“Of course, and I love them all dearly, but none of them have ever crept into the darkness of a Swiss night with me to rig a saucer of honey to fall on Lady Louisa Wormley’s head after she left her chamber in the morning.”
Clara laughed at the reminder of one of their more memorable adventures. “Lady Louisa deserved a saucer of pig excrement. The honey was too kind.”
“You see? Where will I find anyone else with such a delightful sense of justice?” Bo clapped her hands to her wasp waist and gave her a severe look. “Don’t answer me. I despair.”
Her friend’s feigned melodrama had Clara relaxing slightly, and momentarily distracted her mind. “You may visit me in Virginia whenever you like. My doors will always be open to you.”
“Is Ravenscroft in accord with your intentions?” Bo asked.
“Yes. He’s pockets to let as you said, and he needs the funds. He keeps his portion, and I return to my home. It will all be easy.” She flushed as she said the last, for her thoughts again strayed to his wicked suggestion, and to thoughts of his touch. Of how much she’d enjoyed it, and of how difficult she found it to resist him.
“He’s the devil’s own sort of handsome, is he not?” Bo seemed to sense the sinful course her thoughts had taken. “Is he as good a kisser as they say?”
Her pride wanted her to lie, but this was her friend. Her compatriot. The very lady with whom she’d released frogs into the knickers drawer of one Miss Caroline Stanley. “I’m afraid so,” she admitted weakly, embarrassed. “Bo, he’s every bit the rake they say he is too. Perhaps worse.”
“Never say it.” Bo looked impressed.
She likely was. Bo was unique and bold, and she aired her mind without caring who she offended or what rule of society she bent. She was a true original, the last of her sisters on the marriage market. As such, her parents were quite eager for her to make a good match before she created a horrible scandal. Bo herself was in no such hurry.
“I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true,” Clara grumbled. “Though it grieves me to admit it. I’d certainly never tell a soul other than you. Well, and perhaps the earl himself. I do believe I foolishly told him just such a thing yesterday in the gardens.”
And he’d been pleased, the rapscallion.
Her friend’s gaze searched Clara’s, seeing far too much. “You like him, don’t you?”
Like him? Of course she didn’t like the Earl of Ravenscroft. He was odd, a contradiction, too handsome for his own good. He was a reprobate who’d used his looks to cuckold husbands all across London. He drank too much. He didn’t seem to hold anything sacred. He’d never done anything worthwhile in his life, aside from taking on the title of earl and walking about as though the world was his theater. Why, the greatest suffering in his life was likely nothing more dire than a leaky roof on one of his stately homes or a worn carpet he could ill afford to replace. Pockets to let for an English lord was still living quite handsomely for most folk.
No, she didn’t like him at all. She opened her mouth to say precisely that.
“Don’t answer me now,” Bo intervened in a low tone, her eyes darting past Clara’s shoulder and widening with meaning. “He’s coming this way. Oh my, he is wonderfully fine-looking, Clara. I’d forgotten just how much since I saw him last at Cleo and Thornton’s dinner. I’m not sure I’d be in such a rush to leave for Virginia, were I you.”
Clara pursed her lips. “The appearance hides a most hideous soul, I’m sure. Devoid of all morals.”
But still, she turned to drink in the sight of him striding toward her through the ballroom’s heavy crush of revelers with a purpose she didn’t mistake. Their eyes met, and a heavy, languid feeling sluiced over her. He was a beautiful creature, tall of form, lean of hip, his shoulders broad beneath his black evening clothes. His dark hair had been pomaded with a more judicious hand tonight, rendering it less gleaming and more lush. For some reason, she imagined tunneling her fingers through it, raking her nails over his scalp, holding his head to hers for the kind of devouring kiss he’d bestowed upon her that night in his study. The kind of kiss some forbidden part of her clamored for again.
Perhaps her brain was rotten, as her stepmother had suggested. It had to be for her to entertain the notion of ever again allowing Ravenscroft to kiss her. He reached them and bowed with formal elegance, taking their extended hands one at a time to buss the air over them. Bo’s hand came first, and when it was Clara’s turn, the delicious slide of his firm mouth upon her skin teased her, ever so slight but nonetheless sending her traitorous heart into a flurry.
“Forgive me if I’ve intruded upon you, Lady Boadicea, Miss Whitney.” His tone was butter smooth and rich. Practiced.
He wasn’t requesting forgiveness, not truly. Rather, he was marking his claim, Clara realized. She had aligned herself with the wickedly handsome man before her, this man who smelled of French cologne and had taken untold numbers of ladies to his bed. In a short time, she’d be his wife.
The thought gave her a shiver that she banished with the stern reminder that theirs would be a marriage in name only. “You don’t strike me as the sort of man who often asks forgiveness,” Clara said, harnessing the streak of boldness that wanted to come to life within her.
“Ah, Miss Whitney, how insightful you are,” he remarked, an odd light in his eyes that she couldn’t decipher. “Penitence isn’t one of my virtues, I’m afraid. Of course, many would tell you that I haven’t any virtues at all.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” Bo told him matter-of-factly.
Part of Clara couldn’t believe her friend’s insouciance but then she thought about all the nights they’d crept about their finishing school in the name of pranks and revenge. For his part, the earl flicked a casually assessing glance over Bo before turning his brilliant eyes back to Clara.
“This is the one, then,” he said, and she knew he had discerned which friend had led her to his door in a mere sentence.
He was blessed with an alarming penchant for reading people with a blend of clarity and ease. She’d witnessed it before, but she was just beginning to fully appreciate its consequences. The Earl of Ravenscroft was smarter, wilier, and more aware than she’d even supposed. “Lady Bo is my dear friend,” she said carefully, aware that she neither confirmed nor denied his suspicions. She didn’t wish to cause any trouble for Bo, after all.
“Of course.” He flashed a grin that showed off his white, even teeth. “Lady Boadicea, I have an old and treasured friendship with your sister, Lady Thornton.”
His confirmation of the Duchess of Devonshire’s similar suggestion days earlier stirred up an odd emotion that she refused to recognize as jealousy, for of course it wasn’t. Curiosity was all it was. Bo’s elder sister, the Marchioness of Thornton, shared a love match with her husband. They were a rarity in theton, Clara understood. So how was it that Lady Thornton was a friend of Ravenscroft’s?
She looked at Bo, who shrugged, as if to suggest it a moot point, and then back to the earl, who revealed nothing. His expression was impenetrable. Surely he would’ve realized the implications of his admission. But if he did, he didn’t appear to care.
