More Than a Duke(23)
He steeled his jaw. This sudden, inexplicable interest in Lady Anne was merely about sex. He’d never before noticed her lush form and now, well hell, now he did, and he wanted to know all of her. In the physical sense. Margaret’s deception had shown him there was nothing else to know of a woman outside of the pleasure to be had in her arms.
He might mock Anne’s efforts to land Crawford, but the reality was Harry had well-learned the way of their calculated world eight years ago. He’d given in to the emotion of love, given his fool’s heart to the sweetly innocent, beautiful Miss Margaret Dunn. He’d risked his very life, his reputation in a duel against Lord Rutland for the honor of the lady’s love. In the end, she’d chosen neither of them. She’d chosen wealth and status. And Harry? He had pledged to neither love nor feel again.
He didn’t care about the damned Lady Anne, tempting vixen with her sharp tongue. He pulled out his watchfob and consulted the time. He should leave. Hell, he should have left when Anne herself had made the suggestion a short while ago. A steady staccato pierced his thoughts. He dropped his gaze to the floor.
The tip of Anne’s slippers peeked out the front of the gown and beat a rhythm in time to the current song selection. All the hardened anger he’d carried since Crawford had come over and interrupted whatever this was between him and Anne, lifted. An odd shift occurred. There was something so whimsical, so endearing in Anne’s innocent gesture.
The lady enjoyed music.
Other than the fact that silver-flecks danced in her eyes when she was annoyed and that a little muscle ticked at the left corner of her lip when she frowned, Harry knew next to nothing about Lady Anne Adamson. But with her talk of contraltos and lyric sopranos, and her fixed interest in even the horrid performance of the Westmoreland girls, he found she cared about music.
He who made it a habit of not learning anything about a lady’s interests, outside of the bedchambers, that is, knew this of her. When one knew a lady’s likes and dislikes and what made her smile or laugh, and even frown, then one could no longer see merely a supple body to bed.
Christ. What was next? He’d begin sprouting sonnets about the sun-kissed golden hue of her silken ringlets?
He gave his head a hard shake and stood.
Anne looked up at him with a question in her wide-blue eyes.
He gave a curt bow and without a backward glance took his leave. The echo of his boot steps blended with the squawking squeal-like song of Lady Marissa Westmoreland. When at last he exited the palatial townhouse, he tugged at his cravat and sucked in a much-needed breath of air.
His driver hopped down from atop the black lacquer carriage and opened the door.
Harry strode over as fast as his bachelor legs could carry him and leapt inside. “To my clubs,” he said curtly.
The driver closed the door behind him and then the carriage shifted as he scrambled onto his perch.
Harry pulled back the black curtain and peered at the white stucco townhouse bathed in candlelight, unable to account for this desire to return to the too small, prim Klismos chair beside Lady Anne. The carriage sprung forward and he let the velvet fabric flutter back into place. He drummed his fingertips on the tops of his thighs, suddenly reminded of a different tapping. Specifically, two delicate slippered feet beating away a staccato rhythm upon the Italian marble floor.
He dragged a hand across his eyes. Slippered feet did not earn his notice. Bare naked toes used for wicked deeds, however, did.
As his carriage approached the front of Forbidden Pleasures, one of the most disreputable of the hells in London, Harry exited the coach resolved to put the innocent Anne from his thoughts once and for all. He strode up the three stone steps. The majordomo pulled the door open and Harry swept inside.
Raucous laughter and a cloud of thick cheroot smoke hung over the crimson-red establishment. Harry eyed the room a moment and then moved deeper into the club.
He strode over to an empty table and sat, absently viewing the debauchery before him. A liveried servant rushed over with a bottle of brandy. Harry accepted a glass and waved the man off. He splashed several fingerfuls into the tumbler and then filled it to the brim, determined to get well and fully soused. He took a sip and when that did little to diminish Anne’s disapproving eyes from his mind, he downed the entire contents.
“Well, well, Stanhope,” a voice drawled. “I thought you’d never arrive.”
He glanced up.
Lord Alex Edgerton grinned down at him. He and Edgerton went back to early days at Eton and Oxford. Theirs was the manner of friendship in which they would risk their life for the other. Harry should know. When he’d fought that foolish duel, Edgerton had been his second. Known for carousing, gaming, and over-indulging in spirits and ladies, the two were remarkably similar and good friends for it. “May I?”