“What if we’re recognized?”

Swinging her silk domino, a flutter of scarlet in the air, Lucy insisted, “No one shall know us.

We will simply be three masked women among countless others.” Snatching Jane’s hand, Lucy dragged her up the carpeted stairs. “You were quite ready for adventure when we discussed this a week ago.”

“That was before I knew our destination,” Jane grumbled.

“Adventure carries risks.” Lucy’s gaze skimmed Jane again as she pulled her into her lavish bedchamber. “Now. You will never blend in wearing something so modest.”

Jane bit her bottom lip, feeling herself relenting. “I wouldn’t want to draw undue attention.”

“Can we make haste?” Astrid queried. “It’s almost midnight. All the best food will be gone.”

Tucking Jane’s hand in her elbow, Lucy led Jane into her dressing room. “You shall see. It will be a grand adventure. Who knows? Perhaps some charming gentleman will sweep you off your feet and carry you far away from your wretched relations.”

Astrid snorted.

Jane’s heart fluttered with panic at the mere idea. She didn’t want to marry anyone. Once had been enough. And she wasn’t the sort to engage in a casual dalliance. Especially with the type of men likely attending a courtesan’s ball.

In fact, she couldn’t understand widows who took lovers. She had never found anything particularly exciting about the marriage bed. On the contrary.

And as for love…

Well, she had never been that fortunate.

Chapter 2

Seth Rutledge, the Earl of St. Claire, stood rigidly at the edge of the crowded ballroom, hands folded behind his back. His nostrils twitched against the overpowering aroma of perfume, longing for the scent of sea and wind as he watched Madame Fleur approach, h*ps swaying in a manner that brought to mind rolling waves. Her welcoming smile below her peacock-feathered domino faltered when she caught sight of his face.

She stopped abruptly in the middle of the ballroom, her heavily rouged mouth sagging a bit. Her startled expression, followed quickly by a look of pity, was all too familiar.

Seth growled low in his throat. Bloody hell, how he loathed that look.

For a fleeting moment he wished for a mask of his own. But he gave the thought only a moment, forbidding it to root in his head, to weaken him. Forcing his chin higher, he better exposed his face to the light.

The courtesan recovered and resumed her smile with a finesse that he would expect from one of her legendary reputation. Stopping before him, she brought with her the sweetly sick bouquet of gardenias, roses, and a dozen other floral fragrances he could not distinguish. Acrid as gunpowder, the scent of her stung the inside of his nose. Yet he was glad to see her. Whores didn’t judge.

She pressed close, granting him a view down the stiff brocade of her bodice, revealing that she wore nothing underneath.

“It’s been too long, mon cher, why have you not come to see me sooner?” she purred in an accent that was decidedly not French. He wasn’t certain of Fleur’s exact origins, but he would wager Seven Dials.

“I arrived in Town only yesterday.”

He had departed his family’s estate to accomplish the inevitable. At eight and twenty, he owed it to Julianne to marry and provide an heir. His sister needed family. Someone other than himself.

Ironically enough, he had survived pirates, war, pestilence, disease in foreign lands—survived only to return home and find his brother dead. From an ague, no less. No doubt his father cursed that quirk of fate from the grave.

It had been no secret that Seth’s father purchased his commission in the hopes that he would never return. Rotten luck that Albert had died, leaving the wrong son to marry and bear responsibility for the family.

Precautions had to be taken to assure his cousin would not get his claws on St. Claire Priory—or his sister—again. If something befell Seth, the right sort of wife would see to that. The right sort of wife would safeguard his sister against villains like Harold. And the darkness. Seth fought to swallow the sudden sourness coating his mouth. He would protect Julianne from the darkness that engulfed her. The darkness Seth had created. He owed her that much.

A bride unlike the female he had let creep beneath his skin years ago. A female not revolted by the sight of him. If such a lady existed.

Shaking off his musings, he dipped his finger between the swells of Fleur’s br**sts.

“Hmm, I like this fierce face of yours,” she purred. “My very own pirate.” She trailed a long nail down the white-ridged scar that slashed across his face and cut into his upper lip.

He shied away, unused to the contact, but bemused that she would think he resembled a pirate when it had very nearly been a pirate to cut his face to ribbons. Half a breath to the left and the Portuguese slave smuggler would have had his eye.

Fleur lifted her brows meaningfully. “I know just the thing to celebrate your return. What I have in mind may take hours. Days. Weeks.”

“I’m afraid I cannot linger in Town. I’ve an errand to dispense and then I’m off.” Errand. An adequate description of his task.

“To rusticate in the wilds?” She made a pffting sound. “You mean you’re not interested in renewing old friendships?” Her eyes shimmered with a wicked light. Only five years older than himself, she had aged remarkably well. Although her hair was an improbable shade of red, her face and body were as tight and smooth as the first day they met. “I’m confident I can provide you with a reason to linger.” Her eyes locked with his, hot with promise, gleaming with a desire that had quite undone him as a lad. Him and Albert both.

And yet little moved him now.

“It’s been a long time, mon cher,” she continued, “and you’ve grown into quite the man.” Her heavy-lidded gaze held his eyes, hot with promise.

“I’m ugly as sin and you know it.” If she didn’t make her living stroking the egos of gentlemen, she’d react as all other women did and steer clear of his menacing mien.

Her plump, bejeweled hand brushed the front of his trousers, challenging his words.

“What are we waiting for, then?” he asked.

Determination had brought him to her. Determination to feel something, anything. He may want nothing to do with tender sentiments, but sex was something else entirely. Especially with a partner who did not have to close her eyes as he leaned over her.

Sex could make him forget. Make him feel again. Even if only for a short while.

His gaze flicked to the many alcoves surrounding the ballroom. Moans and cries floated from behind the scarlet damask drapes, mingling with the music of the orchestra. He doubted there was a room in the house not already occupied. Even the dancing couples appeared to be more in the midst of fornication than a waltz. Distaste filled him at the dissolute scene, oddly echoing the feelings he had after a battle, standing aboard ship and looking out over the carnage.

” Mon cher, give me but a moment.” Her eyes raked him hungrily.

Seth’s lips twisted in a smile. The scar at his lip tightened and pulled, and he quickly released the smile, letting his mouth fall into a mild line. Grasping her fingers, he raised them to his lips, watching for a sign of revulsion to cross her face. Fleur lifted herself eagerly toward his hand.

“It would be a delight,” he murmured, aggravated at the desultory tone of his voice. Here stood a woman ready and willing. Why did he not feel excitement, desire? Something. Anything. Why did he not feel?

“You remember the lavender salon? It is for my use alone.” Her tongue slowly traced her rouged lips. “I shall be along shortly. A few matters require my attention before I can claim the long, uninterrupted hours I require with you.” Her kohl-lined eyes slid over him in heated perusal.

He kissed the back of her hand. “It will be my pleasure.”

Anything to put off returning to the thick silence of his house across Town, to keep from staring into the dark and thinking about the unrelenting night that ruled his sister—the darkness that he had forced on her in the reckless days of his youth. But that was his cross to bear. One of many.

Taking a wife was the least he owed Julianne. And it wasn’t as if marriage would affect him to any great degree. It was not as if he were holding out for someone special, someone to love.

He simply required a bride with similarly low expectations.

His hand lifted to stroke the scar splitting his top lip, fingering the skin-puckered tear as he contemplated the nameless, faceless female with a heart as remote as his own.

Chapter 3

The iridescent gold gown was a far cry from the modest blue she had worn at the start of the evening. Jane tugged at the bodice, hoping to pull it higher. Her face burned from the way the men ogled her. Not only her, but every woman in the room. They assessed and surveyed like hawks searching the horizon for the choicest morsel.

Costumed gentlemen lurked everywhere: Cupids, Caesars, pirates. They ogled every woman in attendance as if they had the God-given right, as if every female in the room were present for their pleasure, to be touched and fondled at whim. And perhaps they were. None appeared to be ladies overly concerned with their virtue.

The gold diamonds warmed the flesh of Jane’s bosom. Her hand brushed the stones every so often, taking comfort in their presence—the only extravagance, the only item of value someone thought her worthy to possess. They fed her courage in the face of so many wolves. Not for the first time, she wondered if she had made a mistake in coming here.

“Taste this,” Astrid said, offering a lobster pasty. “They’re divine.”

Shaking her head, Jane tugged on the dress again. “It doesn’t fit,” she grumbled.

“It fits.” Astrid announced blithely, chewing with an intense look of appreciation, oblivious to the admiring stares sent her way. With her fair skin and honey hair, she looked like a sun-kissed peach in her apricot gown. Hardly the coldly reserved duchess most of the _ton _ knew her to be—

that even Jane had first thought her to be.

Astrid held up another pasty. “What about this one?” She squinted at it, her dark brows dipping.

“Appears to be stuffed with spinach. And perhaps artichoke, um, no, truffles…” Biting into it, she moaned with approval, the uninhibited sound rather odd coming from such an austere woman.

Jane raised her voice to be heard over the din. “No, thank you.”

Somewhere on the dance floor, a woman squealed in loud delight. Jane looked up, watching as a gentleman tossed the lady over his shoulder and carried her off into one of the curtained alcoves edging the ballroom.

“Astrid,” she began, her gaze darting about the ballroom uneasily, trying to ignore the gentleman not two yards away who leered at her, licking his lips as if she were a bit of dessert he would like to sample. “Where is Lucy?”

“There.” Astrid nodded to the dance floor, looking up from her plate briefly.

Jane turned, watching as Lucy whirled past in the arms of a pot-bellied Viking. She frowned at the way the Viking clutched Lucy close, his hand skating down her spine, inching dangerously close to her derriere. With admirable composure, Lucy grasped his hand and lifted it higher on her back.

Jane shook her head. This was scarcely what she had imagined when her friends proposed an evening out. Shaking her head she looked away, catching sight of a gentleman at the other end of the table as he fed a woman a morsel from his plate, thrusting his entire finger into her mouth as he did so.

Heat crawled up her face and neck, burning the tips of her ears as the woman suckled his finger as one would a stick of peppermint. Forcing her gaze away, she muttered, “This is not what I had in mind—”

“I warned Lucy you would be frightened.”

 Frightened. The heat in her cheeks grew scalding at the thought of her friends discussing her possible unwillingness to remain in such a cesspit as somehow a deficiency—a lack of courage.