Seven Secrets of Seduction

by Anne Mallory

  She held up the book in her hand. “Does your brother often visit?”

  “All of my siblings do. They like to pretend they are checking in on me. But they do so to avoid our parents. Colin likes to come and make life miserable. To visit the staff in the kitchens. I think he is attempting to stage a revolt. Or to conquer his hypocrisy.” The last was said too lightly.

  “Oh.”

  Perhaps we are all hoping that it is not without hope to do so. To extend one’s view so high.

  She swallowed and squared her shoulders. “I’d like to organize an outing for your servants.”

  He raised a brow at the abrupt change of subject, his narrowed eyes obviously trying to figure out how the topics were related. “An outing?”

  “Yes, for your staff. I’ve heard that the Duke of Brexley holds fantastic parties at Hyde for his town household.” She tried to pretend interest in examining the book. “Lunch perhaps. You could even invite your siblings. Colin. Stave off the revolt.”

  “I’m not sure I’d want to attend, in that case.”

  She lifted her head and met his eyes. “I’d attend.” Her response was twofold.

  He didn’t speak for a long moment. “Fine. Speak with Mrs. Humphries. Don’t be surprised if she thinks you are trying to take her job though.”

  “Mrs. Humphries and I have come to an accord.”

  His brows rose again. “Do I need to build an ark?”

  “You say it as if I am hard to get along with.”

  “My housekeeper is unused to…guests like you.”

  “Guests that you dress and escort to outrageous places?”

  “No. That isn’t quite as unusual.”

  She felt a little pang of jealousy but stuffed it down. No, this was her adventure, and that was the way she’d treat it. Adventures took place in the here and now. The present. The near future.

  “But my guests are usually quite aware of the way things work with me, or with the family member they are associating with, and are not interested in taking up with my staff.”

  “You are far above my station. I assume the women you consort with are as well.”

  One finger curled under her chin. “Ah, but the reality of that statement is far from true. I sometimes feel you are completely out of my reach.”

  She blinked.

  His hand slid down her back and urged her toward the door. “I’ve never been good at knowing my place, however.”

  The grand carriage was waiting for them outside. She took a breath and stepped inside. It was easier every time she did. Thoughts of other things collected in her mind.

  Someday—someday when she was irritated with him no longer—she would have to thank the viscount for that.

  “Where are we going, oh shriveled and wintry one?” she asked as she settled into the plush seat, determined to think of it all as the adventure she had deemed it. To guard herself against what she had been emotionally slipping toward at Vauxhall.

  “To see the Cirque Diamant perform. An apology, as I said.”

  She stared at him. She had thought about going to a performance after their conversation at Vauxhall. About how she wouldn’t step out of her comfort and grasp the ring. But the paper had reported the run as being sold out yet again, so she hadn’t even tried to secure a ticket to the pit, where room might be found to squeeze.

  “It is the middle of the day.”

  “Well spotted.”

  She let her slipper hit him in the shin with the rhythm of the carriage. Twice. He grabbed her heel in his hand the third time, his fingers slipping down her ankle.

  “What—” She swallowed. “What are you doing?”

  “Your leg seems to have a twitch. Let me help you.”

  “That’s unnecessary,” she said, her voice a little high.

  “No? But you are so helpful to me. With my staff. With escorting me to the gardens. Dressing up in this gown that makes you shine in the darkness of the carriage. Brightening up the day like a jewel sparkling in the sun.”

  His fingers curved over her heel, the slipper falling from her foot. The feel of his fingers running over her fine stockings was erotic. Like an echo of the crescendo from the gardens.

  Her lips parted on a reply, his eyes locked with hers. Trapped. Seeking something as his hands traveled her silk-clad skin.

  The carriage stopped, and he slowly reached down and slid her slipper back on her foot. Fitting it over the curves. Perfectly made. Just for her.

  “Shining as if a star just for my eyes.”

  A knock sounded on the door, but his hand lingered, his posture that of a knight reverently touching his chosen lady, his eyes never leaving hers. He answered the knock and she shakily accepted Benjamin’s hand.

  The viscount offered his arm and they strode up the walk with purpose, as if they were a respectable couple attending an event. As if he hadn’t just turned her world on end again.

  Without the lights and orchestra blaring, the theater looked like just another storefront on the street. Bereft of the crowds of people moving and chatting, streaming inside, eager to see a new production or a beloved classic. The riffraff moving downward and the wealthy moving up. The separation like the ancient divide. The common people staring up and watching their betters, the gods and goddesses of old. People who had been born to privilege, mostly, and those few who had worked tooth and nail to get there.

  Miranda stared at the empty boxes, the empty orchestra and pit, her feet carrying her into the belly of the theater alongside the viscount.

  “Welcome!” A man with colorfully patched trousers strode up the corridor toward them. “Your lordship.” He bowed to the viscount. “And beautiful lady.” He bowed low to her. “Welcome to the show.” He smiled broadly. “Or at least the death-defying acts of practice.”

  The man gestured to the orchestra and the boxes above. “Anywhere you’d like to sit, your lordship. We have the King’s box spruced and ready. Or the critics’ seats in the back.”

  A sudden commotion onstage claimed his attention. He clapped his hands together, then cupped them around his mouth. “First stretch is complete. Places for second rehearsal. Tell Eleanora and Leonardo they are up.”

  He turned back to them, his feet already taking him backward down the corridor. “Anywhere you’d like.” He extended his hand. “Please, enjoy.”

  He turned and walked briskly to the stage; some of the performers cast curious glances at the two of them, but most of the men and women ignored them and walked to their blocked spots.

  “Rehearsal?”

  The viscount’s eyes glimmered mischievously. “I’m told that rehearsal is even superior to the actual show.” His eyes took her in. “Sometimes practice can be more enjoyable than the main event in that you have to rehearse over and over again until everything is in its perfect slot, its perfect place.”

  Her heart picked up unwilling speed.

  “Mmmm. Where would you like to sit, my lady?” the viscount asked, gesturing around the empty theater.

  “Well, one can hardly resist the King’s box, can one?” she said, unwillingly looking forward to the spectacle. And to being with him.

  It seemed the moth never learned.

  He smiled and held out his arm.

  The King’s box was in the prime viewing spot at stage left. Perfect for overlooking the melee on the boards. And with the acrobatics, quite close while at the same time maintaining an illusion of privacy.

  She touched the fabric on the chairs. Such an odd thing. To be sitting here like a true princess.

  She couldn’t let his spell overwhelm her. She shook her head and turned her attention to the stage.

  Women and men in different costumes—some in full dress, and others in undershirts and hose, just enough to cover them—strode in from all sides, assembling in place. The jovial man who had met them stood below, raising his hand to initiate the spectacle.

  The cues took shape as the curtain was pulled to the side, nothing hidden from view l
ike it might have been during the main performance. A beat of a drum rolled, and a wave of the orchestra crested with the man’s hands. Then stopped. He yelled at someone in the back, then began again. They restarted three times, and the man sent a nervous look up toward the box.

  And then the performance began in earnest, nothing hidden as the production took shape.

  The men pulling the ropes stood in plain sight, taking away some of the mystery, but replacing it with curiosity and interest. How they pulled and caught, their muscles straining under their rolled-up shirtsleeves. The black garb they normally wore hid them mostly from view during performances—and some theaters’ hands were better at it than others. She should probably be scandalized by the show of skin, but then she wasn’t a courtier or a lady. And she didn’t have to pretend to be the dour daughter of a schoolmistress here. No one knew her or cared.

  The performers were incredible yet again. Here in this temporary home, they had all of the sets and tricks ready and waiting. None of the freedom was lost, it was simply changed. The wonder at what might happen if an acrobat slipped on a wet patch of grass or how they navigated the crowd, blending in, threading through, was absent, but their performance was more daring because of the risky new twists and flips they attempted.

  Players flinched when an occasional compatriot landed with a thwack on the floor. Yells accompanied successfully completed starring moves. The well-rehearsed acrobatics and air of joy were intoxicating. They obviously loved what they did. And had no problem showing it. Grabbing the bar and swinging. Jumping into the air without long, drawn-out thought. Letting out a shout when a new trick was properly executed.

  It was lovely, she thought a bit wistfully.

  “You like it,” his voice said at her ear.

  “I do.”

  “What do you love?”

  “The freedom. The joy.”

  “You do not seek such for yourself often, do you, Miranda?”

  “I have a nice life. There is happiness.”

  “Contentedness. The joy and freedom you wish for is there for you to grasp.”

  She turned toward him, his lips so close to hers. “I think you call me a coward, your lordship,” she murmured, eyes on his mouth.

  “Do I? About some things, perhaps.” His thumb stroked her lower lip. “But about others, no. You have so much passion and life brimming in you. You just have to be freed to show it.”

  “Are you volunteering for the task?” she asked as lightly as she could over the heavy beat of her heart.

  “Volunteering? Never. I am simply appointing myself to the role.”

  “Quite high-handed of you.”

  “As I’ve already confessed, it’s a failing of mine.” He smiled lazily, his fingers curling into her nape. “Do you forgive me?”

  “Do you ask forgiveness? I can’t credit that you do.” Her lips curled beneath his thumb, her heart beating more wildly, but she was determined to duplicate his expression of lazy regard and ease. “I think you rarely ask for it, in truth.”

  “Ah, that too, I confess, is a failing as well.”

  “You have many.”

  His fingers stroked her nape. “But you so few. A good prospect for us to balance each other, don’t you think? You will be my conscience, and I will be your shame.”

  “I do not find happiness shameful,” she said quietly. “It is simply fear that I fear.”

  His fingers paused, then he drew her forward. “And that is why you are a lure I can’t resist.”

  Her eyes closed unwillingly, feeling the draw. “Because of the fear?”

  “No, because you are emotionally willing to experience the thrill yet so physically reluctant to grasp it. So often it is the opposite. Hence, I find it intoxicating.”

  And yet, she couldn’t keep the thought to herself. “You hardly seemed intoxicated with your absence after the gardens.” Her eyes opened.

  There was a moment’s pause. “You do not know the pain it caused for me to stay away.”

  “I do not.”

  A low laugh vibrated from his chest. “Someday perhaps I will explain it if I can explain it to myself.”

  And there it was again. A pointer that there was some future between them. Confusing and provocative.

  The red flash of an acrobat flipping through the air showed in her periphery. A shout of accomplishment.

  “Someday perhaps I will demand it from you.” His eyes darkened at her words. Desire turning them black.

  The wonderful and heady feeling of feminine power beat in her. She wondered if she could bottle the feeling and clutch it to her in the darkness of the night. Under her frayed bedcovers and simple nightgowns.

  His thumb traced her lips. “And someday perhaps I will beg your forgiveness in earnest.” He leaned into her, his lips a hairbreadth from hers. “But not today. Today I still seek to take.” And his lips claimed hers, dominant and overwhelming.

  The colors and shouts, the flips and twirls were sucked from the outside of her world and sent swirling beneath her skin. Bursting from within.

  “Will you let me take you, Miranda?” he whispered against her lips.

  She nearly replied that he could take her anywhere as long as his lips continued to do those lovely things to her, to produce those overpowering sensations within. A taste of the finest liquor. Of something that could cause one to be drunk with one sip.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Excellent. Tonight?”

  Tonight. The Mortons’. With Georgette. “I am to attend a dinner party tonight.”

  “A dinner party?”

  “Yes. With a friend.”

  “Cancel it,” he whispered, eyes hidden from her as he traced the curve of her tilted jaw with his mouth.

  “But—”

  He drew back so he was looking into her eyes, his voice even more like the smooth-edged aftertaste of whiskey. “I promise I will make it well worth your sacrifice.”

  Considering the invitation, Georgette would hardly mind if she canceled. Putting herself forward at the Mortons’ suddenly seemed like extending a formal handshake rather than opening herself to light flirtation. The viscount’s fingers played at the ties of her dress, making her skin burn beneath. It seemed obvious that opening up was something the man at her side was very keen to do to her.

  She looked toward the stage. An acrobat flipped through the air and landed precariously on the shoulders of another. He tottered for a moment before gaining his balance and raising his arms in triumph.

  “Very well,” she whispered, hoping her own actions wouldn’t cause her to crash instead.

  “Excellent. We will stop by Madame Galland’s on the way back.”

  “I have a number of dresses already.” They had all been hanging there, waiting for her to run her fingers wistfully down their silk. Some of them doomed never to be worn. At least by her.

  Because while this thing with the viscount was exciting and exhilarating, it would soon ebb—again—and she would go on to other pursuits, hopefully with her heart intact.

  She couldn’t see herself in the role of a mistress, discovering more about a man as mysterious as the viscount, falling in love with someone she could never claim. Always guarding her heart, waiting for him, or some other paramour, to lose interest.

  It was also why she never wanted to meet Mr. Pitts. The man completed a part of her that she’d never known was missing. Invigorated her in a way no one else had. She knew nothing about him physically, but oh so much about the deeper self he held within.

  But she would never meet him. Never need to reconcile any wish that the crotchety man on the other side of the page could be someone who could spark her in other ways. In the same way she didn’t need to discover if the viscount was someone who would touch her more deeply and make her lose herself in the end.

  “You do not desire another?”

  “No,” she said calmly, as he tucked her loosened hair behind her ear.

  “There is nothing that coul
d entice you?”

  “Were you planning to take me to the Hannings’ masked ball?” she joked. The invitations and responses had all been generated long before. The coveted vellum secured in hands across London. In fact, why wouldn’t the viscount be going? She would have assumed he would be.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said lazily, twirling her hair. “Yes, I am.”

  He watched her face, full of color as she pressed her hands to her waist and examined the dress from the side. Not as animated as when she was arguing over books—when her face was overflowing with passion—or on paper—her pen creasing the page just an extra touch when she was debating—but in a purely female, satisfied way.

  It made the purely male side of him purr.

  She’d make the perfect mistress. She really would.

  The curving lines on the paper in his pocket were etched in his mind. He touched the correspondence and removed it. Looking at the soft slopes, he smiled and looked back up as she gave a small twirl, the dress curling around her just as the end of her salutation curled on the page.

  If control were something that he always sought, then tempting fate had always been his fatal flaw. A piece of his father that he had never stamped out of his own personality.

  He fingered the expensive necklace in his right-hand pocket, caressing the lovely stones and simple setting.

  She ducked back into the dressing room. He reached with his left hand and lifted Madame Galland’s pen from its pot. He tapped it against the side and set it to a loose piece of paper, his natural sloping scrawl allowed to scritch without outside regard.

  Dear Chase,

  I can only offer the loosest of advice when dealing with a rogue…

  She emerged in a peacock blue that would set off her eyes, making them blazing sapphires. The swan who had never imagined herself as such.

  The perfect mistress. One he could keep, well, forever, quite possibly.

  But I can tell you—never trust one. A rogue always has ulterior motives.

  Chapter 14

  Secret #5: Some are more ripe for seduction than others. But the sweetest fruit is the woman who doesn’t realize she is plump on the vine. The one who bursts upon your tongue as soon as you set lips to her.