Both Callie and Lady Helena were eying her strangely.
“You only need to ruin your reputation enough so that Lord Hamish will not want to marry you,” she added for good measure. “You do not want to damage yourself for any future prospects. What if you wish to marry someone else someday, have children of your own?”
“Improper behavior with Mr. Decker would not necessarily ruin Lady Helena for all others,” Callie countered. “Besides, what if she and Mr. Decker like each other? What if they fall in love and wish to marry? I do adore matchmaking. You know, I hold myself responsible for my brother marrying his wife. If I had not thrown them together as often as possible, they would have both been too stubborn to see they belonged together.”
What if Decker and Lady Helena fell in love?
Now it was Jo who wanted to retch at a notion.
“That would be horrible, Callie,” she snapped. “Why should Lady Helena wish to marry a man who keeps erotic pictures on the walls of his library?”
“What manner of erotic pictures?” Lady Helena asked, sounding intrigued.
“Yes, what manner of erotic pictures?” Callie probed. “And how would you know what is hanging in his library?”
Blast. Collect yourself, Josephine. First, you invented a book, then you interrupted your dearest friend, and now you are treading dangerously near to revealing you were in Decker’s library, of all things.
She cleared her throat. “That was the rumor I heard, I believe. And also in his club, the Black Souls.”
“I wonder what is depicted in them,” Lady Helena said, then flushed prettily. “Oh dear, I do hope the two of you will not think me shockingly forward and vulgar. My poor mother would be horrified.”
Callie laughed. “If you have not noticed by now, my dear, we are hardly cut from the same cloth as the paragons of society. And truthfully, I wonder what is depicted in them as well. I do not recall ever having been inside Mr. Decker’s library as yet, and of course, I have never gone to the Black Souls. Perhaps I will have Sinclair take me one of these days…”
But Jo did not miss the speculative look her friend sent in her direction. And nor did she fool herself that she was not flushing. She was dreadful at keeping secrets, and Callie knew it.
Jo busied herself with taking a sip from her tea, which was growing cool, studiously avoiding her friend’s gaze lest she read too much in Jo’s eyes. Namely, the scorching kisses she had shared with Decker the night before, in his carriage and at his club. She had gone home and immediately crossed item number one off her list.
“I have an excellent idea!” Callie exclaimed, grinning like the cat who had gotten into the proverbial cream. “Sinclair and I shall host a dinner party. I will see that Mr. Decker is included. That way, you can see if the two of you suit. And if you do, my brother and his duchess are hosting a country house party in a few weeks’ time. I will make certain you are all included in the guest list.”
Jo liked the idea of more opportunities to see Decker. Perhaps the potential to find him alone and cross off more items on her list. However, the aim of throwing him together with Lady Helena aggrieved her mightily. How to suggest as much without garnering further suspicions from her friend, however?
“Do you have anyone else in mind?” Jo asked Lady Helena. “Another man who might aid you in your quest to make yourself decidedlyde tropto the officious Lord Hamish?”
Lady Helena’s gaze lowered to her teacup, her lashes sweeping over her eyes. “There is one, but I fear he would not enlist himself in helping me to accomplish such a feat. He is close friends with my brother and I have known him since I was a girl. The Earl of Huntingdon, but he is nearly betrothed to another.”
Jo’s hopes flagged. Huntingdon was notoriously proper and cold. He seemed a lost cause.
“I shall invite him as well,” Callie decided. “The worst he can do is refuse. I do, however, believe him to be friends with Westmorland. Surely we can use the connection in our favor.”
“Thank you for wanting to aid me,” Lady Helena said with a tremulous smile. “I am not certain anything can save me from the wretched future awaiting me.”
Jo knew a stinging rush of shame. She was being selfish. After all, she was not being forced into an unwanted marriage. Her brother Julian would never do such a thing, as much as he blustered and threatened. He was merely overly protective of his sisters.
And it was not as if Decker washers, was it?
No matter how much something deep inside her suddenly wished he were.
Decker detested dinnerparties.
He found them appallingly boring and a tedious waste of otherwise useful time.
Unless he was the one hosting, that was. But he had made an art of offering his guests an experience unlike any they would have elsewhere. There had been the time his chef had shaped all the desserts into miniature bubbies. The evening when the famous American actress Eva Silver had dined completely in the nude alongside his guests could not be forgotten. Occasionally, his guests could select their desserts from the body of a naked woman. It made for an excellent table scape. Besides, how many stuffy lords could honestly say they had plucked a berry tartlet from a beautiful woman’s rouged nipple?
But the table before him, carefully decorated with flowers and whatnots and sparkling silver and candles and a bloody floating miniature boat in the center, was decidedly not as interesting. To be fair, the Countess of Sinclair was remarkably adept as a hostess. She possessed a natural charm that made every gathering she helmed smoother than the ordinary dull societal events he had occasionally attended in the past because some lord or other wished to solicit advice or to sell him something.
Even so, there was one reason he had decided to attend his second dinner party hosted by Sin and his countess in as many weeks. For as much as Decker loved Sin like a brother, that love had a limit, and engaging in societal nonsense more than once a month was it.
However, Sin had let it slip that Lady Jo Danvers would be in attendance.
