Tempted By the Night (2 page)

The arrival of the Earl of Rockhurst at Almack’s the next night caused a near panic amongst the other guests. Of course he had the necessary voucher. He’d
always
had a voucher at his disposal. And why wouldn’t he? He possessed the fortune of Midas, and if that wasn’t enough to pass muster with the patronesses, his handsome visage and hawkish looks were admired wherever he went.

But most importantly, he was single. More than one mother had lamented that an unwed earl without an heir was truly a sin against nature.

Though they hadn’t necessarily been talking about Lord Rockhurst. For there was the small matter of his reputation—a man whose tastes favored expensive courtesans and high-stakes gaming, as well as an un
savory penchant for frequenting some of the most dangerous hells and darkest brothels.

To bring him to heel,
one matron had declared,
would take a lady of some consequence. A lady who could touch his black, unfeeling heart.

Yet here he was, at Almack’s, all but declaring his intention to find a bride. For what other reason was there for a rich, unmarried nobleman to attend the Wednesday night balls?

Accustomed as he was to the controversy, Rockhurst gave little regard to the stir his arrival caused, for there, to his amazement, was his cousin, Miss Mary Kendell.

He held out his arm to her, and she settled her hand atop it automatically. Taking a glance around them, then back at her, he asked, “Cousin, whatever are
you
doing here?”

“I would ask the same of you,” she replied. “Really, Rockhurst! Send around a note of warning before you decide to arrive at Almack’s.”

He glanced around the room and blinked several times. “Almack’s? Is that what this is called?” He patted the front of his jacket. “And here I thought I had tickets to the ballet this evening. Remind me to sack Tunstall tomorrow for driving me to the wrong address.”

“The sun hasn’t even set yet,” Mary pointed out. “I’m sure when you arrived, you might have noticed the difference.”

The earl grinned, completely unrepentant. “I will maintain to my dying day this was all Tunstall’s doing. Or until his.”

“Poor Tunstall,” Mary said. “I’m surprised he didn’t
fall over with apoplexy when you directed him here rather than your usual haunts.”

“Ah, Mary,” Rockhurst replied. “As forthright as ever. ’Tis why I adore you above all my other relations.”

“Since your only other choice is Aunt Routledge, I can’t say I am impressed with your singular favor.”

Rockhurst laughed. His cousin was one of the few people who was neither awed nor impressed by his title and rank.

“You still haven’t answered my question. Whatever possessed you to come here?” She waved her hand at the ballroom, where a good portion of the
ton
was staring back at the pair of them as if they had arrived dressed for a masquerade.

“I lost a wager.” He winked at her and led her toward the punch table.

“You never lose wagers.”

Right she was, but he wasn’t about to explain himself to anyone. Hell, how could he explain it to her when he wasn’t quite sure of the reasons himself. “I will tell you if you can tell me what you are doing here amongst all these dullards, Mary?”

“If you kept to proper society, you would know I am out this Season.”

She couldn’t have said anything that would have shocked him more. “Out?”

“Rockhurst, I would like to get married. Before it is too late even to consider the possibility.”

Quite frankly, he didn’t know what to say. He’d never considered that his bluestocking cousin would even want a husband.

She continued on, “And I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t point out the impracticality of such a notion like Father or…or others have.”

Yet there was one point he could argue, glancing around the room one more time and suppressing the shudder that threatened to run up his spine. “Why here?”

“Aunt Routledge,” she confessed.

“Bullied you into it, didn’t she?”

Mary cringed, then nodded.

He leaned over. “You need to spend more of your days away from your library and out in the world—where our aunt can’t find you.”

“I haven’t the Dials to hide in, as you do,” she commented. Then she glanced over at him, taking a measuring glance if ever there was one.

A skill she’d no doubt inherited from their aforementioned aunt.

“You’ve looked drawn of late,” she said. “I take that to mean that your other responsibilities have become more pressing than usual.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

She lowered her voice, and asked, “You haven’t found the hole yet?”

He shook his head, but said nothing more given the curious and close company surrounding them. Mary wouldn’t pry further—at least not until she had him alone where she could pepper him with questions. Nothing like a true bluestocking to want every detail of a matter.

If anything, perhaps his troubles of late were exactly the reason he was here. At Almack’s.

He glanced around at the bevy of young beauties and heiresses and those who’d just arrived in the world with all the necessary pedigree and nothing else to recommend them, and he shuddered.

No, for a brief second of late, he thought he’d found a lady who was different. Miss Charlotte Wilmont. But it hadn’t taken him long to realize the lady had eyes only for another.

But in those few hours in her company, he’d discovered something he hadn’t thought possible. A spark of something that he’d never found before. Perhaps it had only been a brief enigma. A happenstance of fate.

Yet here he was, at Almack’s, surveying the ladies of the
ton,
in search of…someone.

His musings were interrupted by a sharp fan into his ribs, and his cousin saying, “Rockhurst, stop measuring the guests as if they were horses at Tatt’s. It is unbecoming.”

“Would you prefer this?” he asked, then feigned a loud laugh as if she’d just said something terribly witty, then winked at a passing matron, finishing off his performance with an elegant bow to a knot of giggling debutantes, whose mirth disappeared almost immediately as their mouths fell open at such a favor.

Mary groaned and tugged him past the foolish nits. It wasn’t long before they’d arrived at the punch table, and Rockhurst surveyed the tepid lemonade and poor fare with a skeptical tip of his brows. “Whyever does one come here?”

“Because it is entirely respectable.”

He shuddered. “Now I know why my Wednesday nights have been occupied elsewhere all these years.”

“Which is well and good, for you’ve got every matron in the room speculating that you’ve come here seeking a bride.”

He glanced around the room. “I hardly think one night under this hallowed, sacred roof—”

“Harrumph!” Mary blustered, sounding exactly like their Aunt Routledge.

But being a gentleman, Rockhurst decided not to point out the obvious.

“You haven’t been subjected to enough afternoon teas and card parties to know better,” she chided. “You have no idea what you’ve gone and done.”

“Then I will in all haste do something quite despicable to put an end to such nonsense.”

She laughed. “There, now that’s the cousin I know. Please do, for it gives me such pleasure to listen to all your faults and follies discussed for weeks on end, and all I can do is nod and sympathize over your wasted existence, when I would love nothing more than to tell them all that you are—”

He came to a blinding halt. “You wouldn’t dare—”

“You are in a state if you can’t see that I’m teasing,” she said, turning back and catching hold of his arm again. “Really, cousin, there was a time when you weren’t so beetle-headed.”

“Beetle-headed?” he asked, his brow cocking upward.

Mary couldn’t help herself, she laughed. “Yes, beetle-headed.” She shook her head and glanced at him. “Whatever is the matter with you? You used to be so
dependable. Flirtations with married women, the finest Incomparables, and now you’ve gone quite respectable.”

“Respectable?” He shook his head. “I think I prefer beetle-headed.”

“Then you shouldn’t have taken Miss Wilmont to the opera the other week,” she chided. “Really, Rockhurst, whatever possessed you to pluck Charlotte Wilmont out of obscurity?”

“I don’t know. I’d probably driven past her a hundred times and never noticed her, and then one day, there she was. I couldn’t help myself. Not that she had eyes for me, mind you. Lucky devil, that Trent.”

“They do suit, don’t they?” Mary sighed, twisting her fan about. “However, the point is that if you insist on escorting proper young ladies to the opera, not to mention arriving here at Almack’s, then you are going to be seen as respectable.”

He rubbed his chin. “What a devilish trap.”

“Exactly. I’m still inclined to believe that Trent’s wedding has you thinking of setting up your own nursery. Perhaps that is what I will tell Aunt Routledge when she corners me tomorrow,” she said, her lips twitching.

“You are an incorrigible chit, Mary. You will do no such thing.”

His cousin made a very unladylike snort. “Then what do you suggest I say when she calls on me and demands an explanation as to why you were here? For you know she will. She’ll be on my doorstep at some ungodly hour, determined to ferret out the matter so she has the first word on the subject wherever she goes.” When he
said nothing, Mary groaned. “You’ve put me in a terrible spot,” she complained. “Whatever
are
you doing here, Rockhurst?”

“I wish I knew, Mary,” he said, scanning the crowd around them again. “I wish I knew.”

“This has gone on long enough, Quince.”

The lady in question flinched even as the man she least wanted to discover stepped from the shadows of a curtained alcove. She didn’t need to turn around to see him, she could feel his presence.

Knew every curve and line on his handsome face.

And wished she didn’t.

“Go away, Milton,” she told him. “I’ve got to time this just right if I am too succeed.”

“If,
” he repeated. “Now isn’t that an interesting turn of phrase.
If.
Why not say, ‘
When
I get your ring.’”

She turned and glanced at his rich attire—tonight it was a bottle green jacket and tight breeches. The gold trim on his coat glistened in the candlelight. Then again, Milton always chose his clothing to dazzle and disarm.

And it worked, even on her, even after all these years. Her heart wavered for a second as she marveled at the breadth of his chest, his jewel green eyes, and his long limbs. All of them.

Until she remembered how and why they were here. That they’d once been happily married, bound together by a ring, until Milton had broken her trust and her faith in him.

Harrumph.
“Don’t you have some young, fool
ish nymph to seduce?” she asked. “Or have you run through all the willing candidates?”

“My, my,” he said, tipping his head as he studied her. “Sharp-tongued as always. And not concentrating on the task at hand.” He nodded toward the trio of young debutantes gathered in the outskirts of Almack’s fashionable set. “Shouldn’t be all that hard for someone of your talents to go over there and steal it off her hand. You got it off mine quite handily.”

“You were drunk and in the arms of your mistress,” she pointed out, her gaze not leaving the object of her quest. Lady Hermione Marlowe. As long as the lady was encircled by her friends, it wouldn’t be as easy to steal the ring as Milton liked to think.

“Such a quibbling point,” he replied, glancing down at his hand—the one that had worn the ring during their short-lived marriage. “I daresay you were lucky yesterday that her wish was interrupted and that she wasn’t able to finish it. Now go get my ring.”

“And how do you propose I do that? Go up and ask her for it? Excuse me, Lady Hermione, but do you mind returning that ring to me? You see, it possesses more power than you could suppose, and if you were to make a wish, I would have to grant it.”

Milton made a rude noise and took to studying their prey. “She might make it easy and wish for a cup of lemonade and be done with it.”

“You obviously haven’t had any of the lemonade,” Quince remarked, then shook her head, studying their quarry for a moment. “No, I fear if Lady Hermione wishes for anything tonight, it will have to do with—”

“Wha-a-at the devil is
he
doing here?” Milton said, his words coming out in choked panic.

Quince glanced up to the entrance and gaped as the Earl of Rockhurst came striding into the grand room.

“This is your doing, isn’t it?” Milton turned to her. “Some jest on my behalf?”

But she wasn’t listening. Ring or not, she wasn’t about to cross paths with the Earl of Rockhurst. She turned to go the other way, any way that would take her well away from
him,
but Milton had caught hold of her arm and held her fast.

“Quince,” Milton ground out as he gave her a small shake. “Did you bring him here?”

She glanced first down at his hand on her arm, then up at him. “Whyever would I do that?”

“You tell me,” Milton shot back, a light of panic she’d never seen blazing in his eyes. “I don’t care what sort of nonsensical plan you’ve conjured to punish me, but there is one thing for certain: you aren’t leaving this room without my ring. Now, I command you to go get it.”

“You command me?” She laughed, then slipped out of his grasp and melded into the crowd before he could stop her. If there was one thing Quince knew about Milton, it was that he deplored mingling with people, something she was counting on.

“Quince, return to me at once. This isn’t amusing,” he whispered in the direction she’d fled. “There will be trouble with this. You mark my words. I’ll not be responsible if she—”

Then he felt the beginning of the tremble that boded only one thing.

That it was indeed too late.

For Hermione Marlowe had also seen the Earl of Rockhurst arrive, and with almost her next breath, cast her wish.

Lady Hermione Marlowe stood in the wings and looked around the crowded room.
Almack’s. Again.
She heaved a sigh.