Say Something Shocking.
Learn What Naughty Words Mean and Use Them in a Sentence.
The last one was crossed out in a different ink then it had been written in. He tensed as he thought about that day in Marianne’s home when he’d taught her all those naughty words and watched her sweet mouth form them as his body became edgier and more focused on her. He pushed those thoughts away and continued to read the list:
Go to a Party Uninvited.
Wear Something Daring.
Again, that one was crossed off and he pulled the list to his chest and thought of Marianne in her beautiful gown at the Brighthollow ball. The one that had drawn every man’s attention in the room, including his own. The one that had made her look so intoxicating that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from kissing her as he asked…
As he asked her why she had been behaving so strangely recently. When she’d denied him an answer.
“Marianne,” he groaned as he began to realize exactly why that might be. He returned his attention to the list:
Be Unchaperoned with a Man.
That item had a question mark next to it and in Marianne’s hand, for he knew it instantly, it read:Does Sebastian count?
He stared. The annotations on the list, the lines through the items, those were in Marianne’s hand. He looked further to verify:
Get Drunk.Crossed off.
Find Out What Boxing is All About.Crossed off.
Experience a Perfect Kiss.
His breath caught as he saw Marianne had crossed that item off, only the line was shaky, as if she’d been trembling when she did it. The perfect kiss. The kiss they’d shared on the terrace, perhaps. It had been a perfect kiss. Powerful and heated and passionate.
He continued to scan the list and saw the wordslove affair, but before he could read that further, he was drawn to another item, this one with one more of Marianne’s notes beside it.
Play Faro in a Hell.
His stomach clenched because next to that item, she’d written:Mr. Lanford.
“Christ,” he muttered, tossing the list aside on the table and pivoting toward the door. She was going to the hell with Lanford. After so much time since he’d last seen her, she was likely alreadyatthe hell. And there were those kinds of places where a lady wouldn’t stand out, but Hedgewig’s wasn’t one of them. Marianne didn’t belong there.
And he needed to get to her as soon as possible so that she didn’t get herself into too much trouble.
CHAPTER 14
Marianne had spent many a pleasant hour playing faro and other card games with friends, but most especially Claudia. And she found, as she sat at the table surrounded by strange men and women, smoke clouding the air around her, drinks flowing freely, that she was benefiting from the practice. She collected her winnings yet again with a laugh as the next event began.
While the cards were shuffled, she glanced around the room. She had pictured a great many things while hearing about hells and the underground in whispered tones from people who thought she was too innocent to hear them.
But once inside, she found it was just a large parlor, kind of like a tearoom in Bath, only with more men and louder arguments and somewhat raucous behavior from the visitors.
She jerked her attention back to the matter at hand as the banker began to lay out the cards before him. Only she saw something that caught her eye. The man to his closest left was slipping his gaze toward the banker’s shoulder. Toward the cards.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, motioning to the banker. “I believe the gentleman on the left can see.”
The man in question jerked his gaze toward her, his bleary eyes growing wide. “I beg your pardon, chit?”
“Perhaps you didn’t mean to,” she said as the others at the table began to stare at her and uneasiness rose from deep within her. “It’s—it’s so easy to accidentally do just that when directly beside the banker.”
The banker twisted in his seat and started waving his hand. “What did I tell you, Wilcox? Over and over, you lousy cheat?”
“I weren’t cheating!” the man she’d accused said. “That little whore is lying!”
