Blinking, Lady Rosamund folded her arms across her not-quite-generous-enough chest. “I am not going to dance with you.”
Yes, you are. The force of that thought unsettled him a little, but for the moment he would humor himself. He certainly had nothing better to do. “If a marriage is valued at ten thousand, surely I might have a waltz for three hundred.”
Her fingers clenched into very determined-looking fists. “So you know about the debt.”
He nodded. “If I’d known the prize, I might have wagered a larger sum against your brother.”
“I am not for sale.”
Clearly he could argue with that, but from the abrupt horror in her grass green eyes, she’d realized that at the same moment she’d spoken. Horror. He’d been forced into things he didn’t relish by the lure of funds—or of having them cut off—but the blunt had been the reward for compliance. What was her reward? Marriage to Cosgrove?
As she started to turn her back on him, he touched her shoulder. Lightly. Even through the green silk of her gown, his fingers felt scalded, and he withdrew them swiftly.
“A trade, then,” he continued, as she faced him again. He flexed his fingers, resisting the urge to shake them.
“I have no idea what you’re talk—”
“Once the rest of Mayfair hears you’re to marry Kingston Gore, very few gentlemen will be willing to risk stepping onto the floor with you. If you dance with me tonight, though, I will dance with you later, when no one else will. And I’ll forgive your brother’s debt.”
He wanted to touch her again, to see whether that odd heat would repeat itself, but at the same time the idea worried him. He enjoyed sex, but one woman served as well as another. Touching a female’s arm did not scorch him, and certainly not through cloth.
Green eyes studied his face in that direct, disconcerting way he’d already noticed that she had. “You’ll forgive James’s debt.”
“Yes.”
“And you will not wager with him again.”
“That will take two dances.”
Rosamund glanced in the direction of her parents, who’d been foolish enough to wander halfway across the room without her. Of course they’d been foolish enough to let their son bury them in debt, and to send their daughter off as a sacrifice, so their lack of attention wasn’t unexpected. “I doubt you’ll hear a waltz played tonight.”
He grimaced. Damned powder-wigged drudges. “A quadrille, then, for tonight. And the promise of a waltz at the next soiree you attend.”
“Very well,” she said slowly.
His mouth curved again. “Good.” Bram stuck out his hand. “Let’s shake on our agreement, shall we?”
Her mouth opened again, and he abruptly wanted to kiss her. Another oddity, because he rarely kissed. Whatever the devil was wrong with him, it seemed to involve her. When she touched her palm to his and curled her fingers around his, warmth shot through his hand down his spine, and slammed into his groin. It took more self-restraint than he generally showed to keep from pulling her into his arms.
Lady Rosamund made a small sound and swiftly withdrew her hand, flexing her fingers as she did so. For God’s sake, she’d felt it too. He looked at her, for once not certain what to say.
An arm draped across his shoulder. “Ah, Bramwell, I see you’ve met my intended,” King drawled, gazing at Rosamund.
“Yes. I was just congratulating her,” he heard himself say, noting that King’s almost-betrothed had lost several shades of color. “And I’ve gotten myself a quadrille,” he continued, “because apparently waltzing is forbidden here.”
“That is a shame,” Cosgrove said. “Where but a waltz or a marriage bed can a man and a woman be so intimate?” The marquis grinned. “Other than the odd brothel or broom closet or closed carriage or…more discriminating soiree, that is?”
Rosamund’s color returned in a rush. “Excuse me, my lords,” she said, bobbing a stiff curtsy. “I think I hear my mother calling me.”
Bram’s gaze lowered to the curve of her hips as she hurried away from them. He’d heard Cosgrove give a near duplicate of that speech before, but the female in that instance had been neither shocked nor virginal.
“Ah, I suppose I’ll have to chase after her now.” King sighed. “I imagine her mother and sister are equally as frigid.”
“Then why bother?” Bram asked, managing just the right degree of cynical amusement. For once the tone sounded odd on his lips, because surprisingly he didn’t feel much amused at all.
“‘Why bother?’” King repeated. “Because it will be very, very amusing. I daresay in six months you won’t even recognize proper, clenched Lady Rose Davies.” He tightened his grip on Bram’s shoulder. “And her damned father forced a month’s delay on me. Apparently he wants it to look like a love match. I think that was Levonzy’s doing, but it does make the game more interesting, I suppose. So keep the agreement to yourself, will you?”
More interesting, indeed. “I’ll be silent as the grave.”
“Good.” Blue eyes slanted in Rosamund’s direction. “Look at her, Bramwell. She thinks she can stand up to me. It puts me all aflutter.”
Cosgrove released his grip to stroll over to where Rosamund stood beside her mother and tried to look interested in whatever inane conversation the woman was having with her husband. Bram gestured for a glass of whiskey. Uncomfortable with the tight sensation in his chest, he took a long swallow and turned his back on them in favor of the equally crowded corridor.
He’d seen the Marquis of Cosgrove dig his claws into people before. King probably had urns full of dusty, ill-used souls lining the mantel of Gore House. Some had been eager to learn what they thought would be the ways of a popular bounder. Others had been snatched unawares simply because they took King’s fancy for some reason or other. Bram conceded that he was more than likely the only one of Cosgrove’s former fledglings who had known precisely what he was walking into and had welcomed every black, twisted moment of his so-called education.
This time Cosgrove’s game bothered him. Rosamund Davies wanted nothing to do with the marquis, and she was being forced into it against her will. Neither did she seem to want anything to do with him, Bram reflected, but he could hardly blame her for that. He knew full well that he was as black as pitch inside and out. And Lady Rosamund was…good.
Bram downed the whiskey and set the glass aside. Yes, she was good, and he was definitely not good, and he was going to dance a bloody quadrille with her because he’d given his word.
“I don’t think we need to wait to make the announcement,” Lord Cosgrove said in a low voice.
Ostensibly he was speaking to her father, but Rose hadn’t been able to avoid noticing that his light blue gaze remained on her the entire time. It made her want a bath.
“You agreed to the delay, Cosgrove. It will better serve all of our reputations.”
The marquis nodded. “I suppose so. Everyone will be convinced that Rose and I have made a love match, and no one need know how close your family came to ruination and the poorhouse. Very clever of you, Abernathy.”
Her father didn’t like that, Rose could see, but since it was true there wasn’t much he could say about it. It might have been satisfying to see him put in his place, except that she remained the one paying the highest price in all of this.
Bram Johns had turned her into a bargaining piece as well, but at least he’d bargained with her. And she’d had the choice of agreeing to his terms or not. She hadn’t expected that from someone of his reputation, but perhaps she simply wasn’t familiar yet with all the machinations of blackguards. At the same time, if she hadn’t overheard his amiable conversation with proper ladies who apparently liked him, she didn’t think she would be dancing a quadrille with him later.
She glanced at Cosgrove and then away again. Apparently she was going to become a great deal more familiar with at least this blackguard—unless she could conjure a way to aid her family’s predicament that didn’t include marriag
e. Failing that, she would be forced into his life. Hm. It therefore seemed wise to learn about it—especially if she meant to be able to use any of her knowledge to keep Cosgrove away from James. If no one else could do it, she would have to do it herself. There was also the matter of self-preservation, though she had no idea yet how she would protect herself.
The first quadrille of the evening was announced, and her heart shuddered a little in her chest. Lord Bramwell hadn’t said which quadrille he wanted, but with Cosgrove standing so close to her, no one else had approached her for a place on her dance card—not that she’d ever seen it filled past halfway under the best of circumstances. Her evening tonight seemed to be wide open. Bramwell Johns had been very correct about that. It seemed her days of dancing for the joy of it had vanished before she’d had a chance to bid them goodbye.
“Excuse me,” the low voice she’d already come to recognize drawled from behind her, “but I believe this is our dance, Lady Rosamund.”
As she turned to face him, she caught the quick look that flashed from Cosgrove to Lord Bramwell. That was curious. She knew them to be fast friends, and yet the look in the marquis’s eyes hadn’t been friendly at all. Trying to ignore the unhappy throat-clearing from her mother, as if associating with Cosgrove was better in any way than accepting a dance with Johns, she held out her hand.
Awareness crept up her fingers as he clasped them. Wordlessly he led her to a space on the dance floor and released her to take a step back into the long line of gentlemen. The music began, her side curtsied while his bowed, and they turned into the dance.
“Answer a question for me, Lord Bramwell,” she began after a moment, as the dance brought them together.
“Perhaps,” he returned, regarding her again with that unreadable gaze of his.
“Are you and Lord Cosgrove not allies?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped. “We generally end on the same side of opinions. Why do you ask?”
“I’m attempting to discover what your part in all of this might be. And don’t try to tell me that our meeting this morning was a coincidence. You’ve known James for nearly a month, yet I only make your acquaintance on the morning that Cosgrove deigns to settle my brother’s debt? You came specifically to see me.”
“You have me deciphered, then.”
“And yet, I don’t think a groom-to-be’s friend would say to a wife-to-be what you said to me.”
They parted, turning with other partners before he made his way back to her side. “I’m not much for formality of acquaintance,” he drawled, keeping his voice pitched low.
Rose drew a breath. “So you think we should become…lovers.”
His grip on her fingers tightened briefly. “Oh, I definitely think that.”
Goodness. “What would your friend think about that?” she asked when she could steady her voice again.
“Lady Rosamund, if you’re attempting to play one of us against the other, I would recommend another course of action. Neither of us is terribly particular, and though for some reason I seem to be feeling…nice this evening, it’s not an emotion you should wager on where I’m concerned.”
“You were very pleasant to those ladies, earlier.”
“Alyse and Beth Bromley? They are my friends. I don’t touch my friends.” He gazed at her. “You are not my friend.”
For the first time since she’d set eyes on him tonight, a stir of uneasiness went through her. This man she danced with and exchanged words with had ruined people before. He’d ruined women with scandal, and men with money. He’d fought in the war on the Peninsula, and the rumors were that he’d killed both before and after that expedition. Drinking, wagering, women—according to James, Lord Bramwell hadn’t set foot inside a church in ten years for fear that he would be struck dead beneath the entryway.
“Why are you here then, sir?”
The dance ended, and he stopped in front of her, ignoring the applause of the guests around them. He gazed at her levelly, a black-haired, black-clothed demon of impeccable proportion and symmetry. A handsome devil, literally.
“I’ve decided to do you a favor,” he said finally, the lazy drawl just touching his voice and stirring down her spine in response.
She folded her hands in front of her. “And what favor is that, pray tell?”
“Kingston Gore will eat you alive,” he returned even more quietly, taking a slow step closer among the milling guests. “Beginning with your honor, and ending with your soul.”
“I—”
“I know this, because I fed him mine a very long time ago.” Lord Bramwell took her hand, lifting it in his to examine it thoughtfully before he raised her knuckles to his sensuous lips. She wanted to close her eyes at the sensation of his warm mouth touching her skin. Good heavens.
“Then you’ve warned me,” she said, more stiffly than she meant to, and snatched her hand away. “Thank you. My family requires me to make a union with Lord Cosgrove, and so I will do so. I daresay I can manage him as well as he manages me.”
He shook his head, one black strand of hair falling across his eyes. “Not without my help, you won’t.” Lord Bramwell took her hand again, this time placing it more properly over his sleeve. “I know him better than anyone other than Satan himself,” he continued, strolling with her in the direction of her parents and Lord Cosgrove, who continued to gaze at her with those angelic blue eyes.
“What could you possibly do to help me?”
“Make off with you.”
“Don’t jest.”
“I find myself surprised, but I seem to be utterly serious.”
“No!” Rose tried to regain some composure before she suffered an apoplexy in the middle of Great Aunt Clacton’s ballroom. “For heaven’s sake. Keeping me hidden away in some…cellar wouldn’t help my family.”
“But they’re selling you to Cosgrove.”
She looked up into his eyes. They were very different people, she realized, and while he obviously had no grasp of right from wrong, or loyalty and honor, she did. “I don’t like my family,” she whispered as they drew near, “but they are my family. They depend on me. This is how I am required to render my assistance.” As for her private feelings about that circumstance, she wasn’t about to enlighten him.
Slowly he slipped his arm from hers, stopping as she continued to advance. “Then allow me to teach you how to play the game,” he murmured from behind her.
His voice echoed into her chest. Heaven knew she did need some help. The…horrified dismay she felt when she looked again at the Marquis of Cosgrove made that clear enough. Marriage. The rest of her life, entwined with his. She was in well over her head. And to her surprise, she didn’t feel that same horror when she looked at his friend.
She supposed beggars, as the saying went, couldn’t be choosers. Without turning around, Rosamund nodded her head. She would have to learn whatever Bram Johns could teach her about the devils inhabiting London. And soon.
Chapter 4
Bram rose early the next morning. It was early for him, anyway. Before noon, and by several damned hours. “Mostin,” he said, as he sat at his dressing table to shave, “how long have you been in my employ?”
The valet finished opening the heavy curtains that covered every window of the large bedchamber. “Seven years, my lord.”
“And in all of that time, have you ever known me to do anything selfless?”
“Selfless, my lord?”
“Don’t play coy, Mostin. You know perfectly well what I mean. An action without any gain, monetary or otherwise, for me. And be honest.”
“Honest, my lord?”
Bram slanted a look at the servant. “Honest.”
“Then yes, my lord. I have seen you behave in a selfless manner.”
“You have not.” Damn it all, that was not what he wanted to hear this morning. Not after the oddness of last night. “When?”
The valet cleared his throat. “I have several times seen you leaving for luncheon with Lord Quenc
e, even to the point of canceling engagements with…young ladies to do so.”
“Oh, that. Allow me to clarify. I refer to selfless actions that do not involve the families of Phin Bromley or Sullivan Waring.”
“Ah. Then no, my lord. I have never known you to perform a single selfless act.”
“Precisely.”
“Though you did spend three years on the Continent, where I know very little of your activities.”
“That was war. One is never selfless in war.”
“As you say then, my lord.”
The question became, then, what did he hope to gain from his offer to enlighten Lady Rosamund Davies as to the abyss that was Kingston Gore’s soul? And what had prompted her to accept his offer? Aside from the fact that his own kettle was nearly as black as Cosgrove’s, all he was likely to accomplish was to make his friend into an enemy. His suggestion hadn’t been selfless, clearly; he found Rosamund interesting—even intriguing and compelling—and that baffled him. He’d known duchesses and opera singers and courtesans and even a female mercenary working against the French in Spain. A round-hipped, small-chested, green-eyed young woman with no worldly experience and a penchant for reading histories should barely have caught his eye, much less his attention.
Was that it, then? He needed to spend another hour or so chatting with her, telling her to stay away from absinthe and laudanum—and Cosgrove when he imbibed them—and take a bedchamber with a locking door as far away from Cosgrove’s as she could manage. Then he could go back to burgling the homes of his father’s friends and being as much of an annoyance as possible again.
“Will there be anything else, my lord?” Mostin asked as he put the last touches on Bram’s cravat.
“Hm? No. Yes. Have Graham saddle Titan.”
The valet nodded. “I shall inform him, my lord.”
Bram dropped his pocket watch, money, a cigar, a handkerchief, and several calling cards into various pockets, then headed downstairs. Lowry House where he lived had been in the Johns family for three generations now. He’d moved into the house on Stratton Street as soon as he’d returned from Oxford, and his father had been only too happy to have him and his circle of acquaintances gone from the patriarchal abode of Johns House.
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