To Wed a Rake(11)

It appeared the young lord was called Duffer, a thoroughly appropriate name. He almost stumbled over his own boots in his haste to kiss her hand. And a second later he took Emma into the gaming rooms, where he last saw Kerr.

Kerr was seated at a table playing vingt-et-un, his head bent to the side, studying his cards. Emma paused for a moment, letting Duffer’s hand slip from her arm. Her future husband (if she decided to give him the honor) was remarkably good looking: tall and dark, with a gypsy face and slanted eyes. He wasn’t wearing a costume, just a stark black coat and a carelessly tied scarf, but he looked better than all the peacocks he was sitting among.

“Kerr!” Lockwood hissed at him. “Wake up, man. There’s a woman behind you!”

The last thing Gil wanted was trouble with women. Tomorrow he was going to St. Albans, and…

He looked. She was trouble. Trouble in all the ways he most liked.

“My lord,” the woman said huskily. “You are playing with such devotion that you haven’t noticed me.”

“I’m afraid that I’m at a disadvantage,” Gil said, rising and bowing. “I am Gilbert Baring-Gould, the Earl of Kerr.”

“Mais, monsieur,” she cried, drawing back, her voice breaking slightly, “Darling Gil, you haven’t forgotten me, have you?”

Gil blinked. Surely he hadn’t—

“Oh, but you have forgotten me,” she said, her voice dipping into a husky lament. “Hélas, gentlemen—”

She cast a brilliant smile around S smp>

“Dangerous?” Gil said. He was almost certain he’d never met her before. Except perhaps there was just the faintest hint of something familiar about her. “Absent-minded, perhaps, but not dangerous.”

“You admit it,” she said, pouting.

Lockwood was clearly anxious to assuage her disappointment. He stepped forward and kissed her hand. “Ah, mademoiselle,” he said softly, “my heart is French, I assure you. I could never forget the merest press of your fingertips.”

“Do you tell me, sir,” she said, in the most ravishing lisp, “that you Englishmen are not all as unmannerly as Lord Kerr? For I do believe that he has quite forgotten our acquaintance.”

Gil was torn between amusement, disbelief, and just the faintest—faintest—hint of embarrassment. Could he truly have forgotten such an exquisite bit of womanhood? “You must help my decrepit English memory,” he said. “When was that encounter, mademoiselle?”

She pouted. “That shows the worst of your memory,” she said, “for I am no mademoiselle, but Madame de Custine. And you, sir, were so kind as to—” She stopped and gave him a smile that told the entire room just how kind he had been. Damn that French brandy, Gil thought to himself. There was nothing to do for it but accept the scandal: his godmother would hear of this within five minutes. “I gather I was kind enough on that forgotten occasion that you remember me, my dear Madame de Custine,” he said, kissing her hand again. “I consider that quite generous.”

Her eyes were glinting at him above her mask. The very curl of her mouth surprised Gil. How did he ever drink enough brandy to forget her? “Consider it a tribute to your skills, my lord,” she said, and the innuendo in her voice was unmistakable. Lockwood stepped back and picked up his cards. The man next to Lockwood turned and whispered to a friend.

Gil sighed inwardly and threw down his cards. An ace and a king fell onto the table. Actually, his godmother would know within three minutes.





“Gentlemen,” he said, “I must beg your leave to make my apologies to this lady.”





Chapter Eight





“Would you say,” Gil asked, staring down at the glorious bit of womanhood who had sought him out, “that you might have embroidered a bit on our acquaintance?”

“Pas de tout.”

“I just thought that you might have taken poetic license,” he said, steering her toward the windows leading to the garden. “Cast a romantic tone over an encounter of the most pedestrian nature…Did I help you into a carriage, perhaps?”

Emma gave a little gurgle of laughter. The pleasure of being French had gone to her head. She felt tipsy with a sense of power, exuberant with her own lies. She pitched her voice to a purring reproach. “How can you say such a thing, Lord Kerr? I vow that you came close to breaking my heart!”

They passed through the doorway, Emma’s wide, brocade skirts sweeping the door panels. Why on earth hadn’t she come to London before? Why hadn’t she known how much pure fun it was to hunt for a man, to cut him from the pack, just like one of Farm V smp> to Loer Ben’s sheepdogs might do with a prize ram?