Wanton in Winter

by Scott, Scarlett

  Grace’s eyes narrowed. She looked distinctly unimpressed. “You had a splinter.”

  Eugie swallowed. “Yes.”

  “She did,” added the earl, his expression guilty as sin.

  The man was terrible at subterfuge, wasn’t he?

  “In your heel,” Grace continued.

  “Yes,” Eugie said weakly, knowing her hasty attempt at deception would not prove sufficient either. She could only hope Grace would hold her tongue and would not question—

  “Was there a need to raise your hem past your knees?” her fiendish sister asked.

  Eugie scowled at her. “Yes. As it happens, they kept falling over my foot. I could not see my heel properly, and Lord Hertford was kind enough to offer his assistance. I am most indebted to him.”

  “How…kind of his lordship to offer such attentive aid,” Grace said, smirking.

  Eugie imagined all the ways in which she would get even with her sister later.

  For now, she stood, swishing her skirts back into place. Her heart was still pounding steadily. Her body was still aching. And the longing he had incited within her had yet to be doused. If anything, she was all the more desperate to know what she had missed.

  If only Grace had not interrupted them when she had.

  But then again, perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps if she had not, Eugie would be compromised in truth now, rather than just compromised in theory. One could not be compromised, after all, when one’s ignominy had only been witnessed by one’s sister.

  Could one?

  She forced herself to speak. “It was indeed most kind of the earl, and now, thanks to him, my splinter is removed.” She smiled at her sister before casting a frantic glance toward the earl. “You may go now, my lord. It would not do for anyone else to find you here. Thankfully, my sister can be trusted to keep your assistance to me in such a sensitive matter between the three of us. Can you not, Grace dearest?”

  She had never before asked her sister to keep a secret from their brother for her, but Eugie would ask it now. She had no wish for Dev to force her to marry the earl, or for him to challenge Hertford to a duel.

  Grace hesitated, her eyes narrowing farther, before she responded. “Yes, of course. I will keep your assistance with my sister’s splinter to myself, particularly since the splinter has been removed and such a scene will not be repeated. Will it?”

  The wickedness within Eugie certainly hoped it would.

  “Misses Winter,” the earl said stiffly, before he bowed to the both of them. “If you ladies will excuse me, I should leave before I cause any undue harm to either of your reputations.”

  “Yes, do go,” Grace said rather rudely.

  “Of course,” Eugie murmured, glaring at her sister before turning her gaze back to Hertford. “Thank you, my lord.”

  For kissing me senseless, she wanted to add. Wisely, she refrained. The look he gave her was as scorching as it was brief. And then, he was gone.

  Leaving Eugie alone to face her sister.

  “What was the Earl of Hertford truly doing beneath your skirts?” Grace demanded when the door had scarcely closed on his lordship’s back.

  “Lower your voice if you please,” Eugie ordered her sister. “I have no wish for such a question to carry.”

  “Then you should not have been alone with the earl in this room with his hands up your skirts,” her sister countered, her tone laden with censure.

  Grace was not wrong.

  Eugie had no excuse for her actions, save the way being in Lord Hertford’s presence made her feel. Perhaps it was his mouth. Or his kisses? Those hazel eyes. The strong, well-defined slash of his jaw. That light-brown hair of his, almost the shade of honey…

  “I acted imprudently,” she forced herself to say, lest her mind get carried away. The ramifications of her actions descended upon her, filling her cheeks with heat and her heart with regret. “I could have caused great harm to all your reputations, and for that I am sorry. You will not tell Dev, will you?”

  Her sister’s lips compressed and she gave her a searching look before answering. “Before I make any promises, please tell me the splinter in question was not Lord Hertford’s manly appendage.”

  “Manly appendage?” Eugie’s cheeks went hotter still. “Grace!”

  “Oh, do not act scandalized with me.” Grace took a step closer, her thorough gaze traveling over the mangled remnants of Eugie’s coiffure. “You were just allowing a man liberties. Your hair is almost completely unbound, you know. If anyone else were to have come upon you… Never mind. I am getting distracted. You did not answer my question about the dubious splinter.”

  Of course, she knew to what her sister was referring. Christabella had recently been able to acquire some rather lurid books with the aid of an enterprising lady’s maid. Their sister-in-law, Lady Emilia, had also given them a stern talk. But still. His manly appendage?

  She could not bear say it aloud.

  “There was no splinter,” she admitted instead, “as you well know. I was following Lord Ashley, and Lord Hertford approached me out of nowhere. I could not very well admit I was following Lord Ashley so that I could kiss him and remove him from the list.”

  “You are truly going through with your madcap kiss all the gentlemen plan?” Grace demanded. “You do realize how many gentlemen are in attendance and how short the weeks are until Christmas, do you not?”

  “I am not intending to kiss all the gentlemen,” she defended herself. “Just the ones who appear to be courting our sisters and who have suspect motives. Lord Ashley, for instance, is a notorious reprobate. He does not deserve Pru.”

  “I rather thought he was attempting to arrange a match between Pru and his brother,” Grace said then, frowning.

  “The duke and Pru?” It was Eugie’s turn to frown as she contemplated that. “I do think you must be wrong. Coventry has scarcely spoken a word to Pru.”

  “He has scarcely spoken a word to anyone,” Grace countered. “Indeed, there is something odd about him. He almost never goes about in society, but he is somehow a familiar of Lady Emilia’s, which is the only reason he would deign to attend.”

  “Perhaps I shall not have to kiss Lord Ashley after all,” she mused.

  “At last we return to you and your scandalous behavior,” Grace said. “You were on your way to kiss Lord Ashley, when Lord Hertford waylaid you and you wound up kissing him and allowing him to toss up your skirts instead.”

  She winced. “When you say it thus, it sounds hideous.”

  “Because it is hideous.” Grace’s tone was sharp—she had never been one to mince words or spare feelings. “If I did not know you as I do, I would suspect you guilty of all the abominable things that pompous bag of wind accused.”

  “You know just as well as I that I only ever kissed Lord Cunningham once,” she felt compelled to defend, hating how one man’s prevarication could follow her for so long. Could ruin her in the eyes of others for a lifetime.

  How quick society was to believe a lie as long as it whetted their collective appetite for a good scandal.

  “Of course I know that, dearest,” Grace reassured her, patting her arm in a rare show of consolation. “But perhaps Lord Hertford does not.”

  Though her sister’s tone was gentle, the implication was clear.

  All the warmth burning through her went cold. “You mean to suggest the earl believes the scurrilous rumors Cunningham spread about me?”

  Grace’s countenance softened with undeniable sympathy. “He has kissed you twice in two days. He has also managed to get you into this room so he could ravish you. Perhaps you ought not to be worried about our sisters, Eugie. Mayhap you should be concerned for yourself.”

  Dear Lord. Why had she not seen it for herself? Why had she not realized sooner? I should not wish to cause further damage to your reputation, he had said in the garden. Which meant not only did the Earl of Hertford know about the gossip surrounding her, he was only kissing her because he believed
she would allow him liberties.

  He thought she was a trollop.

  And she had certainly behaved as one.

  “Oh, Grace,” she whispered, dread settling over her shoulders like a mantle. “What shall I do?”

  “If I were you, I would punch him in the eye,” Grace drawled. “But you are too softhearted for violence.”

  “I think I shall settle for a sound harangue instead.”

  “Wise choice.” Her sister gave her a quelling look. “But no more splinters, real or imagined, or I will be forced to tell Dev after all.”

  “No more kisses with the earl,” she promised Grace.

  Why did the thought fill her with disappointment?

  What had he been thinking?

  Cam stalked from the writing room, castigating himself with each step that took him farther away from his folly. He needed to find a brandy. Or claret. Or anything.

  No, he did not. He needed a head-clearing walk in the frigid December air.

  He made his way toward the gardens, surprised when Aylesford ambled into view around a bend in the hall, looking as if he had just woken up although it was the midst of the afternoon. Now that he thought upon it, he had not seen his friend at breakfast this morning.

  “Aylesford,” he greeted him grimly, offering nothing more than a curt smile that was more grimace.

  He had every intention of continuing on, moving past the dissolute viscount so he could make sense of his own stupidity.

  But Aylesford was otherwise inclined. “Just the man I was looking for this morning.”

  “It is well past noon,” he offered acidly, “and I am not in the mood for a dialogue at the moment.”

  “Damn me, I slept longer than I had supposed,” Aylesford grumbled, passing a hand along his jaw, which was neatly shaven. “Why did Carruthers not tell me it was afternoon? You have not seen my sister or my mother, have you?”

  “I have not seen Her Grace or Lady Lydia,” he said, thinking the duchess would not be impressed by the viscount’s bleary-eyed state. “You had a late night, I take it? One of the matrons or bored wives present warmed your bed all evening, I gather.”

  “Yes.” Aylesford coughed, the blades of his cheekbones darkening. “Something rather like that.”

  Despite his own state of distraction, Cam noted the lack of sincerity in his friend’s tone. Along with the way he suddenly averted his gaze. “Never say it was your feigned betrothed who kept you awake.”

  Miss Grace Winter seemed a cool sort from his few interactions with her and the dialogue he had overheard in the library, but perhaps there was another side to her. Leave it to a rakehell like Aylesford to draw it forth.

  The color in the viscount’s cheeks deepened. “Lower your tone, man, lest someone hear you. No one knows she is my betrothed just yet.”

  Cam could not contain his chortle. “We are speaking of the same Miss Grace Winter, are we not? Do you mean to tell me you spent the evening with her?”

  His horror was complete. What manner of females were these Winter sisters? They were veritable Sirens, luring otherwise sane men into the rocks with their mere song.

  “Damnation, Cam.” Casting his gaze wildly about, Aylesford gripped his arm and began propelling the both of them toward the doors leading to the frozen outdoor gardens. “If we must speak of such delicate matters, let us do it where no one else shall overhear. There are ears in the walls of every country house. Mark my words.”

  He could not argue. Just yesterday, he had been the bloody ears Aylesford spoke of. Grimly, he followed his friend into the bleary, cold December day. Overhead, a fine drizzle had begun to unleash from the clouds, lending the air a damp chill he felt to his bones. The heavy door closed with a barely audible creak.

  A flock of starlings, unconcerned with the impending winter gloom, took exception to the sound and burst into flight, winging overhead. The gravel crunched beneath their soles as he and Aylesford made their way down a path in silence, their breath puffing clouds into the chill air.

  The viscount stopped at last, raking a hand through his dark, wavy locks. “I fell asleep in the library last night,” he admitted.

  Cam’s eyebrows rose. “With Miss Winter?”

  “Of course not.” His friend scowled. “She made off well before I found my way into her brother’s brandy stores.”

  He could not make one whit of sense from his friend’s revelations. “Here, now. Best begin at the beginning, Aylesford. Before the tippling. And the tupping.”

  His friend’s jaw went rigid. “There was no tupping, blast you. Grace is my betrothed. My feigned betrothed. Either way, I would not tup her. Listen to you, the Prince of Proper, suggesting I would tup the woman I am going to wed.”

  “Grace?” he could not help but to repeat Aylesford’s use of Miss Winter’s given name, prodding his friend, who already seemed as if he were harboring conflicting feelings about the feigned betrothed in question. And truly, he could not resist. It was the distraction he needed from his own stupidity. “It certainly sounds as if the two of you are quite intimate.”

  “Devil take it, Hertford.” Despite the sleepiness he had thus far failed to scrub from his eyes, Aylesford appeared genuinely enraged. “I was not intimate with her. I would not dishonor her… Fair enough, I would dishonor her, but I am doing my best not to, in an effort to preserve the lady’s reputation.”

  Cam was not fooled one bit. Miss Grace Winter was tougher than a blacksmith’s anvil. “She rejected you, did she not?”

  “Fuck.” Aylesford’s scowl turned into a glare. “Yes, she did, if you must know. Let us all revel in the humiliation the great rake Lord Aylesford suffered at the hands of a stubborn, arrogant female whose brother is a glorified factory owner, for God’s sake.”

  He could not contain his laughter, but in truth, it was not at his friend’s expense. Rather, he was laughing at the both of them. What a pair they made: the seasoned rakehell and the proper lord, both with their well-earned Town bronze and their knowledge of the finer sex, laid low by the Misses Winter.

  “I ought to hit you for laughing at me,” the viscount said ruefully, rubbing his jaw once more. “I shan’t, because I like you far too much, Hertford. And because the dowager would have my hide if word of it ever reached her.”

  He caught his breath, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes. “If it makes you feel any better, I am not laughing at you. I am laughing at the both of us. These Winter sisters are running us ragged.”

  “Oh?” Aylesford grinned crookedly. “And which sister is running you ragged, may I ask? Could it be the chit in the red dress? Do not try to deny it, Hertford. I knew it from the moment you attempted to dissuade me from pursuing her by bringing up that hogwash story of Cunningham’s. You wanted her for yourself. You need not have gone to such an effort to keep me at a distance. If you had but said the words.”

  The chit in the red dress.

  Yes, of course it was Eugie. It had always been Eugie, from the moment he had stepped foot inside Abingdon House and seen her from across the massive hall. He had been drawn to her from the first, although she was the Winter with the reputation. There was something ridiculously alluring about her.

  “Miss Eugie is…” He paused, struggling to find words apt enough to describe the way she made him feel and finding none. “Yes, she is running me rather ragged.”

  There were a great many more things he could have said.

  Such as I almost ravished her in the writing room just now.

  Or, I had her skirts about her waist when your feigned betrothed entered the chamber.

  But why bother?

  He was having far too much enjoyment at Aylesford’s expense.

  “You like her,” Aylesford observed, his tone as serious as his gaze. Almost as if he required a validation that the feelings assailing him, too, were real.

  “I do,” Cam admitted grudgingly. “But she is all wrong for me. I could never make a match with a woman such as her.”
r />   Indeed, he had built his reputation upon his strict adherence to propriety. He was always above reproach. Though his friends were rakehells and ne’er-do-wells, he had never made a rustle. Mostly for his mother’s sake, he realized now. She had already endured so much for him, and her constitution could not bear much upset.

  “Best to keep her at a distance, then,” Aylesford said, and Cam knew he was not just speaking of he and Eugie, but of himself and Grace as well.

  “Best, yes,” he agreed.

  “But when has what is best ever been what is most pleasing?” his friend asked, his voice contemplative.

  “Never,” he agreed.

  Still, he knew, right then and there, that he must avoid Miss Eugie Winter for the remainder of the house party. He could not afford to kiss her again.

  Ruin was far too dear a cost these days. Especially when he was about to lose everything he had left unless he married.

  And fast.

  Chapter Six

  The hour was late.

  Eugie could not sleep.

  One lone word had been pressing upon her shoulders with the weight of a boulder ever since Grace had interrupted her reckless interlude with the Earl of Hertford earlier in the day: ruin.

  What a silly notion it was, that ladies could be forever tainted by one action. One word. One lie.

  Though she had donned a dressing gown over her night rail, it was most unseemly to be wandering in the night, alone, at a house party, in a state of dishabille. But no amount of turning over in her bed, fluffing her pillow, stoking the fire, or pacing the floor had enabled her to fall into the waiting arms of slumber. She was too hot. Then too cold. There were too many coverlets on her bed. There were not enough.

  She was vexed with Lord Hertford. But she still wanted to kiss him.

  The only distraction which could save her, she was certain, was a book. Surely there was one to be had in the massive library. She rounded a bend in the corridor and ran into a wall.

  A wall of muscle.

  That smelled deliciously of soap and man and the Earl of Hertford.

  Large hands grasped her arms in a gentle, yet firm, hold. Her palms flattened over a sturdy chest that was covered in the unmistakable lawn of a shirt. When her touch moved higher, she encountered hot, bare flesh and a soft smattering of hair.