One Good Earl Deserves a Lover

Damn Mr. Cross and his idiot wager.

Damn herself for taking it.

Penelope was still speaking, voice all soft and saccharine. “And if you’re lucky, you shall discover . . .” She sighed. “Well, you shall enjoy it quite a bit, I hope.” She shook her head, coming out of her dream, and laughed again. “Stop thinking about bulls.”

Pippa scowled. “How was I to know?”

“You’ve a library full of anatomy texts!” Penny whispered.

“Well, I question the scale of the illustrations in several of those texts!” Pippa whispered back.

Penny started to say something and thought better of it, changing tack. “Conversations with you always take the strangest turns. Dangerous ones. We should go downstairs.”

Sisters were useless. Pippa would be better off talking to one of the prostitutes.

The prostitutes.

She adjusted her spectacles. “Back to the ladies, Penny. Are they prostitutes?”

Penny sighed and looked to the ceiling. “Not in so many words.”

“It is only one word,” Pippa pointed out.

“Well, suffice to say, they come with the gentlemen, but they are certainly not ladies.”

Fascinating.

Pippa wondered if Mr. Cross associated with the ladies in question. She wondered if they lay with him on that strange, small pallet in his cluttered, curious office. At the thought, something flared heavy and full in her chest. She considered the feeling, not quite nausea, not quite breathlessness.

Not quite pleasant.

Before she could assess the sensation further, Penelope continued. “At any rate, no matter what is happening at the club this evening, Bourne is decidedly not consorting with prostitutes.”

Pippa couldn’t imagine her brother-in-law doing anything of the sort. Indeed, she couldn’t imagine her brother-in-law doing much but dote on his wife these days. Theirs was a curious relationship—one of the rare marriages built on something more than a sound match.

In fact, most rational people would agree that there was absolutely nothing about Penelope and Bourne that would make for a sound match.

And somehow, they’d made just that.

Another curiosity.

Some might call it love, no doubt. And perhaps it was, but Pippa had never given much credence to the sentiment—with so few love matches in society, they were rather like mythological figures. Minotaurs. Or unicorns. Or Pegasuses.

Pegasii?

Neither, presumably, as there was only one Pegasus, but, as with love matches, one never knew.

“Pippa?” Penelope prodded.

Pippa snapped back to the conversation. What had they been discussing? Bourne. “Well, I don’t know why he would come,” Pippa pointed out. “No one expects him to stand on ceremony for society.”

“I expect him to do so,” Penelope said simply, as if that were all that mattered.

And apparently, it was. “Really, Penny. Leave the poor man alone.”

“Poor man,” Penny scoffed. “Bourne gets everything he wants, whenever he wants it.”

“It’s not as though he doesn’t pay a price,” Pippa retorted. “He must love you fiercely if he is coming. If I could avoid tonight, I would.”

“You are doing an excellent job of it as it is, and you cannot avoid tonight.”

Penny was right, of course. Half of London was below, and at least one of them was waiting for her to show her face.

Her future husband.

It was not difficult to find him among the throngs of people. Even dressed in the same handsome black frock coat and trousers that the rest of the peerage preferred, the Earl of Castleton seemed to stand out, something about him less graceful than a normal aristocrat.

He was at one side of the ballroom, leaning low as his mother whispered in his ear. Pippa had never noticed it before, but the ear in question also stood out at a rather unfortunate angle.

“You could still beg off,” Penelope said quietly. “No one would blame you.”

“The ball?”

“The marriage.”

Pippa did not reply. She could. She could say any number of things ranging from amusing to acerbic, and Penny would never judge her for them. Indeed, it would very likely make her sister happy to hear that Pippa had an opinion one way or another about her betrothed.

But Pippa had committed herself to the earl, and she would not be disloyal. He did not deserve it. He was a nice man, with a kind heart. And that was more than could be said about most.

Dishonesty by omission remains dishonest.

The words echoed through her, a memory of two days earlier, of the man who had questioned her commitment to truth.

The world is full of liars. Liars and cheats.

It wasn’t true, of course. Pippa wasn’t a liar. Pippa didn’t cheat.

Trotula sighed and leaned against her mistress’s thigh. Pippa idly stroked the dog’s ears. “I made a promise.”

“I know you did, Pippa. But sometimes promises . . .” Penelope trailed off.

Pippa watched Castleton for a long moment. “I dislike balls.”

“I know.”

“And ballrooms.”

“Yes.”

“He’s kind, Penny. And he asked.”

Penelope’s gaze turned soft. “It’s fine for you to wish for more than that, you know.”

She didn’t. Did she?

Pippa fidgeted inside her tightly laced corset. “And ball gowns.”

Penelope allowed the change in topic. “It is a nice gown, nonetheless.”

Pippa’s gown—selected with near-fanatical excitement by Lady Needham—was a beautiful pale green gauze over white satin. Cut low and off the shoulder, the gown followed her shape through the bodice and waist before flaring into lush, full skirts that rustled when she moved. On anyone else, it would look lovely.