“I intend to return this gown to you after tonight,” Temperance said, taking up the argument that had begun in the carriage ride here.
“And I’ve already told you I’ll simply have it burned if you do,” he replied smoothly, baring his teeth to a gentleman staring at her bosom. None of them would have ever noticed her in her usual drab black gowns. He was a fool for taking her out of her obscurity and bringing her into contact with these overdressed wolves. “I must confess my disappointment in your waste, Mrs. Dews.”
“You are an impossible man,” she hissed under her breath while smiling at a passing matron.
“I may be impossible, but I’ve gained you entry into the most fashionable ball of the season.”
There was a short silence as he guided her around a pack of elderly ladies in far too much rouge.
Then she said softly, “So you have and I thank you.”
He glanced swiftly sideways at her. Her cheeks were pink, but the color was not from any rouge pot. “You have no need to thank me. I’m merely fulfilling the bargain we made.”
She looked at him, her gilded eyes mysterious and far too wise. “You’ve done more than that for me. You’ve given me this beautiful gown, the hairpins, slippers, and stays. Why shouldn’t I thank you for all that?”
“Because I’ve brought you into this den of wolves.”
He felt more than saw her startled glance. “You make a ball sound overly dangerous, even for one as inexperienced as I.”
He snorted. “In many ways, this company is as dangerous as the people we’ve met on the streets of St. Giles.”
She looked at him skeptically.
“Over there”—he tilted his chin discreetly—“is a gentleman—I use the word in only its social sense—who has killed two men in duels in the last year. Beside him is a decorated general. He lost most of his men in a vain and stupid charge. It’s rumored that our hostess once beat a maid so badly she had to pay the woman over a thousand pounds to hush up the matter.”
He glanced down at Mrs. Dews, expecting shock, but she stared back, her expression open and frank and a little sad. “You’re merely proving that money and privilege do not go hand in hand with good sense or virtue. That, I think, I already knew.”
He bowed, feeling heat stealing up his cheeks. “Forgive me for boring you.”
“You never bore me as well you know, my lord,” she replied. “I only wish to point out that while money can’t buy those things, it can buy food for the stomach and clothes for the body.”
“So you think the people here are happier than those in St. Giles?”
“They should be.” She shrugged. “Being hungry or cold does terrible things for the temperament.”
“And yet,” he mused, “are the wealthy here any happier than a poor beggar on the street?”
She looked at him with disbelief.
He smiled down at her. “Truly. I think a man may find happiness—or discontent—no matter if he has a full belly or not.”
“If that is true, it is very sad,” she said. “They should be happier with all their needs fulfilled.”
He shook his head. “Man is a fickle, ungrateful creature, I fear.”
She smiled at that—finally! “I don’t think I can understand the people from your class.”
“Best not to,” he said lightly.
“You, for instance,” she murmured. “I’m not sure you have any more need of me in St. Giles, but you take me with you still. Why?”
He looked ahead of them, examining the crowd, watching the other men watching her. “Why do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you?”
She hesitated, and though he didn’t look at her, he was aware of her every movement. Of her restless fingers tracing the neckline of her bodice, of her pulse fluttering at her throat, of the moment she parted her lips again.
He leaned closer to her and repeated low, “Don’t you?”
She inhaled. “At Mrs. Whiteside’s house, you made me watch…”
“Yes?” They were in a damnably crowded room, the press of bodies almost suffocating. Yet at the same time he felt as if they existed in a closed glass sphere of their own.
“Why?” she asked urgently. “Why did you make me watch? Why me?”
“Because,” he murmured, “you draw me. Because you are kind but not soft. Because when you touch me, the pain is bittersweet. Because you cradle a desperate secret to your bosom, like a viper in your arms, and don’t let go of it even as it gnaws upon your very flesh. I want to pry that viper from your arms. To suckle upon your torn and bloody flesh. To take your pain within myself and make it mine.”
She trembled beside him; he could feel the quivers through the arm she kept on him. “I have no secret.”
He bent and whispered against her hair, “Sweet, darling liar.”
“I don’t—”
“Hush now.” A shiver ran up his spine, and he knew without even turning that his mother was approaching. They’d neared Sir Henry, who stood with two other gentlemen. Deftly he inserted Temperance into the circle, made a slight excuse, and turned just as Lady Caire tapped him rather hard on the arm.
“Lazarus.”
“Madam.” He inclined his head.
“I see you’re still escorting that woman.”
“I’m so glad your memory is intact,” Lazarus said smoothly. “So many begin to lose recollection as they age.”
There was a short, frigid silence, and for a moment he was sure he’d said enough to drive her away. He watched as Temperance leaned toward Sir Henry, and the man’s eyes dropped to her bosom.
Then Lady Caire drew a trembling breath. “What did I ever do to you to deserve this terrible sentiment you show toward me?”
He looked back at her, blinking in honest astonishment. “Why, nothing.”
She sighed. “Then why this constant hostility? Why this—”
Something snapped in him. He took a step toward her, using his height to tower over her smaller frame. “Don’t ask questions when you don’t truly want to know the answers, madam.”
Her blue eyes, identical to his own, widened. “Lazarus.”
“You did nothing,” he said quietly and hard. “When Father abandoned me at the wet nurse, you did nothing. When he returned five years later and tore me screaming from her arms, you did nothing. When he whipped me for crying for the only mother I knew, you did nothing. And when Annelise lay dying of a childish fever—”
He cut himself off, staring blindly toward Temperance. Sir Henry had his hand upon her arm, and there was a slight frown between her brows.
His mother laid her hand on his arm. “Don’t you think I mourn Annelise’s death as well?”
He turned back to her, swallowing, his mouth twisted in a sneer. “When Annelise lay dying, desperately ill from fever, and my goddamned father refused to send for a physician because a five-year-old girl should learn strength, what did you do?”
She merely stared at him, and he noticed for the first time the fine lines that radiated from her blue eyes.
“I’ll tell you what you did. Nothing.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sir Henry draw Temperance away from the other gentlemen. Toward the back of the ballroom. “Nothing is what you always do, madam. Don’t be surprised when I, in return, feel nothing for you.”
He took her hand off his sleeve and threw it away from himself.
Lazarus turned swiftly, but Temperance and Sir Henry had vanished. Goddamn it! He began weaving through the ballroom, making for the far corner where he’d last seen her. He should never have left her alone with the man. Should never have let himself be distracted. Someone caught his arm as he passed, but he shook off the hand and heard an exclamation of surprised displeasure; then he was at the corner where he’d last seen her. He shoved aside a pyramid of dying flowers, expecting to find a passage or nook for lovers. But there was nothing. Only the blank wall behind the flowers.
Lazarus turned in a circle, searching the ballroom for a flash of turquoise, the proud tilt of her head. But he saw only the idiot faces of the cream of London society.
Temperance had disappeared.
* * *
TEMPERANCE KNEW ALMOST at once that she’d made an unfortunate mistake in judging Sir Henry’s character. As he led her into a darkened room, her pulse beat with alarm, but hope died hard. If she was mistaken, if he really was interested in the home, she’d be a fool to insult him. On the other hand, if his interest wasn’t in the home at all, she might be in very grave danger indeed.
Which was why she made sure to put a large armchair between herself and Sir Henry as they entered the room.
“I sympathize with Caire your need for privacy, sir,” she said as sweetly as possible, “but might we want to find a better-lit room at least?”
“Can never be too sure, my dear,” Sir Henry replied, not reassuring Temperance at all. “I dislike to discuss my business where others might overhear.”
He closed the door behind him, making the room quite black.
Temperance inhaled. “Yes, well, as to that. The Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children has only three staff at the moment: myself, my brother, Mr. Winter Makepeace, and our maid, Nell Jones.”
“Yes?” Sir Henry said, his voice sounding nearer.
Temperance thought it prudent to abandon her armchair and shift a bit to her left and closer to the door. “Yes. But if we had sufficient funds, we would be able to hire more staff and thus help more children.”
“You’ve fled, my little mouse,” Sir Henry singsonged in a nauseating voice.
“Sir Henry, are you at all interested in my foundling home?” Temperance asked in exasperation.
“Of course I am,” he replied, much too close.
She made a startled movement to her right, and male arms immediately closed about her. Horrid wet lips slid across her cheek. “The home will be a perfect cover for meeting you.”
And then his lips were mashing hers against her teeth.
Sadly, the first thing Temperance felt at this assault was disappointment rather than outrage. She’d spent the time since the musicale imagining how the home could benefit from Sir Henry’s patronage. Now she’d have to start the whole bloody process of finding a patron over again. In disgust, she shoved against his chest, but naturally he didn’t give an inch. Instead he attempted to insert his thick tongue into her mouth, a truly revolting prospect.
Temperance had been disciplining males for a half score of years now. True, the males she dealt with were usually much shorter and less hairy than Sir Henry, but the principle, surely, was much the same.
She reached up, took a firm hold of his left ear, and twisted hard.
Sir Henry screamed like a little girl.
At the same time, the door to the room crashed open. Someone moving low and fast rushed in, shoving Temperance aside and slamming into Sir Henry. The two men went down. Temperance squinted in the dark. She heard the thud of fists, then Sir Henry’s choked-off scream.
There was a pause.
Caire took her arm and escorted her roughly out the door. Temperance blinked as he began hauling her back down the passage. As they neared the ballroom, the sound of the crowd inside grew.
She attempted to withdraw her arm from his grasp. “Caire.”
“What the hell were you doing going to a dark room with that ass? Have you no sense?”
She glanced at him. There was a reddened spot on his jaw, and he looked livid. “Your hair has come undone.”
He stopped suddenly, pushing her up against the wall of the passage. “Never go anywhere with a man not of your family.”
She arched her brows up at him. “What about you?”
