“A drunk,” she shot back as if she’d seen too many of his kind this evening. “Here’s a full one.” She offered the full tankard she’d carried over to him.
Phillips took it, but then gave the girl a leering smirk and poured the contents down her frightfully low bodice before Gavin even realized what he was about.
Ale splattered everywhere including over Gavin. Phillips then followed this antic by lurching forward and diving his face into her cleavage. He shook his head wildly in her bosom, wrapping his arms around her waist.
The girl screeched for him to let her be. She hit his back with her tray and struggled to escape. All around them, men roared with laughter. Some stood on the benches or their chairs in the boxes for a better look. They thought this a great stunt and shouted encouragement loud enough to drown out what was happening on stage.
Gavin thought it criminal. He stood, grabbed Phillips by the collar and the seat of his breeches and yanked him up. “Run,” he said to the girl, and he didn’t have to tell her twice.
Swinging Phillips around to meet him, Gavin said, “You are chairing a committee meeting on the morrow with the Regent. Sober up.”
Phillips looked into Gavin’s face, grinned like the sod he was, and burped. Offended by the odor, Gavin let go of his hold and Phillips dropped to the floor at Harris and Crowder’s feet where he did not move.
“I told you he’d be the first to pass out,” Rov announced to Daniels. “Pay up.”
“You’ll have my marker on the morrow,” the admiral answered, unconcerned.
“Do you wager on everything?” Gavin asked his friend in horrified surprise.
“Only when I know I shall win,” Rov assured him, sitting back in his chair and crossing his legs. “For example, I’ve a wager that I shall bed the Siren before any other manjack in this room.”
“That is a ridiculous bet,” Gavin answered, pleased to finally be able to express his opinion on the matter.
“Is it?” Rov asked, unperturbed. He took out his snuff box and took a pinch. “Perhaps you would like to place money against me?” He sneezed.
“I don’t waste money on immoral women,” Gavin answered.
“The Siren is more than just any woman,” Daniels said, speaking as if Gavin was a simpleton. “Don’t you know who she is? Why are you here if you don’t?”
“No, Baynton doesn’t know,” Rov said. “I’m certain he wasn’t in attendance when she appeared in London years ago.”
Daniels chortled his thoughts. “Well, you are in for a treat, Your Grace. Loveliest creature in the world. Captured every male heart and then disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Gavin asked.
“Aye,” Rov said. “When they had the Naughty Review years ago, she was the queen of the evening. God knows I had never laid eyes on anything more magical than her. There wasn’t a one of us in the theater who didn’t want her.”
“Aye, that is true,” Daniels said.
“But she vanished and no one, including the theater managers would tell us who she was or where she went. I know because I spent a pretty penny trying to learn the information. But tonight, she is back and she won’t escape me, not this time.”
“Do you intend to hunt her down?” Gavin said.
Rov laughed. “Absolutely, Baynton. She’s an actress. She’s fair game. It is what her kind expects.”
“You aren’t stalking a deer. This is a person.”
“A lovely one,” Rov agreed, unrepentant. “Wait until you see her. You’ll want to stalk her as well—oh, wait, you won’t keep a mistress.”
This had been an old squabble between them. Rov didn’t understand why Gavin didn’t use his ducal title to wallow in female flesh. “You are suspiciously like a monk,” he was fond of saying, only half in jest.
If he knew the truth, he’d truly roast Gavin . . . because Gavin had yet to “know” woman, as biblical scholars were fond of saying.
It wasn’t that Gavin didn’t wish to. He was hungry for sex. He longed for the softness of a woman, a wife, a helpmate.
However, as a duke, it was important that his wife be a virgin. Otherwise, as his father had stressed on several occasions, how would he know her offspring were his?
And if Gavin’s wife must be a virgin, should he not be one himself? ’Twas said that knights of old remained celibate until they’d taken their vows and the idea had captured Gavin’s imagination, not that his father had allowed him any time to go whoring with Rov and the others. His father had been a tireless taskmaster in preparing his eldest son.
