“Ridgely.”
Pamela was not impressed by his question. Had she forgotten he was her elder brother and that his largesse provided her with her teeming wardrobe, the jewels at her throat, and the roof over her head? Deering had been a wastrel. Pamela had loved him desperately. He’d died destitute, having drained his family coffers, and leaving her with nothing.
But he would not remind his sister of past pains. To do so would be wrong. And for some reason, Trevor had decided he had committed enough wrongs for one day.
He took a fortifying sip of his brandy and then sighed, relenting. “After the guards were in place, I wandered to the library and fell asleep.”
“That doesn’t explain how you came to be atop Lady Virtue on the divan,” his sister pointed out,sotto voce.
Thankfully, none of the servants had overheard her outrage earlier, and Pamela was exercising extreme caution now to preserve the illusion that nothing untoward had occurred. No one was the wiser for his transgressions against the innocent lamb in his care. An innocent lamb who was, just as she had previously taunted him, not quite as innocent as he had supposed.
She knew how to make herself come.
Bloody hell.
Lady Virtue Walcot, flushed and rumpled on his divan with her hems around her waist, creamy thighs parted to reveal her glorious cunny as her fingers flew over her swollen clitoris, was a memory that would live on within him forever.
Beyond eternity.
A sculpture ought to be commissioned to preserve the moment and commemorate it a hundred years from now, so that men could see that once a goddess had roamed the streets of London, bringing mere mortals to heel like mongrels. And none of them a bigger mongrel than he.
“Have you nothing to say?” Pamela asked, her outrage making her quiet voice vibrate beneath the intensity of her emotions.
“I’ve quite forgotten your question,” he admitted wryly.
He’d been thinking of Virtue.Again.When he ought to be thinking about the ramifications of his actions and the very real possibility that someone was trying to have him murdered.
Pamela’s nostrils flared. Trevor and his sister had always been opposites. She favored their mother with her golden-blonde hair and her bright-blue gaze. He physically looked like his father, with dark hair and eyes. It was one of the reasons, he suspected, that their mother loathed him. And where Trevor eschewed propriety and had spent years avoiding his familial duty like the plague it was, Pamela had been the dutiful daughter, marrying a duke’s son. It hadn’t been her fault that Deering had died before inheriting, leaving her with nothing save her widow’s portion. Nor had it been her fault that her husband had been an abysmal gambler.
“My question,” his sister repeated, an edge to her voice which had been initially absent in her flustered state, “was what happened between you and Lady Virtue in the library?”
What had happened was that everything he’d thought he’d known about himself had been torn asunder and rearranged. He felt rather like a map that had seemed complete, but had in truth been drawn hopelessly incorrectly.
But he wasn’t about to confide any of that to his furious sister.
“She’s still a virgin, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said instead, intent upon avoiding offering further details.
Pamela’s face turned an alarming shade of red. “That isnotwhat I was asking, though I am gratified to hear it. Good sweet heavens, Ridgely. This is beyond the pale, even for you.”
She was damned easily embarrassed for a widow. He didn’t think he’d ever witnessed his ordinarily composed sister so agitated.
“Well.” He waved a hand dismissively into the air, flashing her a self-deprecating smile. “Allow me to alleviate you of any concern in that regard, nonetheless.”
“How long has this been happening?” Pamela gritted from between clenched teeth. “Have you been debauching her for the entirety of her stay at Hunt House, beneath my very nose?”
“Such matters tend to be delicate and require privacy,” he drawled. “I’d never dream of debauching my ward whilst you watched, Pamela. What manner of scoundrel do you take me for?”
“Cease jesting!” she hollered, her voice echoing in the cavernous room like the lash of a whip. “How can you dare laugh about this, Ridgely? Are you completely callous and cold, utterly without conscience? Do you not feel badly about what you’ve done to Lady Virtue?”
What he’d done? Why, the minx had bit him. And pulled his hair. And then she had grown impatient with his teasing and tended to herself. The chit was a menace.
“I’m not laughing, sister dearest,” he said, changing his tone. “I’m being perfectly calm. You, on the other hand, are rather making a spectacle.”
His jibe was apparently too much for Pamela.
She stormed forward, eyes flashing with uncustomary anger. “How long, curse you? How many times have you trifled with her? I warned her against the dangers suitors might bring to her reputation, but I never dreamed the greatest danger would be here in her very home.”
He was hardly a danger to Virtue. If anything, he was attempting to protect her. To show her the way of the world so that she might make a better match for herself. She deserved a husband who appreciated her, damn it. Not some pompous fop with shirt points in his bloody eyeballs.
