She should feel triumphant that her goal was within easy reach, but was rather strangely deflated and harboring doubts about the entire arrangement. In truth, it was as if her appetite had been whetted for beefsteak...only to be served liver instead.
CHAPTER SIX
When they reentered the receiving room, an entirely new scene greeted them. The room was a shambles. Articles of clothing littered the trees, and male and female bodies slumped everywhere in a drug-like stupor of satiation.
“Where do you think to find him?” she asked.
“Look no further.” Ned inclined his head toward the dais with a glower. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
For surrounded by women and sprawled like a god, or more aptly, a satyr, on the queen’s throne, naked as Adam with a floral wreath on his head and phallic scepter in hand, was Ludovic, Viscount DeVere.
Lacking any sense of shame, he idly caressed the breast of the woman who held his cup to his mouth whilst another knelt between his knees fondling his manhood. To Phoebe’s shock, he seemed to positively glory in the dissolute decadence, as if he were Bacchus incarnate with the entire night tailored for his own sensual gratification.
The moment had come, and she found herself hesitating. Dear God in Heaven. What would Kitty do now?
“You shouldn’t see this.” Ned growled. “I would be more than pleased to call a hack to take you home.”
Grappling with her feigned sangfroid, Phoebe swallowed. Hard. “But whatever for?” The cool response commanded a supreme effort. “I sought DeVere, and here he is.” She couldn’t help slanting a glance at Ned. His jaw was clenched, his pulse throbbing visibly in his neck.
“You really wish to go through with this?” he asked in an undertone. “You see how he is. He’ll only use you and cast you aside.”
“What does it matter? As long as I get what I need, we shall call it an equal trade.”
“I don’t believe you mean that!”
“But, indeed, I do,” she replied, directing a brazen gaze to DeVere and endeavoring to keep it above the impressive staff jutting from his nether region. “For needs must—”
“When the devil drives?” Ned flicked a bilious look from Phoebe to DeVere.
“You might say that.”
“Very well,” he replied, tight-lipped. “If that is what you wish, far be it for me to deny a lady.” Ned made a mocking obeisance to the would-be demigod. “My lord DeVere.”
“Ah, Ned!” Ludovic cried in a voice slurred from drink. “I wondered where you’d gone. You’ve returned with a companion?”
“Only because the lady expressed a wish to make your acquaintance.”
Ludovic gave Ned a sardonic arch of his brow. “How extraordinary. Did she, indeed?” He abandoned the nearby breast to appraise Phoebe. “Charming.”
She realized she had passed muster when he waved away the woman between his legs and flashed her a bedazzling smile. “What is your name, my pet?”
“Kitty,” she replied.
DeVere threw back his head with a guffaw. “Kitty? How delightfully apropos!” His erstwhile companions forgotten, he patted a muscular thigh. “Come then, Kitty, my sweet, little puss. Sit on your master’s lap, and I’ll stroke you ‘till you purr.”
She slanted a look to Ned, a sudden quickening in her chest. His hands were clenched by his sides; his knuckles blanched white. She opened her mouth to speak, but he’d already turned his back on her. Phoebe’s heart sank like a stone.
She knew her mask had slipped when she looked back to DeVere to find him studying her with a sly smile beneath a hooded gaze. “It appears our Ned is quite taken with you, my pet. And one can’t help but wonder if his sentiments might be returned.”
“La! My lord.” She laughed, endeavoring a blithe tone that sounded harsh even to her own ears. “We only just met. Why would you think such a thing?”
“Because I have only once before seen that ‘dog in the manger’ look on his face...and that was over eighteen years ago.”
“I often have that effect on men. Did you not see the queue at my dressing room door? I cannot afford such partiality...not without something in return.”
“Ah,” DeVere said.
“Might I add yours was not the only calling card I received the day after my performance?”
“My card? I had nearly forgotten.”
“Forgotten?”
“Don’t look so disappointed, my dear. And you would be well advised to better conceal your emotions from a man like me.”
“And why is that?”
“I am predatory, you see. It is a wicked quirk of my nature to take advantage of any human weakness. I simply cannot help myself.” His smile was so wickedly charming, Phoebe could easily perceive how he’d earned his nickname.
“I am also a man of caprice,” DeVere continued, “one who lives entirely upon my whim. My attention is easily captured, but sadly, difficult to maintain for any duration. Ennui, you understand. It is a curse, really, as I am continually compelled to seek out new diversions...new companions.”
Heeding his warning about displaying her emotions, she tried to hide her eagerness behind a blasé demeanor. “And you sent me your card. Was this the reason, my lord? A desire for a new companion?”
“Perhaps,” he answered vaguely. “But one has some difficulty conjuring an appetite, even for such a delectable sweetmeat as you, after having indulged in a meal of seven courses.”
“Seven?” she repeated, stunned.
He gave a half-shrug. “It’s my lucky number.”
“That’s quite a boast, my lord.”
“No boast, I assure you.”
Unable to keep her curiosity in check, Phoebe’s gaze drifted south to his equipment. Now lying pink and flaccid against his thigh, she thought it looked benign enough. He actually looked bored...or perhaps it was exhaustion—assuming there was any truth to his claim.
“Determined to prove his manly prowess, Malden dropped a gauntlet that I was compelled to pick up. I have never refused a contest, you see. And what’s infinitely more, I have never lost one.”
“Never?” she asked, astonished.
“Never.”
“Then surely, that means no one has yet offered a suitable challenge, one truly worthy of your multitudinous talents.”
Oblivious to her sarcasm, DeVere gave the statement a moment of reflection. His lips then curved into a slow, devious smile. “My dear, you are exactly right.”
She drew her brows together. “What do you mean?”
“I need a better challenge.” He laughed heartily, sloshing his drink upon himself, which drew her gaze involuntarily to his privates. With a rush of heat to her cheeks, she quickly looked away.
He took hold of himself to emphasize his next point. “Just as any man with a fully functioning cock can bed a woman...or seven...anyone with two legs can sit a horse, just as the greatest buffoon in the world can turn a card or roll the dice. No, what I need is for someone to propose an impossible feat—a wager that can’t be won.”
She watched with a gaping mouth, as animated with new life, DeVere sprang from his throne and began collecting his discarded articles of clothing.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“The night is young.”
“But it’s well past midnight,” she argued.
He quirked a brow. “Then it’s still hours before daylight. I rarely seek my bed before the sunrise.”
“Where do you go?”
“To find someone with imagination.”
“Who could that possibly be at this hour?”
“A man who never sleeps, and moreover, one who never met a wager he didn’t like.” DeVere answered her puzzled look. “Why our young prince’s chief advisor and boon companion, Charles Fox, of course.”
***
Three years of celibacy. After suffering three long, frustrating years, he had rebuffed a willing woman in a moonlit garden—for willing she was, or would have been quickly eno
ugh, had he only applied himself instead of pushing her away. Why couldn’t he be like other men, taking his pleasure whenever and wherever he found it? She had confessed her need for a protector, had intimated her interest in him, but now would look to DeVere instead. Ned cursed himself for a bloody fool.
And then he cursed the pair of them. “You may both go to the devil with my blessing,” he murmured under his breath. He’d left Kitty and DeVere in a blaze of fury he couldn’t comprehend. DeVere was just being DeVere, after all, the same wild rogue he’d always been, but for some confounded reason, Ned felt an almost overwhelming compulsion to pound him into the ground.
It was not as if Ned had marked her as his territory. DeVere’s look had voiced the question. Had Ned only uttered a word, the blasted whoremonger would have respected his claim. DeVere never poached on his friends that way. Maybe it was his own warped code of honor, or maybe he’d never had the need. In either case, with his silence, Ned had practically gifted her to him, delivered the sheep to the wolf on a silver platter.
She wasn’t DeVere’s type. He didn’t know why, but he knew to the very core of his being that she wasn’t the jade she was pretending to be. There was much more hidden behind the mask than her pretty face. She had already revealed that she was moved by necessity, and such a position made her far too vulnerable to consider her actions clearly, especially with a man like DeVere. He would surely destroy her. He’d seduce and charm her, make her feel like a goddess for a night, a week, or maybe even a month. And then once he’d won her total devotion, he’d send her a note with a handsome parting gift and move on like a bee to the next flower. He couldn’t help himself. And then where would she be?
“Damnation, Chambers,” he cursed himself. “Why should you care? She’s nothing to you.”
Yet the image of her with DeVere, naked and panting beneath him made his blood boil. It made no sense when he was in a brothel with a dozen or more women willing to offer their arses on all fours or kneel at his feet and suck him off on demand. Why was he so fixated on her? Yet he found he couldn’t command the least interest in any of the others. And why now? Had three years of palming himself finally brought him to the brink of madness?
Tearing at his hair, Ned groaned in self-disgust and signaled the serving wench, bent on downing another bowl of kava, its bitterness now a match for his foul mood. Just for good measure, he called for a bottle of brandy as well to obliterate the vile taste.
“Ye oughtn’t to mix the twain,” the girl warned. “You’ll fair regret it if you do.”
Ned just grunted. If he couldn’t lose himself in the arms of the one woman he actually wanted, he would drown in a bottle instead.
***
“What the devil? Is he dead? Who is it, Malden?”
“Bedamned if I know, but I think I saw him earlier with DeVere.” The second unfamiliar voice seemed to be attached to the buckled shoe that prodded him in the gut.
Ned groaned.
“Good. Not dead then. Though the poor blighter will likely wish he was soon enough!”
Their laughter rang in his aching head as sharply as a hammer striking an anvil. He tried to move, but his body was too heavy, as if his limbs were weighted with lead or nailed to the ground. His lids fluttered, but the faces above him were unfocused and distorted beyond all recognition.
“Chambers? Ned?” said a third voice he recognized as Freddie Howard, the Earl of Carlisle. “What do you know, Fox, ‘tis our old chum, Ned Chambers.”
“S’pose we can’t just leave him here like this. Shall we take pity on the man?”
“He’s a friend of yours?” asked the first voice. “Then we certainly shan’t leave the poor wretch in the gutter. Let us convey him to Carlton House. ‘Tis only across the square.”
“Are you certain, Your Highness?”
Your Highness?
“Aye. And send for DeVere.”
Ned felt himself lifted, suspended between them as if in a sling. He tried to protest, but only a garbled noise emerged, his mouth unable to form any coherent words. Abandoning the attempt, he gave himself over to oblivion.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Within the hour, DeVere burst into Carlton House where the prince and his coterie, Lords Malden, Carlisle, and Charles Fox, lounged over open bottles and playing cards.
“Five hundred guineas,” said DeVere.
“What?” Fox looked startled. “What the devil are you about, DeVere?”
“I’m prepared to drop five hundred guineas for any of you sods who can come up with a challenge I can’t win. Indeed, let’s make it more interesting—one thousand guineas.”
“Let me get this straight,” Fox said, scratching beneath his wig and setting it askew. “You have come here to propose a wager on some yet unnamed wager?”
DeVere cocked his head with a grin. “I suppose you might say that.”
“And are prepared to drop a thousand? Just like that?” Fox snapped his fingers.
“Precisely,” DeVere said, throwing himself into an empty chair.
“Are you drunk or mad?” Carlisle asked.
“Neither. I’m bored.”
“After a night spent rutting with everything that moves?” Carlisle raised his glass. “I salute you, DeVere.”
At the mention of his friend’s name, Ned raised his head from a mound of satin pillows. DeVere regarded him with a mocking grin. Pulling himself into a sitting position, Ned grimaced as if he’d just suffered the rack. “Where am I?”
“You are at Carlton House,” answered the Prince of Wales. “My new residence.”
“Damme, but ol’ Ned may not be such a dull dog, after all, though he’s demonstrated a pitifully diminished tolerance for drink.” DeVere laughed. “What think you, my sweet?”
***
Ned’s gaze swept the room, settling on the object of his sudden and inexplicable obsession. She approached the chaise longue where he lay with a tentative step. Ned had known her for a beauty, but in this setting, she seemed a veritable angel. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
He read genuine concern in her eyes, or was it pity? What did she see now but a pathetically weak man laid low by drink? He despised himself at that moment. “Never better,” he lied. “Like the proverbial dog’s bollocks.”
A round and ruddy-faced young man barely more than a youth peered into his face. “Yet, I daresay, a bit green about the gills. Shall I have a physician dispatched?”
“Pray, don’t trouble yourself, Your Highness,” DeVere answered for him. “A hair of the rabid dog that bit him should quite do the trick. Care for some kava tea, Ned?” DeVere smirked.
“How did I get here?” Ned asked, still feeling disoriented and decidedly queasy.
“Does it really matter, Ned?” DeVere dismissed the question and turned back to Fox.
***
Phoebe was glad she had retained her domino as she meandered the room, admiring the grand masters and fingering various objets d’art. The Prince of Wales at only one-and-twenty was already a connoisseur, a collector of rare and beautiful things. It was said he had already spent twice what had been allocated to renovate Carlton House, and he was far from finished.
This was, however, the last place she wanted to be—in the prince’s presence. She didn’t know if she was more hurt or relieved that he hadn’t recognized her. Still, she dared not reveal her face for fear of what might be said. She’d suffered enough humiliation at his hand—lost her position, her reputation, her hopes of a husband and family. He’d cast her aside without a second thought. She had only come here out of concern for Ned. When DeVere had received that frustratingly cryptic message about finding him in a gutter, she feared he had been assaulted...or worse. Now reassured of his well-being, she was sorely tempted to slink away and hope that DeVere might call on her again.
She had not given up hope of engaging his interest, although her own feelings were decidedly unengaged—all the better for such an arrangement. While she thought she had known what to
expect in meeting him, something about the man was truly disconcerting. He was perpetually restless, almost manic in his quest for diversion, as if he feared that in resting even for a moment he might be forced to take stock of himself.
At first, she was befuddled by the close relationship between him and Ned, but now realized Ned’s steadiness served as a perfect foil for DeVere. Although he might mock his friend, deep down, he admired and, perhaps, even coveted that quiet reserve. DeVere was a man who hadn’t grown up and likely never would. Yet he would, assuredly, be entertaining if he chose to take her as his mistress. Moreover, she had absolutely no fear of losing her heart to him.
Ned, on the other hand, was dangerous.
Their brief time together in the garden had only made her realize how lonely she was...had refreshed the longings she’d once had...awakened new cravings. Without even touching her, he had ignited a smoldering fire low in her belly. Knowing she would do well to avoid his company, she was glad he would be only a few days in London. Still, she couldn’t avoid stealing a glance at him across the room. She found him staring back at her. Caught, he hastily looked away. Though he fought the attraction, she knew he felt it too. Phoebe’s heart raced with the confirmation that he was not indifferent to her. Whatever his reason, it was definitely not aversion. She wondered why he had refused her in the garden. Perhaps it was lack of money, but he didn’t seem to want for it. Or perhaps he found such a business arrangement distasteful?
“Well, gentlemen,” DeVere said. “I’ve just dropped a gauntlet. No horses, cocking, cards, dice, or seducing women, as there’s no challenge for me there. Do I have any takers?”
The loser of five hundred guineas earlier that night, Lord Malden perked up at the opportunity to win it back and then some. “Then what kind of challenge are you proposing?”
“Whatever quest your feeble minds can conjure. If I don’t accomplish the feat, I am a thousand guineas poorer.”
“I confess a vivid imagination.” Lord Carlisle chortled. “Perhaps you could try to beat Fox’s record of posting to Paris and back in thirty-six hours. What the devil was it for, Fox?”
A Wild Night's Bride (The Devil DeVere #1) Page 5