Except he didn’t. Instead, she felt a little tug at her coif, and his hand came away, a snowy white egret feather in his grasp. He ran it between his fingers. “I think you have more than you can imagine.”

Somehow, the cold March night became hot as the sun. “It sounds as though you are offering me an alliance.”

“Perhaps I am,” he said.

She narrowed her gaze. “Why?”

“Guilt, probably.”

She laughed. “I cannot imagine that is it.”

“Perhaps not.” He reached for her hand and she stretched her arm out to him as though she were a puppet on strings. As though she did not have control over herself. “Why worry about the reason?”

The feather painted its way over the soft skin above her glove and below her sleeve, at the inside her elbow. She caught her breath at the delicate, wonderful touch. Duncan West was a dangerous man.

She snatched her hand back. “Why trust you when you’ve just admitted you’re in this to sell newspapers?”

That handsome mouth curved in wicked temptation. “Wouldn’t you rather know precisely with whom you are dealing?”

She smiled at that. “Surely this is the best fortune a girl on a dark balcony has ever had.”

“Fortune has nothing to do with it.” He paused, then added, “There’s little love lost between me and Society.”

“They adore you,” she said.

“They adore the way I keep them entertained.”

There was a long moment as Georgiana considered his offer. “And me?”

That smile flashed again, sending a thread of excitement pooling in her stomach. “The entertainment in question.”

“And how do I benefit?”

“The husband you wish. The father you desire for your daughter.”

“You will tell them I am reformed.”

“I’ve seen no evidence that you are not.”

“You saw me goad a girl into insulting me. You saw me threaten her family. Force her friends to desert her.” She looked into the darkness. “I am not certain what I have is desirable.”

His lips curved in a knowing smile. “I saw you protect yourself. Your child. I saw a lioness.”

She did not miss the fact that he’d been a lion mere minutes earlier. “Every tale has two tellers.”

He opened his coat and inserted the feather in the inside pocket, before buttoning the coat once more. She could no longer see the plume, but she felt it there nonetheless, trapped against his warmth, against the place where his heart beat in strong, sure rhythm. Trapped against him.

He was a very dangerous man.

He grinned, all wolf, this powerful man who owned London’s most-read papers. The man who could raise or ruin with the ink of his printing press. The man she needed to believe her lies. To perpetuate them.

“There you are wrong,” he said, the words threading through her like sin. “Every tale worth telling has only one teller.”

“And who is that?”

“Me.”

Chapter 3

He should not have flirted with the girl.

West stood on the edge of the Worthington ballroom, watching Lady Georgiana dance across the room on the arm of the Marquess of Ralston. The man was rarely seen in the company of any but his wife, but there was no doubt that the Duke of Leighton had called in all of his chips – including his brother-in-law – that evening, in the hopes that the combined wealth and power of the Ralston and Leighton clans would blind Society into forgetting the lady’s past.

It wasn’t working.

She was all anyone in the room talked about, and it was neither her powerful champions nor her beauty that fueled the whispers.

And she was beautiful, all length and grace, smooth skin and silken hair, and a mouth – Christ. She had a mouth made for sin. It was no wonder she’d been ruined at such a young age. He imagined she’d had every boy for twenty miles salivating over her.

Idly, he wondered if she’d cared for the man who had taken advantage of her, and found he did not like the idea that she had. He had little patience for boys who could not keep their hands to themselves, and the idea of Lady Georgiana on the receiving end of those hands grated more than usual. Perhaps it was the child. No child deserved to be born into scandal.

He knew that better than most.

Or perhaps it was Georgiana, who looked every inch the perfect, pristine aristocrat, born and bred into this world that should be at her feet, and instead waited to eat her alive.

The orchestra stopped, and Georgiana had only a few brief seconds before she was in the arms of Viscount Langley – an excellent choice for husband.

West watched them with the eye of a newspaperman, considering their match from all angles. Langley was a big fish, no doubt – he’d recently assumed a venerable title that came complete with several massive estates, but he suffered from the great bane of the aristocratic existence – inheritances could be prohibitively expensive. Each of his properties had fallen into disrepair, and it was his responsibility to restore them.

A dowry the size of the one attached to Lady Georgiana would restore the earldom to its former glory, and leave him with enough money to double its size.

West did not know why the idea was so unsettling and unpleasant for him. She was neither the first nor would she be the last to buy a husband.

Nor to be sold to one.

For the price of a long-standing, irrelevant title. One valued only for its place in the hierarchy. Yes, it might buy her daughter silent judgment instead of vocal insult. And yes, it might buy that same young woman marriage to a respectable gentleman. Not titled, but respectable. Possibly landed.