“Cunningham is an ass,” Aylesford observed thoughtfully. “And also a notorious liar.”
Cam found his gaze lingering upon Miss Eugenia Winter. Her curves were lovingly revealed by the scarlet net evening dress. Embroidery around the décolletage emphasized her plump bosom, as if intentionally drawing the masculine eye to that wicked place. He could not deny the allure of her creamy breasts or the flare of her hips. Or her mouth, which seemed far too wide and lush even from across the room.
Indeed, everything about her looked like an invitation to sin.
Cam tore his stare from her and settled it back upon his friend. “Cunningham may be an ass and a liar, but all one needs to do is take a look at Miss Eugenia Winter to know she is every bit as immoral as her reputation suggests. Just look at her in that dress.”
“I am looking,” Aylesford said on a grin. “I fail to see the issue with an immoral woman. I have kept company with—and heartily appreciated—legions of them.”
Cam snorted. “I have no doubt of that. But you must keep in mind you are not seeking your next mistress, Aylesford. You are seeking a betrothed to keep the dragon dowager from breathing fire at you for the next year. She will not approve of that one’s reputation.”
“She will not approve of any of them, truth be told.” Aylesford’s sigh was steeped in resentment. “But that is too bad. My odds are one in five. Any of them will do.”
That was rather the attitude Cam had adopted in relation to the Winter sisters. His debt was colossal. Only a sickeningly wealthy bride would save him from ruin.
Except for the red gown, he reminded himself. He would sooner be cast into penury than accept the tainted leavings of an oaf like Cunningham. Wealth and reasonable respectability. In that order.
Eugie used herfan to great advantage, shielding her lips as she spoke to her sister, Grace. “Would you look at the two of them? They are eying us as if we are, the five of us, about to be auctioned off at Tattersall’s.”
Grace flapped her own fan, her expression one of keen boredom. “Preening peacocks. Little do they know, we have no intention of accepting a proposal from anyone. ’Tis almost sad, really. I would feel sorry for them if they were not such pompous hypocrites.”
“But they are, judging us for our father, our brother, for our wealth and our reputations,” Eugie agreed, her gaze slipping back to the tall man with the light-brown hair, the slashing jaw, and expression of extreme disapproval.
He was handsome, arrestingly so, and even from a distance. Which aggrieved her mightily, for she knew he was no different than any of his fellow lordling counterparts. The stains upon her reputation would never be lifted, and neither would the scars upon her heart.
She would do anything,anythingto keep her beloved sisters from suffering a fate similar to the one she had. For a time, she had fancied herself in love with Lord Cunningham, and she had truly believed he had loved her in return. Until she had discovered the awful truth, and he had turned against her in spectacular fashion, spreading gossip and lies so putrid they did not bear repeating.
“Your reputation should never have been called into question by that spineless, sniveling fool,” Grace snapped, waving her fan. “Dev should have shot him when he had the chance.”
“It is better for us all that he did not, and you know it,” she told her sister.
Their protective and beloved older brother, Dev, had wanted to challenge Cunningham to a duel. Eugie had begged him not to. Better to lose her honor than to lose the man who held their family together. She had been right—her brother’s intense devotion to all his sisters had precluded him from taking the chance he would be removed from their lives forever. The duel had not been fought. Cunningham had continued to spread his lies.
Oh, Dev had made his life a misery in the last few months, buying up his debts in preparation for a true reckoning, but the damage had already been inflicted by his lies. Eugie was damaged goods. Dev could pretend she was not. Her sister-in-law, Lady Emilia could invite every eligiblepartiin the realm to this blasted country house party.
Nothing would change the fact that everyone in this ballroom believed she had allowed the horrid Lord Cunningham liberties she ought to have reserved for her husband.
“Dev would have won,” Grace insisted. “Oh dear Lord, here they come with our own brother.”
“Et tu, Brute?” Eugie muttered at the sight of her brother and sister-in-law leading the two lords in their direction.
“At least they are handsome,” chimed in their sister, Christabella. “And I have heard wicked things about Lord Aylesford. He is arake.”
Eugie sent a disapproving frown in Christabella’s direction. “Do stop reading Minerva Press novels, sister. Rakes do not a good husband make.”
“Nor do barons,” Christabella shot back.
“That was an unbecoming taunt,” Grace informed their sister from the corner of her mouth as Dev and his coterie drew nearer.
“She is right, however,” Eugie admitted. “If I can spare you all the pain I suffered, I would experience it again a hundredfold.”
“No need to be a martyr,” said Pru, the eldest—and, by chance—tallest of her sisters. “We are all aware that many lords are snakes in sheep’s clothing.”
“Gads. It is a wolf,” Grace drawled, waving her fan in a more pronounced fashion, as though her presence at the ball bored her.
“What is a wolf?” Eugie asked, quite lost, as was often the case when one was attempting to converse with four sisters at once. Speaking of which, where had her youngest sister gone? “Where is Bea?”
No one said a word.
