“Speech, speech!”came a shout from the other side of the ballroom.
The crowd roared its agreement.
“Are you certain this party is about perfume?”Nicholas asked.“What can possibly be said about toilet water that we don’t already know?”
“This is the birthplace ofDuke,” his brother answered with reverence.“The inventor is somewhere in this room.”
A flood of irritation washed away Nicholas’s buoyant good humor.
“Where?”He curled his hands into fists.“I’ll throttle the cretin right now.”
“It’ll ruin your image,” Christopher chided him.“And mine.No throttling.”
“That horrid perfume is a plague upon London,” Nicholas growled.“It’s ruining my life.”
“I like how it smells.”Chris shrugged.“So does everyone else.”
Nicholas scowled at him.“That’s what’s horrid about it.”
“That it works?”
“Yes.”Nicholas said with feeling.“It shouldn’t exist.A rake is a noble calling—”
“What’s noble about it?”his brother cut in skeptically.
“—in which a man utilizes his mind—”
“His body, you mean.”Christopher smirked.“The primary criteria for ‘rakedom’ seems to be nothing more than a handsome face and a hard—”
“—in order to engage a willing female participant in a few hours of mutual satisfaction.”Nicholas narrowed his eyes.“This pox of a perfume has every dandy, greenhorn, and featherwit in London dousing himself ineau de toiletteand believing himself a dashing conqueror of women.”
Chris lifted a shoulder.“The ladies do seem to like it.”
“It’s cheating,” Nicholas said firmly.
“So is having a handsome face,” his brother countered.“See how well you do with a flour sack wrapped about your head.”
Nicholas sent him a flat stare.“My face is real.This accursed perfume is false.It must be stopped.”
“Don’t wear it,” Chris suggested.
“I would never,” Nicholas said in outrage.“One shouldn’t need to smell like a duke in order to find a woman.”
“I wonder if it smells like any dukes we know,” his brother mused.
“It smells like all the dukes we know,” Nicholas gritted out.“And the earls and the viscounts and the footmen and the furriers and the bakers and the butchers and the—”
“Everyone’s wearing it.I know,” Chris interrupted with a grin.“That’s the point of this party.Dukeworks.I’ve heard no less than a dozen gentlemen swear it was their key to securing a bride.”
“No man should use a parlor trick to attract women,” Nicholas snapped.“Whether it’s to take them to bed or to the altar.Deception is dishonorable.”
“I concede the point,” his brother said after a moment’s thought.“I would never wed a woman whose interest in me was anything other than genuine.But we have different goals.You are not interested in marriage.Or have things changed?”
“Never.”
A chill slid down Nicholas’s spine at the very idea.It wasn’t just the thought of forever that gave him pause.Wives were alarmingly unpredictable.He preferred knowing exactly what each day would bring.
As a rake, the lines were clearly drawn.One night.One time.Nothing more.Everyone knew what to expect.The women he dallied with sought the same things.They lived in the same world, comported themselves by the same rules.Courtesans, widows, women of independent means who either did not have a reputation to protect or were well-practiced in secrecy.
