“Is she pretty?” Angelique persisted.
He had no idea. Given his grandmother’s hatred of him, he rather doubted she was. But he needed Granddame’s fortune to support the estate his brother had left bankrupt. Marriage was simply a necessary bargain to maintain the dukedom. He shifted on the sheets, shut his eyes, told himself he didn’t care who she was.
“Will she do this for you?” Angelique asked. Her hair brushed his stomach, and he gathered the silk of it in his hand so he could watch her work. She lifted her head again, much to his annoyance.
“Am I invited to the wedding?”
Was he? His grandmother hadn’t so much as left a note to inform him of the arrangements.
He forced away his annoyance at the whole situation, and slid his hand between Angelique’s thighs, and she purred as he stroked her, all other thoughts gone at last from her pretty head. He waited until she cried out, then lifted her to straddle his hips.
She laughed. “You are a devil! I’m due at the theater for rehearsal in less than an hour. There’s no time.”
Nicholas flipped her onto her back and grinned, “There’s always time for this, Miss Encore.” She arched against him with a mewl of need.
“Just once more, then, but hurry—” She rolled her hips, tried to make him move faster, but he held still, teasing her.
“Hurry, Miss Encore?” He tweaked her nipple and she cried out in delight. “Not on your life.”
With Angelique well sated but very late for rehearsal, Nicholas strolled into White’s Club. Viscount Sebastian St. James was waiting for him, seated in a comfortable leather chair, drinking with several other gentlemen of the ton.
“Not your usual crowd, St. James,” Nicholas murmured.
He was sitting with Charles Wilton and Lord Augustus Howard. The gentlemen were only vague acquaintances. Their smiles faded as Nicholas sat down.
“I’d about given you up,” Sebastian said with a drunken grin. “We were just talking about you.”
Nicholas’s spine prickled. “Oh?”
Wilton smiled, but his eyes remained cold. “We were about to mount a wager as to what was keeping you, but St. James felt there was no point, since Angelique Encore is your new ladybird. It was all too obvious.” There was an edge to his tone that tightened Nicholas’s gut.
Augustus Howard waggled his gray brows. “We decided instead to bet on what time you’d arrive. Unfortunately, you’re some hours earlier than my prediction.”
“Trouble with—” Wilton pointed at Nicholas’s lap.
“No, never, not Nicholas!” Sebastian cried. “My guess is Angelique had a performance this afternoon—” He elbowed Nicholas in the ribs. “Or should I say another performance?” Nicholas refrained from rolling his eyes.
Wilton smirked and sipped his drink, as if he knew a secret joke.
Lord Howard leaned in. “I hear your days of merriment are soon to come to an end.”
Ah, so that was the secret joke. His wedding. Nicholas set his jaw, making ready to endure more questions and ribald jests.
Howard pursed his brandy-sodden lips in an ugly pout. “Since you’re to hang in the parson’s noose before the month is out, will you bequeath the lovely Angelique to me?”
Nicholas sipped his whisky to hide his surprise. Within the month? That soon? He felt the imaginary noose tighten, imagined his grandmother cackling as she tugged on his leg to hasten the drop.