Page 95 of The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

“Are you coming downstairs or is our meeting canceled?”

“What meeting?” Jane asked, grateful for the interruption. She was more uncertain by the moment that she could actually put Audrey’s plan to work without giving herself away. She was not dealing with a nincompoop but with a hot-blooded, sneaky opponent.

“The meeting about my family’s future.” He sighed, giving her a long, deep kiss before he released her. “My brothers and I are hoping to find a suitable husband for Chloe before she ruins herself completely.”

“How good of you, Grayson, to make such a decision for her. Heaven knows we women are incapable of choosing even a pair of shoes for ourselves.”

He came to his feet, studying her with a strange smile. “I never said anything like that. Start to dress for the evening, won’t you? I mean to show you off.”

“As your latest mistress?”

He hesitated, his hands on the buttons of his vest, his voice neutral. “Of course, darling. What else?”

They arrived late to the race ball, the coachman parking in the crush of carriages lining the hilly lane. Drake had begged off at the last moment, presumably to call on a certain young lady who had just arrived from London. Simon and Heath set off with Uncle Giles for the card room, where bets were being laid on tomorrow’s race. Grayson herded Jane and his sister toward the candlelit ballroom of Viscount Lawson’s house.

He had been mulling over Heath’s warning and decided that perhaps his brother’s intuition should be heeded. The time had come for revelations. And Jane was definitely up to something.

Again.

He thought of the two Janes he had learned to love. One was the pragmatic, sensible young lady he had been squiring about London supposedly to heal her broken heart. He adored this side of her. Her respectable image dovetailed perfectly with the sort of woman his parents would have chosen for him. This Jane was the ideal bride for a marquess.

Polite, refined, a jewel in the crown of the aristocracy.

But the other Jane. Ah, yes. The mysterious beauty in a wedding veil standing at an empty altar. That enigmatic woman and her shadowy motives beckoned to his darker side. The side of him that scorned convention. The side of him that would strip off her final veil and behold her bare soul in all its sinful glory.

Which Jane did he prefer?

Not one over the over. It was the merging of these two incongruent beings that held him in thrall. It was the woman in her conflicting entirety that he loved and wanted to outwit at the same time.

It was almost the midnight of their masquerade.

As they separated outside the cloakroom, Grayson touched Jane’s face with the back of his gloved hand. “Look how flushed you are, all bundled up in your wrap. No one would ever guess what a temptress you have become. I cannot wait to see what you have in store for me later in the evening.”

She lowered her eyes demurely, answering in amused silence: Just wait, my arrogant darling. Do I have another surprise for you. “It really is rather overwhelming, Grayson—this public exposure as your mistress.”

He stared at her. “Nonsense,” he said, glancing past her to Chloe, whose dark head was suspiciously downbent. “You shall cause a sensation.”

I certainly intend to.

He frowned. “Did you say something, Jane? I cannot hear for the harpist playing in the gallery.”

“I didn’t say a thing.”

He glanced back toward her, his eyes narrowing. “Take off your wrap before you faint. We are packed in here like pickled herrings.”

“As you wish, Grayson. I exist only to please you.” Jane’s voice sounded cool, but her heart had begun to thump. Was she about to let the lion out of his cage? How would she handle him then?

He swung around. “What did you say?”

“That I hope never to displease you,” she answered meekly.

Chloe nudged him away. “Meet us outside the cloakroom after we beautify ourselves, Gray. We didn’t come here to chatter the evening away in the hall.”

A few moments later Jane shed her silk-lined pelisse in the cloakroom, whispering, “I can’t go out there in front of all those people, those strangers, looking like a . . . an East End strumpet.”

“You look positively gorgeous,” Chloe whispered back as she examined the high-waisted sheer peach gauze evening gown that she had lent Jane from her private unworn wardrobe. “I think we ought to dampen it again once more for good measure. Do you want more rouge for your—”

“No!” Jane’s mortified shriek caught the attention of the young maid at the door. “I’m showing enough of my pinker parts as it is. I may as well be wearing a lace doily.”