One Good Earl Deserves a Lover

What in hell? Of course she was waiting for him.

Except she wasn’t. She stood, thrust her plate—along with her half-eaten sandwich—into his hands and directed her full attention to Sally. “I’m waiting for you.”

Sally cut him a quick look, clearly unsure of how to proceed.

Pippa did not seem to notice that she’d thrown them all off, instead stepping forward and extending her hand in greeting. “I am Lady Philippa Marbury.”

Goddammit.

He would have given half his fortune to take back the instant when Pippa told Sally her name. One never knew when the madam might rethink her allegiance, and knowledge made for heady power.

For now, however, Sally pushed her surprise away and took Pippa’s hand, dipping into a quick curtsy. “Sally Tasser.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Miss Tasser,” Pippa said, as though she were meeting a new debutante at tea rather than one of London’s most accomplished whores in a gaming hell. “I wonder if you have a few moments to answer some questions?”

Sally looked supremely entertained. “I believe I do have some time, my lady.”

Pippa shook her head. “Oh, no. There’s no need to stand on ceremony. You must call me Pippa.”

Over his decaying corpse.

“There is absolutely every reason to stand on ceremony,” he stepped in, turning to Sally. “You will under no circumstances call the lady anything but just that. Lady.”

Pippa’s brows snapped together. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Cross, but in this conversation, you are superfluous.”

He gave her his most frightening stare. “I assure you, I am anything but that.”

“Am I right in understanding that you have neither the time nor the inclination to speak to me at this particular moment?”

She had backed him into a corner. “Yes.”

She smiled. “There it is, then. As I find myself with both, I believe I shall begin my research now. Without you.” She turned her back on him. “Now, Miss Tasser. Am I right in my estimation that you are, indeed, a prostitute?”

The word slipped from her lips as though she said it a dozen times a day. “Dear God.” He shot Sally a look. “Do not answer.”

“Whyever not?” Pippa smiled at Sally. “There’s no shame in it.”

Even Sally’s brows rose at that.

Surely this was not happening.

Pippa pressed on. “There isn’t. In fact, I’ve done the research, and the word is in the Bible. Leviticus. And, honestly, if something is in a holy text, I think it’s more than reasonable for one to repeat it in polite company.”

“I’m not exactly polite company,” Sally pointed out, brilliantly, Cross thought.

Pippa smiled. “Never mind that . . . you’re the perfect company for my purposes. Now, I can only assume that your career is just what I imagine, as you are very beautiful and seem to know precisely how to look at a man and make it seem as though you are very much in love with him. You fairly smolder.”

Cross had to stop this. Now. “And how do you know that she is not simply in love with me?”

That was not the way he’d intended to stop it. At all. Dammit.

She looked over her shoulder at him, then back at Sally. “Are you in love with him?”

Sally turned her very best smolder on Pippa, who chuckled, and said, “I didn’t think so. That’s the one. It’s very good.”

Sally met his gaze over Pippa’s shoulder, laughter in her eyes. “Thank you, my lady.”

Well. At least she’d used the honorific.

“May I speak plainly?” Pippa asked, as though she had not been speaking plainly for the last four days. For her entire life.

“Please,” Sally said.

The moment was getting away from him. Something had to be done.

“No,” he interrupted, inserting himself between the two women. “No one is speaking plainly. Certainly not to Sally.”

“I’m happy to speak to the lady, Cross,” Sally said, and he did not miss the dry humor in her tone.

“I’ve no doubt of that,” he said. “And yet, you won’t. As you have somewhere to be. Right now.”

“Nonsense,” Pippa protested, edging him out of the way with a firm elbow at his side. Actually, physically moving him. “Miss Tasser has already said she has time for me.” She blinked up at him from behind thick lenses. “You are dismissed, Mr. Cross.”

Sally barked her laughter.

Pippa returned her attention to the prostitute, taking the woman’s arm and walking her away from Cross, toward the main entrance of the club. She was going to exit the casino, onto St. James’s in the middle of the day, on the arm of a prostitute. “I wonder if you might be willing to teach me how you do it.”

“It?” He hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Pippa ignored him, but answered the question. “To smolder. You see, I am to be married in eleven days. Slightly less than that now, and I need to—”

“Catch your husband?” Sally asked.

Pippa nodded. “In a sense. I also require your obvious knowledge in other matters of . . . marriage.”

“What kind of matters?”

“Those relating to procreation. I find that what I thought I knew about the mechanics of the act are—well, unlikely.”

“Unlikely, how?”

“To be honest, I thought it was similar to animal husbandry.”

Sally’s tone turned dry. “Sometimes, my lady, I’m afraid it isn’t that different.”