“There is a trifling detail that you have overlooked,” Josie said.

“And what may that be?” Annabel asked.

“It takes two to create a scandal, and since no man will even dance with me, I think the Essex family is likely to be free from the taint of a contrived marriage.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“I should amend that: yet another contrived marriage,” Josie said. And then ducked when Imogen threw a grape at her.

2

From The Earl of Hellgate,

Chapter the First

Perhaps others who embark on a life marked by Sins of the Flesh realize in their infancy that they are born to a life of notorious liaisons. I, Dear Reader, was raised in blissful ignorance of my future infamy.In fact, it wasn’t until the tender years of my youth, when I in all my innocence visited the Court of St. James—oh, I loathe to set down the words—that I met a duchess. The episode of the green stockings is known to some, but I can tell you now that…

St. Paul’s Cathedral

London

I t was a serious wedding, plump with pomp and circumstance. Imogen made her way up the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral to be greeted by no less than the Bishop of London. She was exquisitely gowned in cloth of gold; the groom committed the forgivable solecism of taking her hands during the ceremony, and smiling down at her in such a way that tears came to the eyes of many an unhappily married soul. And even some of the happily married ones.

Garret Langham, the Earl of Mayne, watched his closest friend, Raphael Jourdain, Duke of Holbrook, stand at the altar with a sense of deep satisfaction. The day was when he might have scoffed at a man with Rafe’s look of abject adoration. Rafe resembled nothing so much as a lovesick cow, or rather bull. Which was just fine, because Mayne felt the same way. Before long, it would be he standing before the bishop, swearing to love and to cherish, as Rafe was doing.His heart quickened at the thought, and he could almost feel his own features taking on a look of imbecilic adoration. After all, Sylvie was his. He’d never understood that before; never guessed how powerful it was to know that the woman you most love in the world has agreed to be yours.

He glanced at his left. She was standing beside him. Sylvie de la Broderie. Even her name sent a shiver of delight up his spine. She was dressed, as always, with exquisite correctness. Her gown was a rosy pale pink that somehow didn’t swear with her pale red-gold hair. He could just glimpse her elegant retroussé nose. Little curls fell down her neck from under her jaunty, unmistakably French bonnet, adorned with a flutter of tiny ribbons. Like her bonnet, Sylvie was unmistakably French.

Mayne’s mother was French, and he loved nothing more than speaking the language. It all felt right: he had finally, at long last, found a woman whom he adored, and she was French.

“It’s providence,” Rafe had said lazily the night before. They were toasting his wedding with water, since Rafe didn’t drink.

“And my sister adores her,” Mayne had said, unable to stop categorizing Sylvie’s perfections.

“Good old Grissie. You must find your sister a husband now that you’re contemplating domestic bliss. You’re so unnaturally cheerful that I can hardly stand your presence.”

“Well, you won’t have to bear me for long,” Mayne had retorted. “Wedding trip, eh? There’s a newfangled notion.”

“Are you saying that you won’t wish to take your Sylvie to a remote location, preferably on the slowest boat available?”

An image flashed into Mayne’s mind, of himself peeling back Sylvie’s long gloves, revealing a sweet delicate wrist and…

Rafe had laughed at his silence.

Mayne knew that he was dangerously smitten. All he had to do was glance down at his fiancée’s gloved fingers to feel a stirring in his groin. The very thought of peeling off those gloves made him more fraught with passion than he’d been in years. Likely, he thought with a flash of amused contempt for himself, since bedding his fifth or sixth matron.

Yet Sylvie was different from all those women he had bedded, from the first to the thirtieth. She was even different from the only other woman he’d truly loved, the one matron who had not given in to his skilled seductions, Helene, the Countess Godwin. The countess was seated a few rows behind him. They rarely spoke to each other, and her happiness with her husband shone from her eyes. Mayne’s bitter disappointment (though he was ashamed to admit it) had hampered him from the kind of cheerful relationship he enjoyed with most of the society ladies whom he’d bedded.

Of course, that life was over. Sylvie was a virgin, innocent in the ways of the body, even if she had a practical French approach to the bedroom. In fact, she’d told him in her enchanting French accent that she doubted she would make him happy in the bedroom. A little smile curled Mayne’s mouth. Those were naive words, though one would never think to use that term of his sophisticated, sleek fiancée.

Now he glanced down at the curve of Sylvie’s cheek, her pointed chin, the slender fingers holding her prayerbook, and was struck by a wave of gladness. Of course she would make him happy; she had such small acquaintance with desire that she knew nothing of it. And for some dark reason, her innocence made him happy.

Women had always fallen into his arms with dismaying ease, turning their lips up to his before he asked for the privilege, their eyes following him about the room before he knew their names. But Sylvie had to be introduced to him three times; she kept forgetting his name. They had never shared a passionate kiss, even after becoming affianced: she had a strong sense of propriety. It wasn’t as if he wished to kiss her into silence.

Well, he did wish it.

But no one would want Sylvie to be silent: her flow of enchanting, laughing conversation enlivened every minute. In fact, once he finally had her in bed with him, and married, he could imagine her ravishing commentary on the night when he showed her, slowly and tenderly, all the delights that a woman experiences in the arms of a man.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” he had said to Rafe the night before. “Here I am, with my reputation—”

“Spawned by the devil to cuckold unwitting husbands,” Rafe had put in.

“With my reputation,” Mayne had repeated, “and Sylvie de la Broderie agrees to marry me.”

“A chaste goddess, by anyone’s terms. Though I never knew a woman’s reputation was important to you.”

Mayne suddenly remembered that Rafe’s affianced bride, Imogen, hardly enjoyed the reputation of a snowy dove. “It isn’t. But I find some cynical enjoyment in the fact that Sylvie’s reputation is so irreproachable.”

“I suspect that everyone in London is sharing your bewilderment. Or they would be if you weren’t so damned good-looking.”

“Sylvie is not a woman to be swayed by something so unimportant.”

“Thank God, Imogen isn’t either,” Rafe had said, making a face.

“You’re not so bad. Now you’ve lost your gut.”

“I’ll never be a fashion plate. Whereas you always have that look about you, Mayne. I expect that’s why she took you. You look French.”

Mayne had opened his mouth to protest—surely Sylvie loved him for his character, for his tenderness toward her, for his passion, always held in check—but caught back the words. Sylvie was his. He had gone down on one knee and offered her an emerald ring that had been in his family for generations…and she had said yes.