I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

“Viscount Bessette is redecorating his Sussex estate,” Lucien said in the smoking room that evening. “His wife no longer wants red in her sitting rooms. Green apparently is in favor. Everything red must go.”

Everyone in the room—Delacorte and Hugh, that was—turned their heads slowly and stared at him in rank astonishment.

He was amused. “We don’t just talk about horses and boxing at White’s, you know.”

Hugh caught on before Bolt said, with amused exasperation, “He’s selling curtains. Twelve feet long, red velvet, wonderful condition, with valances. Three sets. Vaughn has agreed to pay for them. Delilah and Angelique can arrange for them to be sent or—”

“I’ll go,” Hugh said immediately.

Bolt, Hardy, and Delacorte swiveled toward him in surprise. Hugh realized then it was the first thing he’d said in fifteen minutes, which was as long as they’d all been in the room together. He’d been addressed. He hadn’t responded, because he hadn’t heard them. The desultory, contented conversation around him might as well have been smoke for how much he’d noticed it. They didn’t trouble him; they all knew a man needed a good brood now and again and they left him to it.

Hugh supposed he’d been listening for a lifeline. Apparently it was made of curtains.

He wasn’t in the habit of being melodramatic in his thoughts. But he understood very clearly that his only chance at salvation meant never occupying the same room as Lillias, ever again. He’d been out building the stage all day and hadn’t come in for dinner. He’d only come in for a cheroot. He hadn’t seen her again, and that was by design.

He could hire a hack from the livery stables and easily make the trip, stop in Surrey to inquire about the Clay family, and be back in time to meet his uncle in Portsmouth.

Life had demanded a lot from him. He’d found, every time, reservoirs of strength, insight, cussedness, and endurance, some of it requiring acrobatic spiritual contortions. But ending that kiss had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

Was there satisfaction in knowing she would be just as haunted by it as he was, no matter which aristocrat eventually had the privilege of bedding her? Her voice rising in something near anguish when she talked about being pelted with roses by aristocrats, about being so visible and yet invisible: that’s what haunted him.

And anytime he wanted he could relive it and experience a certain conqueror’s triumph: the sound of her low moan when their lips met. And the blossom-tender give of them beneath his. Or the feel of his tongue twined with hers. Their hips moving together.

But he knew the reason he’d pressed his lips against her breast was that he’d wanted to feel the beat of her heart.

Herheart.

It was this last realization that had him up and out the door just past dawn and all but fleeing The Grand Palace on the Thames.

She would in all likelihood be gone by the time he returned.

“I should think you’d be out of here like a hare out of a trap, Lillias. Off to the Galleria or The Row or some such.”

Ironically, her punishment for smoking a cheroot had concluded nearly in time for all of them to move out of The Grand Palace on the Thames. The snake, still malingering on their townhouse premises, had been successfully lured into a basket thanks to Mr. Delacorte’s friend. Workmen were even now beginning to patch the walls. They could be home again soon. “I would prefer you not to behave like one, if you would,” her father added hurriedly. “A hare out of a trap.”

“Thank you, Papa, but I’ve seen the error of my ways and I think I’d like to spend a little more time in quiet contemplation.”

He scowled at her, unconvinced.

She gazed back at him innocently.

The funny part was that it was true.

Well, apart from the “error of her ways” bit.

And so her family scattered out on errands and entertainments, and Lillias took her sketchbook and the books she’d had sent from her father’s library to Helene Durand Memorial Park and sat on the bench.

And this time she drew.

But first she contemplated.

She’d been altered in a fundamental way. She could now call forth a memory that made her weak and hot and desperate, that made some parts of her throb and other parts of her go erect, and she was certain Mr. Delacorte would make a fortune if he should ever import a pill or a tea that possessed similar powers. She’d liked it too much and had regretted its end. She was irrationally furious with Hugh Cassidy—for knowing more, for making his point, for winning—and grateful to him, which she wasn’t quite prepared to admit, and likely never would.

Mainly because it was probable she would never see him again.

He’d gone to Sussex (Mr. Delacorte had mentioned this in the sitting room last night) and then to Surrey, and she and her family ought to be back in their own home any day.

He was walking away with a few of her secrets, and she was certain he both understood them and would keep them—after all, their worlds did not and would not intersect from this day forward. But she felt as though she knew some of his, too.

How he felt (hard as a wall, safe as a house, dangerous as a wild animal), how he smelled (sweat, sawdust, smoke, musk, sex), how he tasted (like sin, if sin was a liqueur)—taken together they should have all comprised an adventure. And a lesson. And then be rapidly consigned to history.

But now she felt strangely, ever so slightly diminished. Or depleted. As if something vital had been lost. Or as if something nearly gained had slipped from her grasp. Not dissimilar to when she’d ruined her Heatherfield sketchbook.

She had been telling the truth when she said she’d wanted to be alone. Her thoughts and body were not quite done with Hugh Cassidy and she wanted to sit and reverberate a bit, the way she would after listening to a favorite piece of music.

So she read her book—about Native American tribes, as it so happened. One her father had never opened in his own library. One she might never have chosen to read before.

And she drew.

The rules of The Grand Palace on the Thames allowed guests to entertain other guests in the parlor, a contingency meant to forestall orgies or other untoward nonsense one might attempt in rooms upstairs. Their rigorous but kind interview process had thus far ensured that no rogues or roguesses were admitted . . . for long, anyway.

It was this rule that compelled the Earl and Countess of Vaughn to entertain the Marquess and Marchioness of Landover that evening in the little sitting room of The Grand Palace on the Thames. For the Earl of Vaughn was a man of his word, and he had not only purchased a grand set of curtains—which Mr. Cassidy had returned with just hours ago, and was even now hastening to hang in the ballroom—it transpired that he had extolled the delights of The Grand Palace on the Thames to the marquess in White’s and mentioned that they would soon be hosting first-class entertainments in their ballroom.

“Well. What a pleasant establishment.”

Mr. Delacorte, Captain Hardy and Delilah, Lord Bolt and Angelique, and Dot were arranged in chairs about the room. It was a typical evening, apart from the somewhat uneasy volume of aristocrats in the room.

“Year after year our ball is quite the crush, you see, as we’ve so many dear friends and they seem to grow in number year after year,” the Marquess of Landover explained.

None of the people in the room were invited to the ball apart from the earl and countess. None of them minded.

“As do mine,” Mr. Delacorte enthused. “Friends are wonderful. Why, just look about the room—everyone here is a friend now! And thanks to my friend McBride, an apothecary in St. Giles, we found a gentleman who was able to coax a poisonous snake from Lord Vaughn’s townhouse using only a few dead snakes for bait and a brazier. They like warmth, you see. Snakes. It’s on its way to a new home even now.”

Lady Landover’s eyes got wider and wider as this revelation wound toward its conclusion. She stared at Mr. Delacorte as if not one word of what he’d just said had been in English.

“They named the snake after me, as it so happens. Stanton,” Delacorte added.

She carefully lowered her teacup.

“Are you in . . . trade, Mr. Delacorte?” the marchioness tried delicately. She was making a valiant attempt to decipher him.

“We are all in trade,” Lucien said, smoothly. “The Triton Group. Imports and exports. Tea, silk, spices, and other fine things.”

“Oh, yes yes yes yes yes,” the marquess said politely. “Real goers, all of you. I’ve heard talk of you at the clubs.”

“I do like silk. And spices,” Lady Landover said kindly. “And tea.”

“Fortunately for us, nearly all of England shares your tastes.” Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt smiled at her, which meant she received a potent dose of smiling, indeed. All at once.

She dimpled.

Who knew such pleasant men could be found by the docks?

She turned to Dot, who’d been staring, rather awestruck. “And young lady, you are . . .”

“I’m Dot, Lady Landover,” Dot said. Shyly. She’d read about Lady Landover in the broadsheets.

“And what do you do?”

“I answer the door. And bring the tea.” She did a lot of other things, too, but those were her favorites, and awe kept her from expounding.

Or blinking.

This fixed stare gave the Marchioness pause. “Ah,” she said brightly. “We’ve fifty or sixty people on our staffs who do that for us.”

Dot merely continued staring.

Delilah and Angelique struggled not to exchange a glance. If they were being perfectly honest, they’d been a little desperate when Delacorte had shown up at the door right after they’d first opened for business. They’d liked him then. But now they knew they’d choose him over a marquess for a guest at any time. When they were fortunate to have any sort of choice, that was.

“Where are your darling offspring, this evening, Vaughn?” the marquess wanted to know. “Lillias, St. John, Claire?”

“Oh, St. John is out doing what young men do. I think he went to his club. He’ll be in by eleven o’clock. Claire is reading. Lillias had a mal de tête and was tucked up in our comfortable rooms. Quite cozy. But I expect she’ll be down to join us any minute. She’s so looking forward to the ball.”

Lillias had in fact not emerged from her room for much at all over the past four days, even though she was free to roam, if she chose. She’d declined invitations to ride in The Row or to the museum with her mother and sister. But she’d taken a renewed and rather passionate interest in her watercolors and drawing, and they attributed her sudden re-hibernation to that. This seemed like something to condone. Such an elegant, ladylike endeavor.

“So many engagements have been announced this season and others are anticipated! I wonder when Lillias will make some man the happiest man in the world?” This was the way Lady Landover decided to disguise prying as a compliment.

“Well, she receives about one proposal a week, of course,” Lady Vaughn said.

“But she’s a woman of singular and particular tastes, like her mother, ha ha,” the earl added.

The countess smiled politely. One got the sense she’d heard that particular joke from her husband a number of times before.

“Well, it’s quite the fashionable thing to claim to be smitten with her. Of course, our dear Henry is just sixteen, or she might have been able to nab him. And there will be a good deal of competition for him, of course, when he’s of age. As he’ll be a marquess.”

This last bit didn’t need to be explained to anyone in the room.

“We hope to announce an engagement soon,” the earl said. Which wasn’t entirely untrue. There was at least a hope.

Delilah and Angelique exchanged surprised glances. This hadn’t so much as been intimated during their previous evenings in the sitting room.

“Oh, my! Is that so?” Lady Landover touched a hand to her collarbone. “Well, that would be happy news, indeed. I know the ton waits with barely suppressed excitement to know who will finally win her. And everyone looks forward to hearing what she will wear to the ball.”

Only two people in the room were invited to the ball, but no one cared. They were interested in the commerce aspect of the evening.

“I wonder if you’d like to have a look at the ballroom while you’re here?” Lord Vaughn, doing his promised duty, suggested.

“Oh, yes,” Delilah said. “We’re very proud of it. We’ll be hosting musical guests and other entertainments there and we’d so love to hear what you think of the room.”

“Oh, what a charming idea!” Lady Landover enthused. “We should love to see it.”

Hugh stepped down from the ladder and walked the length of the curtains, seizing soft handfuls of it, shaking them out until they lay in fat, lustrous, smooth pleats. The hems trailed the ground ever so slightly, looking like ladies in ball gowns, and he’d haggled with the butler charged with facilitating the transaction to get him to turn over the heavy tasseled cords that came with them for no additional cost. They would now glide smoothly open from either behind the stage or in front of it via a cord.

He couldn’t wait to see the expressions on Delilah’s and Angelique’s faces when they saw them. He smiled at the thought. Then the smile dimmed. He wondered if he’d be present for any of the entertainments held in this ballroom. Or whether he’d be on his way home soon.

His instincts told him the latter was likely. It ought to have been a more thrilling prospect to contemplate.

He’d been five days away from London; he’d gone from fetching the curtains in Sussex to Surrey to visit the Clay family. When he’d called at their genteel farm, he’d been told by a servant that none of the family was home at present. They were in Bath, apparently. They were expected home within a fortnight. He’d inquired directly about a Miss Woodley, giving her description. He’d only been recently hired, the footman who’d answered the door told him. He regretted that he was unable to answer questions about a Miss Woodley.

Hugh thought that was an interesting way to phrase it. Unable to answer questions.

They’d stared each other down, he and the footman.

After some hesitation over whether he even ought to do it—in case Miss Woodley intended to bolt if she knew she was being searched for—Hugh finally left his name and direction in London with the footman. Along with the message, “Your father misses you.”

He’d no choice but to return to London. But he’d go back to Surrey at his first opportunity. He’d go to Bath, if he had to. He sensed he was close to the truth.

He wondered that the only notion he could currently muster about this was relief. Perhaps because he was too weary and too preoccupied.

He’d be leaving for Portsmouth to meet Uncle Liam in just a few days.

Once he’d returned to The Grand Palace on the Thames, he’d purposely gone straightaway to the ballroom to commence the hanging of the curtains.

Between this and traveling, if he was careful, he might never see the Vaughns again.

With that thought, he went motionless. As if to avoid jarring any inconvenient emotions loose.

He hesitated. Then he drew a bit of the soft weight of the curtains between his fingers and lived again the feel of the soft swell of Lillias’s breast beneath his lips.

Lust nearly gave him vertigo. He closed his eyes against it.

The life of an aristocrat—her life—meant velvet anywhere, anytime. Velvet was cast away for other velvet when the whim for another color took you. Was this careless abundance better than fleeting moments of savoring rare pleasures? Did life—did a kiss—owe its sweetness to its brevity? To the fact that it would necessarily end?

He heard footsteps in the hallway outside the ballroom. Light and swift.

His heart lurched.

He went still.

The footsteps stopped.

He didn’t dare turn around.

His heart had taken up a slow, hard drumming. He wasn’t certain whether he wanted them to keep going, past the door.

He slowly turned.

Lillias was standing at the doorway. As surely as if the mere thought of rare pleasure had conjured her.

She was wearing a shade of marigold silk trimmed in copper ribbon and it colluded with the mahogany of her hair.

Damned if it wasn’t exactly like the first time he’d seen her.

It was like a blow to the head. It was a collision with some cosmic force he could never hope to understand. He was no hero, bear or no bear. He was Achilles. She was his velvet-clad heel.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” she said very formally.

“Not at all.” His voice sounded husky and formal in his own ears.

“I wasn’t certain whether I should . . . whether you’d want . . .” She stopped.

He couldn’t say a word.

“The curtains look beautiful.” She stepped into the room and mounted the little stairs to the stage, and he tracked her every move. “I saw the door open and I . . . I thought . . . I understand you’re leaving for Portsmouth to meet your Uncle Liam soon.”

“Yes. In two days’ time. It’s kind of you to remember. I’m very much looking forward to seeing him.”

They were speaking as though they’d just been handed a script.

She smiled uncertainly. “We will be gone from The Grand Palace on the Thames and back in our home for good before you return.”

He went still. “Is that so?”

“Apparently a friend of Mr. Delacorte’s experienced some luck capturing the snake. Alive, as it so happens. And the repairs in the walls are already underway.”

“Delacorte told me this was a possibility. That is altogether good news, particularly for the snake. Unless it had snake kittens.”

She didn’t smile.

He didn’t move any closer.

Neither did she.

It seemed preposterous that this fierce, untenable, intimate association should come to an end so quietly. It had been such a consuming force. It had turned him raw side out. He ought to be relieved, the way one appreciated the drama but was pleased when a storm had spent itself.

“Well. I was on my way to the sitting room to visit with my parents and their friends. I would like to say goodbye and good luck,” she said.

“Well. Goodbye and good luck, Lady Lillias.”

She nodded once.

She looked away from him and he studied her profile as if it were the notches on a mysterious key. That line of her nose, the rose swell of her lips, the luscious dips and curves of her body.

He knew what was worth living for and dying for.

He had never before entertained what might be worth risking eternal damnation for.

And suddenly he was convinced there was only one thing.

“Lillias,” he said softly. He stepped forward.

He gently touched her arm. She turned to him as though he were the sun and she a sunflower. And then she was against his body and in his arms.

He kissed her with absolutely no quarter. As though they were longtime lovers. With greed and desperation. They both knew this needed to be fast. With their arms locked around each other, she met him with a hunger that fanned his own too quickly, too hot. He moved his hand to cup her breast and then his thumb grazed the bead of her nipple pressed against her bodice. He took her gasp of stunned pleasure into his mouth with a kiss. He thought he might face a firing squad if only he could hear that sound over and over for the first time. He did it again, harder. And this time his reward was his name, Hugh, turned into a breathy sob of pleasure in his ear.

He thought he heard voices, faintly, distantly; it was as though they were a memory, the rag-ends of a dream. Perhaps it was just the echoes of the tattered, battered regiment that was all that remained of his conscience attempting to get his attention. And he thought perhaps he’d heard footsteps. Though that sound could have been the thud of his heart or hers. And as she moved her hips against his, he groaned an oath and took that kiss deeper and harder, the plunge and stroke of his tongue mimicking what his cock would never get a chance to do, and shifted his hands to grip her buttocks and pull her hard up against his body.

And this is what the Earl and Countess of Vaughn, the Marquess and Marchioness of Landover, Captain Hardy, Lord Bolt, Delilah, Angelique, and Delacorte saw when the curtain was whipped merrily aside.