert had rarely been in polite company in nearly two years, yet the faces were depressingly familiar. The few new ones belonged mainly to the latest crop of misses, who were, naturally, exact replicas of the previous crop. Lord Robert had arrived very late, scarcely half an hour ago, and already he was bored nearly frantic.
    He had agreed to accompany his cousin because he was curious what it was Julian said and did that drove women of every station and every shade of virtue to lose their hearts, minds, and — if they had them to lose — their morals.
    What Lord Robert had observed at Hookham's only whetted his curiosity: the quiet