A Wicked Way to Win an Earl (28 page)

She ran her cheek against his shaft. “Watch in the mirror, Alec,” she murmured, and then she took him in her mouth.

He sank his fingers into her hair. “Dear God.
Delia
.”

Delia took him deeper, encouraged by his strangled moans. She looked up at him to find him staring at their reflection in the mirror, a hot flush of color high on his cheekbones. She sank down farther on him, tugging at his hard flesh with her mouth, digging her fingers into his hips when he began to move them.

“Jesus. Stop, love.
Stop
.” He tore away from her mouth with a gasp, grabbed her up into his arms, and then nearly sent them both crashing to the floor in his haste to get her to the bed. Delia was giggling as he tossed her onto her back and fell on top of her, one hand scrambling to raise her skirts, the other ripping at his breeches. They both moaned when he slid inside her welcoming heat, and then he began
to move, and the elusive bliss slid closer with each powerful thrust until Delia shattered with a scream, and Alec followed her, his body arching against hers as his pleasure took him.

“My God,” he said, once he'd caught his breath. “I told you it was almost too late.” He rolled onto his back and dragged Delia on top of him. “I think I saw a celestial flash of light at the end.”

Delia laughed, braced her elbows on the bed, and reached down to untie his cravat. “That was the diamonds.”

He hooked a finger under the necklace and turned it this way and that, watching as it glimmered in the firelight. “They are beautiful, but it's not the diamonds that dazzle me, love. It's you. I want you so much, I can't even manage to get my clothes off first.”

“I'll get them off for you.” Delia tossed his cravat over the side of the bed, then sat up and surveyed the general ruin of their evening attire. With a shrug, she started on his waistcoat buttons. “No music for us tonight, it seems.”

“Oh, I don't know.” Alec grinned up at her. “At one point I'm sure I heard a soprano.”

Delia threw back her head and laughed. “Did you? Well, my lord, perhaps you'll get to hear her again before the night is done. Was her voice very beautiful?”

He gazed up at her for a moment, and his expression grew serious. “There are none to equal her in voice, beauty, mind, or heart.” He lifted her hand and pressed it against the middle of his chest, over his heart. “Here, especially, she is not just unsurpassed. She is
only
.”

Delia cupped his face, his beautiful, dear face, in her palm. “Oh, my love. I have no need of musical evenings. You alone can make my heart sing.”

T
URN
THE
PAGE
FOR
A
SPECIAL
LOOK
AT
THE
NEXT
BOOK
IN
THE
S
UTHERLAND
S
CANDAL
SERIES

A Season of Ruin

C
OMING
IN
A
UGUST
2016
FROM
B
ERKLEY
S
ENSATION

A high, thin voice floated on the air, audible even through the closed door. The music had begun. Pleyel. Of course. The
Scottish Airs
. What else?

Good God—musical evenings. Of all the bloody dull entertainments the
ton
inflicted on the gentlemen of London, the musical evening was the bloodiest. One stood about in a stifling room and waited for the music to start; then one squeezed one's arse onto a miniature chair and pretended to appreciate the efforts of a screeching soprano. Wait, stand, squeeze, listen, pretend. It was damned tedious.

Robyn rolled his shoulders inside his tight coat. He'd no intention of escorting his sisters all over London this season. That was, unless they wished to forgo their card parties, routs, and balls in favor of a visit to the gaming hells, or a frolic with the Cyprians in Covent Garden.

He tried to imagine his sister Eleanor at a hazard table, her long, elegant fingers wrapped around a pair of dice as every rogue in London breathed down her neck. Or his sister
Charlotte, engaged in a debate with the whores at the Slippery Eel over how low was
too
low when it came to low-cut bodices.

No, he couldn't picture it. Shame, too, because it would be amusing.

Robyn pressed his ear close to the door and listened. Not to Pleyel, but for the soft shuffle of a lady's slippers creeping down the hallway. He preferred petite, dark-haired ladies, especially those of an accommodating nature, to Pleyel.

Ah, dear old London. Wickedness lurked everywhere, even in the unlikeliest places. Another reason to love the old girl.

Where the devil was she? He tapped his foot, his eyes fixed on the door handle, willing it to turn.

It shouldn't be long now.

*   *   *

“Which do you think the handsomest?” Charlotte asked. She tapped Lily's wrist with her fan and nodded her head toward the center of the drawing room.

One couldn't take a step in any direction without tripping over one elegant nobleman or another, but there could be no doubt which group of gentlemen Charlotte referred to. Lily had noticed more than one feminine eyelash batting in that direction.

“My goodness,” Eleanor interrupted. “Is Lord Pelkey wearing a pink waistcoat?” She peered over Lily's shoulder at the gentleman in question. “Oh, dear. It
is
pink, with green embroidered butterflies. That leaves him out. No gentleman who wears a pink waistcoat with green butterflies can be considered handsome.”

The ladies tittered.

“Better to ask which is the wickedest,” said Miss Thurston, a sour young lady with a head full of dull brown hair and a perpetually peeved expression. Her maid had clearly
taken pains with the hair, but what had no doubt begun as fashionable ringlets had long since succumbed to the heat of the room. Poor Miss Thurston looked as if she wore a fuzzy brown animal of some sort on her head.

“One of them is as wicked as the next,” she declared.

Perhaps the loss of her curls had curdled her temper.

“Mr. Robert Sutherland is the handsomest.” As far as Lily was concerned, there was no question. It wasn't that he was so tall or so remarkably well formed, though he was both. It wasn't even his thick dark hair or heavily lashed black eyes.

No, it was his smile. His mouth was just a shade too wide. In another man that mouth might have been a flaw, but Robyn had a slow, suggestive smile, and he wielded it like a pickax. That smile could crack the ice around the coldest feminine heart.

“And the wickedest,” put in Frizzle-hair.

Charlotte sighed. “Poor Robyn. How awful, to be the wickedest gentleman in the wickedest city in England.”

Lily just stopped herself from rolling her eyes. If she believed half the tales and dire warnings about the wickedness of London, she'd refuse to leave her bedchamber at the Sutherlands' Mayfair town house.

When they'd first arrived, she'd expected to find cutthroats wielding knives in broad daylight, a pickpocket's fingers forever in her reticule, and leering rakes on every street corner. She'd kept a keen eye out for the rakes, as she didn't wish to be caught unawares, but to her knowledge she'd not yet seen one, leering or otherwise, and she'd been here for nearly six weeks already.

It was true she hadn't been out in society much since her arrival. She'd spent most of her time helping her sister Delia prepare for her wedding to Alec Sutherland, but Delia hadn't been the new Lady Carlisle for more than a few days before Eleanor and Charlotte Sutherland, Alec's younger sisters,
had whisked Lily off her feet and into London's social whirl. Their mother, the dowager Countess of Carlisle, had graciously offered to sponsor Lily, and all three young ladies anticipated a lively season.

Leering rakes indeed
. Handsome, fashionable gentlemen abounded, each more scrupulously polite than the last. Lily had rarely seen such a concentration of impeccable manners. The only thing that had given her a moment's concern was the price of hats on Bond Street.

She was fond of hats.

No matter what Charlotte said, Lily hadn't seen any real evidence of Robyn's wickedness. She prided herself on her fair-mindedness, and she wouldn't dream of condemning a man without evidence.

“What about that one?” Lily gestured with her chin at a tall, golden-haired gentleman. “I can't like the look of him. He has cold eyes.”

All four heads swiveled to assess the golden-haired gentleman.

Charlotte craned her neck to see over a large woman wearing a towering purple turban adorned with tall peacock feathers. “Ah,” she murmured with a significant look at Lily. “
That
is Lord Atherton.”

Lily met Charlotte's eyes. “It is indeed?”

Well, then. That changed everything. Perhaps she
could
like the look of him, after all. It would help if she did, as she planned to marry him.

She glanced back over at the group of gentlemen. Lord Atherton stood just at the edges of it, his back a bit rigid and his air abstracted, as if he were only half listening to their conversation. He wasn't as tall as Robyn, but he was certainly tall enough to satisfy Lily.

Charlotte, who loved a matchmaking caper more than anything, rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “Yes. We'll have Robyn introduce you, and—”

Miss Thurston interrupted her. “He does
not
have cold eyes! Why, how unfair you are!” She looked as though she'd like to slap Lily with her fan. “Lord Atherton is the very model of a refined English gentleman. He has a spotless reputation.”

Lily didn't argue this point. His spotlessness wasn't in question. If it had been, she and Charlotte would never have settled upon him, after prolonged discussion, as Lily's perfect mate and the potential future father of her children.

Charlotte didn't entirely agree with Lily's choice. In fact, she'd insisted Lord Atherton was “as dull as a stick of wood.” She'd attempted to steer Lily toward a more exciting young gentleman, but Lily wouldn't hear of it.

Excitement wasn't part of her plan.

Perhaps Frizzle-hair had set her cap for Lord Atherton? If so, Lily feared she was destined for disappointment, for that spotless and refined model of English manhood hadn't looked her way once tonight. He hadn't looked Lily's way, either, but he would before the soprano had sung her last note this evening.

“Didn't you just say one of them is as wicked as the next?” Lily asked, turning to Frizzle-hair.

That young lady gave a worldly sniff. “You're from the country, aren't you, Miss Somerset? Perhaps you aren't familiar enough with town gentlemen to venture an opinion, and should defer to those with more knowledge on the subject.”

“Perhaps,” Lily agreed, all politeness, though she was tempted to laugh aloud at the idea that Frizzle-hair was an expert on gentlemen of either the town or the country variety.

Charlotte gave Lily a sly wink. “How, Miss Thurston, do you judge the degree of a gentleman's wickedness?”

“Well, one does hear things about Mr. Sutherland, you know. Scandalous things.” Miss Thurston clamped her lips shut as if to prevent any of these scandalous things from emerging.

Charlotte gasped. “Why, Miss Thurston! Surely you don't rely on gossip to make your determinations?”

“Well, I—” Miss Thurston faltered. Her face flushed. “That is, of course not.”

Charlotte took a deep breath and patted her chest with the tips of her fingers. “Oh, I'm
so
relieved to hear it, for the gentleman who escapes gossip's vicious tongue may simply hide his debauchery with greater cunning. That would make him
wickeder
than the others, not less so. Wouldn't it, Miss Thurston?”

Miss Thurston's fountain of wisdom on the vagaries of the English gentleman appeared to have run dry, however. She looked from Eleanor to Charlotte, then from Charlotte to Lily, dipped into a shallow curtsy, and hurried away without another word.

Charlotte watched her scurry off, frizzy curls flying, then snapped open her fan with a quick flick of her wrist. “I enjoyed that.”

Lily stifled a giggle. “You're the wicked one, you know, Charlotte.”

Charlotte gave her fan a vigorous wave. “Robyn is every bit as bad as Miss Thurston says, but I can't have her say so right to my face, can I? He
is
my brother, after all.”

Lily glanced back over at the group of gentlemen, but Robyn was no longer there. She scanned the room for a dark head towering over the rest of the party, but he seemed to have disappeared. “Where did he—”

“Come, let's find a seat,” Ellie said. “They're going to start.”

Miss Sophia Licari, the soprano, had taken her place at the front of the room.

Lily gathered her skirts in her hand. “Save my seat, won't you? I need to visit the ladies' retiring room. My sash is twisted.”

Ellie frowned. “Can't it wait?”

Lily fingered the tiny fold in the green satin sash at her waist. No, it couldn't wait. She couldn't abide a twisted sash under any circumstances.

“Shall I accompany you?” Charlotte asked. “The house is rather confusing—”

“No, no. Just point me in the right direction. I'll find it.”

Charlotte made a vague gesture toward the door. “To the right, just there. Down the hallway, the last door on the left. Hurry now, Lily, or you'll miss the best part.”

*   *   *

Damn it, his ear had begun to ache from being squashed against the door. If Alicia thought he'd wait all night for her—

A faint sound came from the hallway, just outside the door.

Robyn froze, breath held.
At last.

A moment later the handle twisted, the door opened a crack, and a dainty, white-gloved hand appeared. He seized her wrist and nearly jerked her off her feet in his haste to get her through the door.

He'd waited long enough.

“What—” she squeaked.

He placed his lips against her ear with a low chuckle. “What took you so long? I was just wondering the same thing myself.”

He eased her backward against the door, leaned his body into hers, and released her wrist. He let his fingers brush against her hip as he reached behind her to twist the lock. The bolt slid home with a sharp click.

God, she smelled incredible. He buried his nose in her neck and inhaled. Odd, but he'd never noticed her scent before, and a man didn't often come across a woman who smelled like a meadow. Fresh, like grass warmed by the sun, or like a daisy would smell if it had a scent. He'd have
expected a more sophisticated perfume from Alicia, something sweeter, heavier. Less subtle. What a pleasant surprise, this scent. He nuzzled her neck and suppressed a sudden, absurd urge to growl.

Two unsteady hands came up to grasp the lapels of his coat. He expected to feel her arms slide around his neck, but instead she pushed against his chest. “I don't—” she began.

“Of course you do.”
Otherwise she wouldn't be here
.

Robyn had no interest in a polite chat, and he'd long since learned the best way to keep a woman quiet was to give her something else to do with her mouth. He dropped a brief kiss on her warm, scented neck but resisted the urge to bury his face in her hair.

A man
should
linger over a scent like hers, but Lord Barrow's study wasn't the place to do it. He could easily be carried away by that scent, and before he knew it, he'd have Alicia flat on her back on what was undoubtedly a very fine carpet.

It wouldn't do to muss his lordship's carpet. It wasn't gentlemanly.

Then again, there was a settee.
Blast
—he should have tested it while he waited for her. But no matter. He'd noticed a desk, as well. A wide, empty desk. Lord Barrow, bless him, was quite tidy. Robyn would have to remember to send the old boy a very fine bottle of brandy to show his gratitude.

Alicia's hands tightened on his lapels. “Please—”