Page 8 of The Seduction of Viscount Vice

“I thought you said you were unshockable?”

“I was,” Lady Parkton said unsteadily, smoothing her silver-touched blonde hair with a distracted hand. “But now you are seeing ghosts? I’m taking you to the archbishop to be blessed.”

“I’m not hallucinating, Mama. Mairi is alive.”

“Lady Mairi MacNair?” Helena’s eyes were agog. “But she is dead. Her papa and mama said so.”

“No. She’s very much alive. And she was at Fallen, posing as one of our footmen. She got in through the kitchens and was circling the damned ballroom serving apple tarts.”

“Good heavens,” said Lady Parkton solemnly, but her lips twitched.

“It’s not funny, Mama,” he growled.

“Of course not. Don’t mind me, I’m still attempting to comprehend that Mairi lives, let alone is wandering around in men’s clothing. How could the Leithbridges have told such a lie?”

Vice grimaced at the thought of Mairi’s parents. He’d been given the cut direct by some ice-blooded sticklers in his time, but they all paled in comparison to the frigid and utterly unpleasant Earl and Countess of Leithbridge. It had always been a mystery how they’d managed to produce a woman like Mairi. “That is what awful people do.”

“I suppose. But why would Mairi dress up as a footman? It seems like a lot of effort just to see the inside of your club.”

“I’d like to see the inside of Fallen,” said Helena.

“No bloody way,” he and his mother answered simultaneously.

“You two are just mean. All the stuffy old bats shun me because my brother is the most scandalous man in the world; I should get at least some benefit from it.”

“Perhaps when you are married,” said Lady Parkton.

“Perhaps when you are forty,” Vice said with a sigh, attempting to shrug the tension from his shoulders. Helena was nine years his junior, an unexpected and entirely beloved baby sister, and he was liberal about everything except any matter that pertained to her.

His sister pouted. “But—”

“Oh look, we’re here.” He’d never been so glad to see the ornate Castlereagh townhouse at number 18 St. James’s Square. “You’ll have gentlemen lining up to talk to you.”

“Pah. They are all silly and dull. And they’ll only want to ask about you and your latest show. Are they really as debauched as the protesters claim?”

Vice tugged on his cravat. His fucking valet would be unemployed tomorrow. “Come along.” He opened the door and assisted them both onto the footpath. “Don’t want to be tardy.”

“This conversation isn’t finished.” Helena’s gaze narrowed.

“Oh, yes it is, Hellion.”

“Darling, please don’t call her that in public.” His mother smoothed his cravat and tucked a blonde curl behind Helena’s ear. “I’m trying very hard to get your sister accepted into the Brimley Finishing Academy for a term to, er, polish the diamond.”

“Why didn’t you say so? That is no more than a quick word with Dev or Eliza—”

Vice broke off as his gaze locked on a shockingly familiar figure staring down at him from an upper-level window. Seconds later, the window was empty.

Mairi was here.

That did it. To hell with waiting for tomorrow, he would make her talk tonight. Pin her to a wall. Dangle her over the oversized punchbowl. Truss her up with those damned breeches.

Any which way, the answers he sought would be his.

…

Damn him! What the hell was Iain doing at the Castlereagh soiree? And with his mother and another woman to boot?

Her heart pounding, Mairi leaned against the wall next to the window.