A masque couldn’t cover everything.
She had dark hair, coiled into a mass of heavy curls at the base of her long, slender neck, red lips, an elegant body, too slim, but still curved where a man wanted curves. No wan, indistinct beauty here, but a lush, glorious explosion of warmth and color, like a blazing sun in a pure blue sky.
The kind of sun it hurt to look at.
Masque or no masque—it made no difference. He’d have recognize her anywhere.
Charlotte Sutherland.
No, not Sutherland. Not anymore. She was the Marchioness of Hadley now.
Now what would make a marchioness abandon her grand country estate for a Covent Garden whorehouse? Wilted roses in the flower gardens, perhaps, or lazy servants? Whatever it might be, it hadn’t anything to do with him. She looked perfectly content to stay where she was. Despite his promise to Cam, Julian decided he’d leave her here, teetering on the edge of scandal.
He tipped the rest of his whiskey into his mouth and turned to Mary. “I’m ready. Shall we go upstairs?”
She rose to her feet. “Whatever you say, guv.”
He was halfway to the stairs when it happened.
Charlotte laughed. Soft—a titter more than a laugh. No one else in the noisy room noticed it. Well, no one would, would they? No one, that is, who hadn’t heard that laugh before, low and suggestive, her red lips pressed to his ear. Her laugh pulled him back at once, back into the dimly lit room, away from Mary and the sweet release her body promised.
As little as a year ago he’d dreamed of that laugh, dreams of such exquisite yearning he couldn’t tell whether they were dreams at all, or nightmares. Odd, how much could change in a year. Dreams faded. A man traded one nightmare for another. Brides became widows, and widows became whores.
What the devil was she doing here?She should be tucked away in Hampshire like a proper little widow, mourning her late husband, not in some whorehouse in the west end, drinking whiskey and blithely courting ruin with every draw on her cheroot. Courting ruin and laughing about it, as if her family’s reputation were of no consequence. As if Cam and Ellie weren’t at this very moment torturing themselves with visions of her disgrace.
Julian dropped his empty glass onto the table with a dull thud. Very well, he’d escort the marchioness out of here just as he’d promised he would, but he’d be damned if he’d be a gentleman about it. After all, a marchioness who entered a whorehouse shouldn’t expect to be treated like a lady.
“Here. Take this.” He took Mary’s wrist, turned her hand up, then reached into his pocket, grabbed a fistful of coins, and dropped them into her open palm. “I won’t need your company tonight, after all, but I do need a room. Which one is yours?”
Mary gaped at the pile of coins in her palm for a moment; then her hand snapped closed. “Top of the stairs, last room on the left.”
“Stay out of it for a time, until you see me leave the house. Can you do that for me, Mary?”
She gave him a curious look, but she knew better than to ask questions. “Whatever you say, guv.”
“Good girl.”
Julian walked back across the parlor and resumed his seat on the divan. He signaled to the footman for another glass of whiskey and settled in to watch and wait.
Chapter Two
Red velvet divans, flocked silk paper on the walls, a fine Axminster carpet in shades of red, black and gold on the floor—if it weren’t for the cheroot and the whiskey, she might have been in Lady Sutton’s drawing-room.
The cheroot, the whiskey, and the half-naked whores, that is.
Charlotte blew a thin stream of smoke through her lips and tried to imagine the expression on Lady Sutton’s face if she found out her drawing-room resembled the inside of a whorehouse. A laugh bubbled up in her throat, trapped the smoke in her lungs, and sent her into a coughing fit that had her gasping and wiping her eyes.
Wretched things, cheroots.
“My goodness, Charlotte.” Lady Annabel gave her a disapproving look and drew expertly on her own cheroot. “Do be quiet. You’ll attract attention.”
Lady Elizabeth snickered. “It’s a bit late for that, Annabel. We gave up being inconspicuous when we strolled into a whorehouse.”
“Don’t inhale the smoke, Charlotte. Like this.” Aurelie Leblanc, the Comtesse de Lisle, touched the thin cheroot to her lips for a moment, then lowered it again without drawing on it. “See? No coughing.”
Lady Annabel frowned. “That’s cheating, Aurelie. The wager is—”
“Cheating?” Lady Elizabeth snorted. “What nonsense. The wager is we light the cheroots and stay in the brothel long enough for them to burn to the end. We never said we’d smoke the awful things.”
