Vice

'Thank you,' she said stiffly, moving away from both Quentin and the footman.

'Juliana has a tendency to topple and spill,' Tarquin observed. 'In certain circumstances she can produce the effect of a typhoon.'

'How gallant of you, my lord duke,' she snapped, roughly pulling the veil from her head and tossing it toward a rosewood pier table. It missed, falling to the marble floor in a shimmering cloud.

'Well, let's not brawl in front of the servants,' Tarquin said without heat. 'Come with me and I'll show you your apartments.' Cupping her elbow, he urged her toward the stairs.

Left behind, Quentin picked up the discarded veil, placed it carefully on the table, then made his way to the library and the sherry decanter.

Juliana and the duke reached the head of the horseshoe stairs.

'As I've already mentioned, I thought you might like to use the morning room as your own private parlor,' the duke said with a determined cheerfulness, gesturing down the corridor to the door Juliana remembered on the first landing. 'You'll be able to receive your own friends there in perfect privacy.'

What friends? Juliana closed her lips firmly on the sardonic question. 'Your bedchamber and boudoir are at the front of the house, on the second floor.' He ushered her up the second flight of stairs to the right of the landing. 'You'll need an abigail, and I've engaged a woman from my estate. A widow-her husband was one of my tenant farmers and died a few months ago. She's a good soul. Very respectable. I'm sure you'll deal well together.'

He didn't say that he'd decided that Juliana needed a motherly soul to look after her, rather than one of the haughty females usually engaged as abigails to ladies of the fashionable world.

Juliana was still silent. He flung open a pair of double doors.

'Your bedchamber. The boudoir is through the door on the left.' He gestured for her to precede him into a large, light chamber furnished in white and gold. The enormous tester bed was hung with gold damask, the coverlet of white embroidered cambric. The furniture was delicate, carved spindle legs and graceful curving arms and backs, the chaise longue and chairs upholstered in gold- and-white brocade. Bowls of yellow and white roses perfumed the air. Juliana's feet sank into the deep pile of the cream carpet patterned with gold flowers as she stepped into the room.

'Oh, what an elegant room!' Her bitter anger faded as she gazed around in delight. The involuntary comparison of this epitome of wealth and good taste with the ugly, heavy, scratched, dented, and faded furnishings in Sir John Ridge's house would not be quashed.

Tarquin smiled with pleasure, then wondered faintly why this chit of a girl's approval meant so much to him. Juliana had bounced over to the door of the boudoir, and he could hear her delighted exclamations as she explored the small, intimate room. 'How pretty it is.' She came back to the bedchamber, her eyes shining. 'I never expected to find myself inhabiting such elegant surroundings,' she confided.

'You will grace them, my dear,' Tarquin said, an involuntary smile still on his lips at the sight of her ingenuous pleasure.

'Oh, I dareswear within ten minutes the entire chamber will look as if a typhoon hit it,' she retorted.

Tarquin held out his hands to her. 'Come, cry peace. I meant no offense. Actually, I find your . . . your haphazard locomotion very appealing.'

Juliana regarded him incredulously. 'I fail to see how anyone could find clumsiness appealing.'

'There's something utterly alluring about you, Juliana. Whether you're on your head or your heels.' His voice was suddenly a caress, his smile now richly sensual, issuing an irresistible invitation.

Juliana stepped toward him as the clear gray eyes drew her forward like the pull of gravity. He held her by the shoulders and looked down into her upturned face. 'There are so many more enjoyable things for us to do, my sweet, than quarrel.'

She wanted to tell him that he was a deceitful whoreson. She wanted to curse him, to bring down a plague on his house. But she simply stood, gazing up at him, losing herself in his eyes while she waited for his beautiful mouth to take hers. And when it did, she yielded with a tiny moan of sweet satisfaction, opening her lips for him, greedily pushing her own tongue deep into his mouth, inhaling the scent of his skin, running her hands through his hair, urgently pulling his face to hers as if she couldn't get enough of him.

He bore her backward to the bed, and she fell in a tumble of virginal white. His face hovered over hers, no longer smiling, expressive now of a deep, primitive hunger that set answering pangs deep in her belly. He was pushing up her skirts and petticoats, ignoring the awkward impediment of the hoop. His free hand loosened his britches, then slid beneath her bottom, lifting her on the shelf of his palm as he drove within her.

Juliana gasped at the suddenness of his penetration, but her body welcomed him with joy, her hips moving of their own accord, her buttock muscles tight against the warmth of his flat palm. He supported himself on one hand as he moved within her in short, hard thrusts. And her belly contracted with each thrust, the spiral tightening until a cry burst from her lips and waves of pleasure broke over her. His head was thrown back, his neck corded with effort, his eyes closed. Then he spoke her name in a curious wonder, and his seed gushed into her with each pulsing throb of his flesh, and when she thought she could bear no more, a surge of the most exquisite joy flooded every cell and pore of her body.

'Such enchantment,' Tarquin murmured as he bent and kissed the damp swell of her breast rising above her decolletage.

Juliana lay sprawled beneath him, unable to move or speak until her racing heart slowed a little. With an effort she raised a hand and touched his face, then let it flop back again onto the coverlet. 'I got lost somewhere,' she murmured.

Tarquin slipped gently from her body. 'It's a wonderful landscape to roam.'

'Oh, yes,' Juliana agreed, pushing feebly at her disordered skirts. 'And one doesn't even need to get undressed for the journey,' she added with an impish chuckle, suddenly invigorated. She sat up. 'Where are my husband's apartments?'

'On the other side of the house, at the back.' The duke stood up, refastening his britches, regarding her with a quizzical frown.

She slid off the bed, shaking down her skirts. 'And where are your apartments, sir?'

'Next door to yours.'

'How convenient,' Juliana observed, beginning to unpin her loosening hair.

'Let me show you just how convenient.' He turned to the armoire on the far side of the room. 'Come, see.'

Juliana, still pulling pins from her hair, followed curiously. He opened the door, and she gasped at the rich mass of silk, satin, and taffeta hanging there. 'What's that?'

'I told you I've been busy with your wardrobe,' he said. 'But that's not what I wish to show you right now.' He pushed the garments aside and stepped back so Juliana could see into the interior.

She saw a door at the back of the armoire.

'Open it,' he said, enjoying her puzzlement.

Juliana did so. The narrow door swung open onto another bedchamber quite unlike her own. No dainty, feminine chamber, this one was all dark wood and tapestries, with solid oak furniture and highly polished floors.

'Oh,' she said.

'Convenient, wouldn't you agree?' His eyes were alight with amusement.

'Very.' Juliana stepped back, shaking her hair free of its plaited coronet. 'Did you install it specially?'

He shook his head. 'No, it was put in by the third duke, who, it was said, like to play little tricks on his duchess. He was not a pleasant man, by all accounts. But I imagine we can put it to better use.'

'Yes.' Juliana was beginning to feel dazed again. 'Does everyone know of its existence . . . the viscount, for instance?'

'No. It's known to very few people. And I'll vouch for it that Lucien is not one of them. He doesn't know this house well.'

'Lord Quentin?'

'Yes, he knows, of course.'

'Just as he knows everything about this scheme?' She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at the tangles.

'Yes.'

'And what does he think of it?'

'He completely disapproves,' Tarquin stated flatly. 'But he'll come round. He always does.' He turned back to the armoire. 'Shall we choose a gown suitable for Lady Edgecombe to wear to the play and a visit to Ranelagh?'

IVliy not? The man was an avalanche, rolling over all obstacles, unstoppable. And, although it confused her to realize it, for the moment she did not want him to stop.

Chapter 11

George Ridge emerged from the Cross Keys Bagnio in midafternoon feeling very much the man-about-town. He turned on his heel, enjoying the swish of his new full-skirted coat of puce brocade. His hand rested importantly on his sword hilt as he looked along Little Russell Street, debating whether to go into the Black Lion Chop-House for his dinner or return to the Gardeners' Arms to see if his posters bad born fruit.

The ordinary table at the Gardener's Arms offered a reasonable meal, and the fellow diners tended to be hard drinkers with a taste for crude conversation and lewd jests. In general it suited George very well, but last night, when the ordinary table had been cleared of dinner and set up for gambling, he'd discovered that his fellow diners were deep gamesters. As the bottles of port circulated and the room grew hotter, George had grown louder and merrier and very incautious, peering with bleary bonhomie at the dice and throwing guineas across the table with an insouciance that later shocked him. He hadn't had the courage as yet to calculate his losses.

His father would have gone berserk if he'd known. But, then, Sir John had been an old prude, except in his taste for young women, and he'd been very careful with his wealth. George had never been to London before his present visit. His father considered it a place for wastrels and idlers, inhabited by loose women and men ready to cut your throat for a groat.

George had enjoyed the loose women this afternoon in the bagnio. Three of them. Three very expensive women. His pockets were a deal lighter now than they had been when he'd left the Gardener's Arms that morning. But it had been worth every guinea. He supposed it was usual for London whores to drink champagne. Cider was all very well for a red-cheeked, wide-hipped country doxy in the barn or behind a haystack, but painted women in lawn shifts, with fresh linen on their beds, obviously had higher expectations.

But as a consequence he found himself guiltily aware that in twenty-four hours he'd probably spent enough to cover the farrier's bill for a twelvemonth. And if he returned to the Gardener's Arms, he would inevitably get drawn into the dicing later. A modest dinner at the Black Lion and a visit to the playhouse would definitely be the prudent course this evening. And since the Theatre Royal was but a couple of steps from the chophouse, he could be sure of arriving before the doors opened at five o'clock so he could get a decent seat in the pit.

He examined the silver lace on his new cocked hat with pride before carefully placing it on his head, ensuring that the pigeon's wings on his pigtail wig were not disarranged. He tapped the hilt of his sword with the heel of his hand and gazed around imperiously, as if about to issue a challenge. A shabby gentleman in a skewed bag wig hastily crossed to the other side of the street as he approached George with his belligerant stance. London was full of aggressive young men-about-town who thought it famous sport to torment vulnerable pedestrians.

George gave him a haughty stare, flicking a speck of snuff from his deep coat cuff. He didn't wear a sword in the country, but he'd realized immediately that in town it was the mark of a gentleman. He had purchased his present weapon from an armorer in Ebury Street, having been assured by that craftsman that it was not a mere decoration- that in the hands of a skilled swordsman, such as His Honor must be, it would be a most deadly weapon, and a powerful protection.