“What did you think of my writing assignment?” he asked.
She had forgotten the two pages entirely. Now she considered them.
“It was detailed, especially for such a busy man.”Busy carousing and entertaining not one but two females,she added silently.
His grin was almost boyish, squeezing her heart with a pang of longing. If only he weren’t such a thundering buck.
“The account of my day didn’t take too long. I cobbled it together, by which I mean I dictated it to my valet over a glass of brandy before heading to my bedroom for a more important matter.”
Purity gasped and rose to her feet.
“You have gone too far, my lord.”
Foxford jumped up. “I intended no offense,” he said, frowning. “In truth, it was a bit of a rude jest, but I meant onlythat I was ready for a good night’s sleep. Am I not allowed to mention a bedroom in a lady’s presence, either?”
“You are not to bring up your nighttime antics at all,” she said, ready to throw him out.
He ran a hand over his jaw as if contemplating. “I am starting to think there are too many barred words and topics, making it impossible for members of the opposite sex to carry on a conversation without stumbling into some of them.”
“It is my nature to hope and wish you could behave like an honorable gentleman,” Purity said, clasping her hands together to keep from wringing them like an anxious ninny. “However, since you cannot comport yourself, I shall no longer keep company with you. I want you to leave and not return.”
His astounded expression gave her pause.
“My Lord Foxford, can you really think I would wish to spend time with you when you come from your bed having dallied with not one but two loose women? Even if you have attempted to scrub off your debauchery.”
“Scrub off my debauchery?” he repeated, appearing entirely confounded. “What in blue blazes are you talking about?”
“You and those women I saw you with last night at Vauxhall,” she reminded him. “Did you not leave with two of them?”
His mouth dropped open. “How could you know that? You had already departed the gardens.”
“And yet I know,” she said, her voice soft, wishing it didn’t sound as sad as she felt. “All of London knows.”
“I see. If you will give me a chance to tell you what transpired, I will,” he said, “although since we have no arrangement between us, I don’t owe you any explanation.”
She narrowed her eyes at his peevish tone.
“It’s true, you owe me nothing,” she agreed.
They stood staring at one another like adversaries.
Then he cleared his throat. “Since I thought we were becoming friends, I wish to tell you anyway,” he added. “For I do not welcome your thinking the worst of me.”
He still sounded annoyed, but she’d caught him in his wicked ways with her own eyes.
“I did indeed leave with two of the women.”
“Ah-ha” nearly burst from her lips, but she restrained herself. He was still a guest in her home. But she could remind him of the sordid truth.
“You took them in your carriage with the shades drawn.”
Foxford shook his head. “No, I don’t believe they were drawn.”
Purity realized she’d added that detail, thinking he would have wanted utter privacy in order to do whatever hedonistic things they could get up to in a rocking carriage.
She shrugged. “Go on.”Would he confess to taking them to his home?
“The two women live at a... a rooming house on the other side of the Haymarket, and I took them there.”
