Barbara Pierce (19 page)

No regrets.
Fayne dug his fingers into the pocket of his waistcoat and removed his watch. Fayne checked the time.
He knew he was suffering over his parting with Kilby when Cadd’s arguments seemed valid.

Everod made a rude sound. “I grant you, Cadd, a courtesan is skilled. She has manipulation down to an art. The lady teases your cock until you are willing to offer her anything.”

“I can afford it,” the marquess smoothly countered.

Ramscar cuffed Cadd on the back of his head. “Puppy,” he muttered, before walking away and disappearing through the curtain of the next box they had planned to visit.

“Hey!” Cadd called after him. He scowled at Fayne. “What did I do to offend him?”

Fayne shrugged. Ramscar was quieter, more introspective than the rest of them. It was difficult to guess at what point Cadd’s diatribe had offended him. The earl had a deep affection for women. He tended to see beyond the superficial. The ladies he selected as lovers were not necessarily renowned beauties; however, they possessed an intellect that equaled his own. It was probably why his liaisons lasted longer than the others’.

“Your idiocy offends him, Cadd,” Everod taunted, shoving the marquess forward toward the curtains. “Ramscar understands the risks a gentleman takes when dallying with these courtesans. While she plays the devoted mistress for you, she is bedding two or three other gentlemen to plump up her purse. Egad, you are damned fortunate your rod isn’t festering in your breeches from one of those cunning bitches.”

Fayne stepped through the curtain after them. What he saw had him turning away and clapping his hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter. Lost in their argument, Cadd and Everod had not considered that the occupants of the box might overhear their conversation. Ramscar abruptly straightened at their arrival. His sweeping glare encompassed them all. The ladies he had been quietly conversing
with were the very conservative Duke of Hadnott’s wife, her fifteen-year-old twin daughters, and the duke’s eighty-year-old mother. The varying degrees of astonishment on the ladies’ faces was priceless. The duke’s mother raised her quizzing glass to her eye and pointedly examined the marquess’s crotch.

Cadd snarled, shoved Everod away with a muffled curse, and marched off. Sneering at Ramscar for not warning them, Everod hastily followed after his friend.

Fayne could not stop laughing. He fought to keep his face sober, while the earl eloquently apologized to the ladies. His friends’ antics had been highly amusing. He could not recall the last time he had been so highly entertained in the theater.

Bringing the back of his hand to his lips to hide his smile, he bowed respectfully to the ladies. As he turned to leave, he noticed something that swiftly quelled his good humor.

Across the circular expanse of the auditorium, Lord Darknell was cozily sitting next to Kilby.

Kilby sensed the viscount’s gaze on her face as she watched the ballet performance on stage. Matters between them had become confusing since her arrival in London. She longed for the simplicity of life at Ealkin, the life she had had before her parents’ deaths. Lyssa was winding and unwinding one of the ribbons of her reticule around her first finger, a definite sign her friend was fretting about her meddling. She could have reassured her friend that she was not angry, but decided Lyssa deserved to share a little of the uneasiness Kilby was feeling.

“Fitchwolf, are you so vexed you cannot bear to look at me?”

She shifted her gaze from the energetic dancers below to the viscount’s beseeching expression. The apprehension
tightening her face lessened with the affection born of years of friendship.

“There. You see?” Kilby said lightly, staring into his familiar brown eyes. “Not vexed in the least.”

“You forgive too easily,” Darknell chided. He clasped her unencumbered hand on her lap. “I have been deserving of your anger. The spiteful burden Archer has placed on your slender shoulders has caused you great angst. Instead of being the friend you needed, I have been sarcastic, judgmental, and overall nasty in disposition.” He stroked his thumb across the back of her hand. “I offer my deepest apologies and pray you will forgive me.”

“I forgave you the instant I saw you.” Kilby leaned over and laid her cheek on his shoulder. “You are one of my dearest friends. We may not always agree, my lord, but I have no desire to toss away our friendship because of those differences.”

Kilby straightened and squeezed his hand. She turned to Lyssa, intending to tell her friend that her meddling had had a happy ending. It was then she noticed a matron frowning at her from the next theater box. Gently she released Darknell’s hand on the pretense of searching for an item in her reticule. A prickly warmth crept up her neck and face. Kilby silently chastised herself. How many people had observed her demonstrative exchange with the viscount? She had forgotten how closely the other patrons watched the activity in the boxes.

Tugging on the strings of her reticule, she discreetly looked about, fearing she and Darknell had become more fascinating than the spectacle on stage. Kilby visibly sagged in relief as she realized those concerns were unfounded. No one was paying them the slightest attention, well, with the exception of the nosy matron in the next box. She leaned back in her chair. It was then her roaming gaze paused on a box one tier down and almost directly across from theirs.
Four elegantly dressed ladies were holding court in the box, while six to eight gentlemen vied for their exclusive regard. Kilby thought several of them seemed familiar to her, but she could not recall where she had met them.

“My lord, do you recognize the ladies yonder one tier below?”

Darknell peered down at the box Kilby had directed him to. “Yes, though I daresay it is best if you avoid them.”

Overhearing his comment, Lyssa inclined her posture closer to them. “Are they paphians?” she asked in hushed excitement. Her friend studied the audience in search of the intriguing ladies who had caught Kilby’s interest.

“Not exactly, Nunn.” Darknell seemed reluctant to pursue the conversation further. “To do so would credit them with more import than they deserve.”

“Who are they? They seem very popular,” Kilby said, observing one of the gentlemen offering his hand to the lady adorned in a bronze-colored dress. There was something vaguely familiar about the gentleman, she mused, as she studied him from the back. The distance and dim lighting made it nearly impossible to guess his identity.

“Ladies of the
ton,
” Darknell said, trying to sound bored. “On the right, there is Lady Silver. Next to her is Mrs. Du Toy, followed by Lady Talemon.” He paused and cleared his throat. Giving Kilby a sympathetic look, he said, “And the lady your new friend the Duke of Solitea is trying to coax into a more intimate setting is Lady Spryng. If I recall, the countess was once reputed to have been the duke’s mistress. It appears Solitea plans on rekindling their intimate connection.”

Kilby merely blinked at the sudden sound of applause and catcalls emanating from the pit. The ballet piece had ended and a lone woman with a guitar advanced to the center of the stage.

As if sensing her regard, Fayne turned and looked directly
into her startled gaze. The bastard had the impudence to smile. Lady Spryng caressed his arm and spoke to him. Kilby’s heart twisted painfully in her chest as she watched them disappear into the shadows.

“I have missed you, Carlisle,” Velouette Whall, Countess of Spryng, said throatily. Her lightly accented inflections were exotic, never failing to arouse Fayne.

As they entered the private parlor that connected to the theater box, she gestured at her personal maid, who was stitching silently in one of the chairs. “Isold, take your work outside the door where there is better light.”

Without looking at either one of them, the maid solemnly stuffed her sewing into a fabric bag and left the room.

Fayne trailed after the countess, who slipped off her Indian shawl. The dress she wore revealed the appreciative curves of breasts and shoulders. “I’ll have you know the light in those passageways is abysmal.”

Velouette faced him, her face sparkling with mirth. “I know, darling. I thought you preferred your entertainments without an audience.”

Fayne knew what the countess was anticipating. While he had knelt beside her in the box, the minx had whispered the naughty details in his ear. There was something about the theater that aroused Velouette. With one of his friends guarding the curtain and a servant outside the door, how many times during their brief affair had he taken the countess on the sofa she was reclining on now?

She beckoned him with one finger. “Share your thoughts with me.”

He sat down sideways on the cushion, facing her. “I was thinking about you,” he answered honestly. “And the things we did to each other on this sofa.”

Fayne was also thinking about Kilby. Seeing her with Lord Darknell had enraged him. The viscount plainly desired
Kilby. From their intimate pose, Fayne suspected the gentleman had grown weary of just being a close friend. Fuming and jealous, he had sought out a woman who was a balm to his tattered pride.

The countess purred in delight. “Oh, those were grand times, were they not?”

“The best,” he agreed, smiling slightly as she reached for his cravat. He stopped her hands before she could ruin the knot. “If we were so grand together, Velouette, why did we part ways?”

The countess shrugged. “It is the way of things, I suppose.” She moved forward, literally crawling into his lap. Gazing up at him with liquid brown eyes, she said, “What does it matter? You are here and we are together again.”

Fayne curled his arm around her waist. The countess was everything he had once desired in a mistress. She was an enthusiastic, exotic beauty who was not afraid of her body or the pleasure he could give her. He had never trembled in her arms, been too hasty or clumsy. Velouette saw the advantages of being his lover, the power and wealth behind the title.

Kilby had just wanted him.

After witnessing the tragic death of his father and his family’s assumptions about her questionable character, she had been reluctant to be connected with any Carlisle. His wealth and position in society had not swayed her into his bed. Once he had coaxed her there, he had lost all semblance of control. She had run from him, wary and unsatisfied.

“You would do anything for me, would you not?” he murmured, caressing her face.

“Anything you desire, Your Grace,” she vowed.

“I could bend you over this sofa, toss up your skirts, and fill you—”

“Yes, my darling—”

“Without tender words, no teasing touch—nothing gentle, just me inside you, pounding—”

“Yes. Please!” she begged.

Fayne cocked his head inquiringly to one side. “And if I use your body and think of another?”

He knew Kilby had seen him with Velouette. Feeling goaded by Darknell’s presence in her theater box, he had deliberately flaunted Velouette in front of her. Despite the distance, Fayne swore he felt her bewilderment and anguish. Kilby was too young, too innocent for sophisticated pretenses.

The countess pouted at his question, and then shrugged elegantly. “I can be whoever you desire, Carlisle.” Her nimble fingers reached for the buttons on his breeches. “Let me show you.”

“Fitchwolf!” Darknell seized Kilby by the arm, halting her abrupt departure from the private box. “Wait! Where are you going?”

He knew what had upset her. They had both watched Fayne and his new mistress leave the box. The duke had placed his hand on the Lady Spryng’s backside as they disappeared behind the curtain.

“I have seen enough theater for one evening, my lord,” Kilby said, clenching her fists against her abdomen. They were standing alone in the dim passageway. Lyssa had wisely given them their privacy. “All I want to do is go home.”

She refused to cry in front of Darknell. Alone in her bedchamber she would put a pillow over her head to muffle the pain and fury she was feeling. First, she had to get around her friend. “Release me. Please!”

“No.” He jerked her closer when Kilby tried to pull away. “Not until you tell me what sent you scrambling out of your seat . . . why you are shaking as if cold . . . what
has put tears that refuse to fall in your beautiful violet eyes.”

Kilby shook her head. “You already know. Do not deny that you wanted me to see him. I suppose you took great pleasure in pointing him out as he cavorted with his mistress.”

“Solitea?” Darknell sneered, his dark brown eyes glittering even in the shadows. “I warned you once that the man was like his father. Did you naïvely believe that he would behave honorably toward you? Especially since he considered you his dead father’s mistress?”

She closed her eyes, blocking out his cruelty. “No more,” she said, her voice cracking with suppressed emotion. “You have proven him a villain. I hope this pleases you. Now let me go.”

“Never!” he said fiercely. “If I do, you will never forgive me for showing you Solitea’s true nature.”

Before she could disagree, Darknell lowered his head and kissed her. Over the years, he had politely kissed her hand, and on her birthday last year, he had kissed her cheek. Warm and coaxing, his mouth moved against hers, seeking a response. Kilby was too stunned by the viscount’s unexpected boldness to do anything more than just stand there rigidly in his embrace. This was one of her closest friends, Teague Pethum, Viscount Darknell. He was an extremely handsome gentleman, and yet she had never contemplated exploring beyond the restraints of their friendship.

Darknell pulled back and studied her dazed expression. With the tip of her tongue, Kilby licked her lower lip, tasting the exotic flavor of the forbidden. How could she tell him that she had felt nothing?

“So Fitchwolf, now you know the truth,” he said, lightly caressing her shoulder.

“My lord, I was not aware . . .” she trailed off, and shrugged helplessly.

“It was better that way. You were too young when we first met.” He gave her a faint grin, reminding her of the carefree Darknell she had known at Ealkin. “I thought we had plenty of time for you to get to know me. To love me.”