A Most Indecent Gentleman

In the darkness of the hall, Cass rolled her eyes. It was rubbish was what it was and they were treating it like bloody Shakespeare.

“Give us another, Eisley.”

That got her attention. The “poet,” and she used the term loosely, was Jocelyn Eisley? Cass crept nearer to the door, hoping for a look to confirm it.

“No, no, too much of a good thing isn’t healthy for you, lads!” the baritone called out in good humor. “I’m off to do the pretty for my lady hostess then it’s to the clubs. Perhaps I shall see some of you there later this evening.”

Cass could imagine him winking as she watched him grace his followers with a low bow. From her vantage point she couldn’t make out his face, his back was to her and the door, but she was treated to her first confirming glimpse of those shoulders, which were just as broad as described. When he straightened, she couldn’t help marveling at his height, at how those shoulders tapered to a lean waist shown to advantage in a superbly tailored dark evening coat, which unfortunately hid a better view of his buttocks. She could only suppose they were as well done as the rest of him. From the back, he was magnificent, all the darkness of his attire topped with a head of guinea-bright hair. Her uncle had been right, after all; broad shoulders, check; gold hair, check; a well-built physique, check. Make that a double check. Eyes the color of sharp jade... Eyes? Wait a minute!

But she didn’t have a minute. He had been backing toward the door, but while she’d been cataloging his finer points, he’d reached the door and turned around. There was nowhere for her to go. Before she could move, her nose made intimate contact with his chest.

“Ouch!”

“What the deuce!” Eisley stumbled against her, his bulk propelling them to the wall. She could feel his hands on her arms, his grip a bit rough as he tried to steady them both. She hit the wall, imprisoned, not unpleasantly, between it and Eisley. “I beg your pardon,” Eisley managed to say once they stopped reeling from the impact. “Are you all right? I didn’t see you standing there. Can’t see anything in this blasted hallway. Don’t know what Lady Martin-Burke was thinking to keep it so dark.”

“It’s a regular Vauxhall down here.” Cass ventured a little saucy tongue in cheek as if she’d ever been to Vauxhall. “Who knows what kind of trouble guests could get up to if they strayed from the well-lit path?” There was just a hint of suggestion in her tone and it wasn’t hard to imagine all sorts of decadent answers when she looked up into those sharp green eyes.

“That being the case, miss, what are you doing down here?” Eisley smiled back, a wide, infectious grin that made the most of his mouth with its slightly fuller lower lip, a mouth made for kissing. It took a moment for her to realize he wasn’t scolding. He was flirting, just a little, something she supposed came naturally to him. From the looks of it, he probably couldn’t help it.

“I was looking for something.” Cass allowed herself to smile back, her eyes holding his for a long moment, far longer than decency allowed. Instinct told her, he would not be impressed with a decent girl who shunned dark hallways and subtle overtures from the handsome men one met in them. And she did have to impress him, right here, right now. One had so little time to make a first impression, especially when there was a ballroom of others to compete with. She was not leaving this hallway without him.

“Did you find it?” Eisley sounded amused. He didn’t quite believe her. “With the hallway being so dark, I would think finding anything quite impossible, particularly the sorts of things ladies are known to lose—tiny earbobs and the like.” He said “ladies” as if he’d already taken her measure and she’d come up lacking in that regard. Well, Cass supposed that was fair. She wasn’t a “lady” in the sense the girls in the ballroom were. She wasn’t the only woman hoping to dance with Jocelyn Eisley tonight. The ballroom had been abuzz with his name since she’d walked in. The difference was that she’d done something about it. She’d gone looking for him while the others merely waved their fans and kept hoping he’d come to them, as if wishing would conjure the man out of thin air.

“Did I find it?” Cass boldly looped her arm through his and angled them toward the ballroom, setting off at a strolling pace. She cocked her head to the side and gave him a coy half smile. “I most certainly did.”

Chapter Two

“I don’t suppose that something you were looking for was me?” Jocelyn offered glibly. But the insouciance was entirely feigned. This wasn’t the first “accidental” meeting in a hallway he’d been party to. A single gentleman of his age and rank was a most hunted creature. “I wouldn’t put it past our hostess to send someone to drag me back to the ballroom.”

She didn’t even bother trying to look penitent. Instead, she, whoever she was, flashed him a smile that dazzled even in the dark of the corridor. “Are you always this arrogant? How could I come looking for you if I didn’t know you? It would be impossible to tell if I’d found you. I could have dragged any impostor back with me if that was the case. In fact, I still don’t know you.” Well, this was certainly new. The hostesses usually didn’t send the fun ones. Jocelyn winked and leaned close to her ear. “Well, not, biblically, anyway, not yet.” There was a faint hint of summer roses about her, a slightly sophisticated scent like the woman herself, a woman who flirted as she did wasn’t entirely an innocent. He was starting to enjoy this, especially if Lady Martin-Burke hadn’t sent one of her husband-hunting minions for him. This chit didn’t seem like Lady Martin-Burke’s sort. She was far too bold.

“You presume too much, sir.”

Jocelyn grinned in the dark. She wasn’t truly mad. He could hear the laughter in her voice along with the required censure. A good flirt knew how to mix the two. She was proving to be adept at the art.

Jocelyn gave an honest laugh. “And yet you’re the one who has commandeered my arm and my attentions.” Had a walk in the dark ever been this interesting? Most walks he took in the dark had certain predetermined outcomes. There were no surprises. There hadn’t been any surprises for a very long time. Yet there were surprises here aplenty.

“Your attentions? Have I? That sounds very promising. Do you suppose there might be a dance for me in that?” She was asking him for a dance.

They’d reached the ballroom where it would be natural to go their separate ways. His duty to see her back to the safety of the crowd and light had been fulfilled. He was required to do no more. She’d realized this, proving that his little interloper was an astute negotiator as well as a flirt. He had nothing against either. Both made for interesting conversation, both could keep a man on his toes and Jocelyn liked a good game. What had promised to be a tedious evening filled with the usual suspects was most definitely looking up. “What do I get in return?”

“Why, my company, of course, and the bonus that I am an exceptional dancer.” Jocelyn wondered how exceptional. Did she know what she implied? Lucifer’s balls, he’d become quite a cynic. His thoughts were perpetually jaded.

Even so, she was infectious, Jocelyn decided as they took their places in line for the next set. Even in the dim corridor there’d been a potency to her, a charisma. Charm was too weak of reference to describe her pull, potency perhaps too masculine to describe the laughter that frothed just beneath the surface of her conversation. In the bright light of the ballroom, she was stunning. Rich red hair devoid of the usual orangey hue, lay artfully coiffed at the nape of her neck. The art was in the long braid of it, coiled so that a man had difficulty thinking of anything else but pulling out the pins one by one and watching it fall.

Blue eyes met his, sharp, dancing eyes that supported his belief that laughter lurked in her every word, as she took her position across from him. The music started and they came together for the first pattern. She hadn’t lied. She was a superb dancer, her movements confident and graceful. There was something supple, fluid even, about the way she danced the simple quadrille, something uniquely erotic.

He must be going crazy. The quadrille was not an erotic dance, it was quite sexless, in fact, unlike the waltz, when done right, any good rake knew was just publicly condoned sex on a dance floor. It was common knowledge among his set that anyone good at the waltz had a better than fair chance of being decent in bed. He had it on good authority that he was one of London’s finest waltzers.

Yet, here he was, fighting the early signs of arousal, in the midst of le pantalon, his blood firing at the sight of her swaying gracefully from partner to partner until all he could think of was getting a waltz with her. Jocelyn supposed he could blame the dress. The ivory of her gown was nearly a seamless complement to the ivory of her skin. It was almost like seeing someone naked. Only the seed-pearl trim of the bodice separated the one from the other, the satin “sleeves” at her shoulders so negligible as to be nothing of substance.

His initial reaction was that whoever her guardians were had dressed her outrageously, yet when he studied the dress he found nothing outrageous about it. It was cut no lower than any other young woman’s gown, and the color was certainly not questionable. In fact, on its own merits, the gown was perfectly decorous. It was the woman in it who gave the dress its scandal.

The dance ended, for which Jocelyn was both thankful and regretful. He’d have to wait a decent interval before he asked for a waltz but he was loath to let her go. “How about some of that company you promised me?” He took her arm, not waiting for an answer. “I am told the Martin-Burke garden has been specially decorated for the evening.” A walk was precisely what he needed. He’d rather take one with her than to walk alone and risk being pounced upon by a rabid matchmaking mama. He would be thirty-one next month and London’s mamas had decided it was high time he marry. So had his father. His father the earl had informed him he’d had eleven years to sow his wild oats on the town.

It wasn’t that he was opposed to marriage. He did plan to marry at some unspecified point in the future, just not the near future. There was the league to consider at the moment. D’Arcy’s departure this summer had left the league exposed and Jocelyn would not abandon Channing Deveril, founder of the league, in his hour of need. After the new year, when the scandal surrounding the rumored existence of the league settled, perhaps then, he’d contemplate a wife. Right now, he was far more interested in contemplating the woman beside him.

The air outside was crisp, a beautiful late-autumn night and probably one of the last. One never knew what the weather gods would do in November. In celebration, the Martin-Burkes had fitted the garden with little fires placed at intervals where guests could stroll and stop to warm themselves from the evening chill. Jocelyn rather liked the idea, but it seemed others were skeptical. The garden was sparsely populated tonight.

“I think fall is my favorite time of year.” She looked up into the night sky, the firelight skimming her profile, her throat exposed. He had the sudden urge to want to kiss that long column. “The air is sharp, not sweet and heavy like it is in the summer, or soft in the spring, or biting like the winter. There’s possibility in the sharpness.” She took a deep breath that lifted her breasts, although she seemed unaware of it. Then she laughed. “It’s all nonsense, of course, the air isn’t a round of cheese.”

“No more than the moon, and look how often we’ve made that comparison.” Jocelyn laughed with her, liking her wit. He hadn’t enjoyed himself like this in ages. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been with a woman who hadn’t hired him, who didn’t know who he was, and he was quite sure this one didn’t know. They were simply being themselves and it felt wonderful, a pleasant deviation from the tedium his life had become.

Her fingers clenched softly on his arm where they lay, a gesture that seemed out of character for this bold creature. “I have a confession. I wasn’t looking forward to coming tonight. I don’t know anyone in town and I was worried, but you’ve made it better than I thought.”

I could make it better still. Good Lord, desire was riding him hard tonight for a change. Usually, it was the other way around. He rode it. He kept true rampant desire on a very tight rein. On his behalf, though, she had caught him unawares. He hadn’t time to steel himself against such a reaction and, in truth, the sensation was not a distasteful one. Rather, it was something of a novelty, which was as good of an explanation as any for this curious feeling.

“Then I’m glad we met.” The strains of a waltz were beginning in the ballroom and the garden emptied as people went to claim partners and spaces, leaving them alone with the fire pits. Jocelyn let the conversation between them lag, allowing an almost awkward silence to fill the space between them before he asked, “Is there anyone waiting for you?” There should be and they should be starting to worry over her absence. She wasn’t here alone, was she? If he hadn’t found the possibility so consistent with her behavior, he’d have found it suspicious.

“No.” She paused and corrected herself. “What I mean is that my chaperone came down with a headache and has left me with friends this evening. I won’t be missed, not quite yet.”

Very errant friends, Jocelyn thought, to let her wander off toward card rooms and then to cajole a strange man into a dance and wander off with him to the gardens afterward. It did make him wonder if there were any friends at all, and that made him wonder a host of other things about his mystery woman. Surely she understood what she risked when she’d gone down that dark corridor in the first place.

He tested his hypothesis. “If I am not keeping you, perhaps you would dance with me?”

“Here?”

He was rewarded with a moment’s disbelief flitting across her smooth features. She’d been so sure of everything else tonight, but not this. This walked the line of real scandal and his mystery woman knew it. All else between them had been decent enough to pass critical censure. This would not. This was intent. One might wander down a dark hall by happenstance, but one did not dance in gardens by accident.

“Yes, here. There’s far more room than inside.” He turned her into position, his hand at her back as she tentatively raised her hand to his shoulder. Her hesitation was delightful. For all her boldness, his mystery woman was human, after all.

He moved them into the dance, aware of the warmth of her skin beneath her gown where his hand met her back. She was not unaffected either by this sudden chemistry that had sprung up between them. He leaned close to her ear, wanting any reason to drink in the scent of her one more time, “You should have said no.”

She cocked her head to look up at him, a smile on her lips. “I know.” Jocelyn’s arousal went rigid. He knew just how he’d kiss that mouth. Heaven help him, she danced divinely.

* * *

Oh, Lord, he danced divinely, and that was where any heavenly metaphor ended. Like recognized like and she knew a sinner when she saw one. Jocelyn Eisley was no saint. He hadn’t even asked her name and here he was waltzing her around the garden, holding her closer than propriety allowed and she was loving it! Even after all the promises she’d made to herself about avoiding scandal and avoiding the charms of men. Here she was literally embracing both. Her promises hadn’t lasted the night.

What did that mean about her? Was she really irrevocably unconventional as the Dorset gossips maintained, or was Eisley a master at easing a woman down the path of seduction? Perhaps both? Although she feared the former, after all, she’d been the one to go looking for him.

Eisley’s hand was firm at her back, a reminder of his strength and competence. She had no doubt he was competent at many things. Her body concurred, thrilling to the intimate touch of his hand, to the sweep of her skirts against his legs, the occasional brush of his hips against hers as they turned. He was the devil’s own git with those handsome looks and teasing wit. He could melt even the staunchest of hearts. She’d have to harden hers considerably. But not yet.

Cassandra could almost reason there was no harm in enjoying a dance before she got down to the business of planning her next move. Tonight, she’d made contact. It was essential she use this opening to secure a second meeting.

The beautiful music faded to a halt, the silence making Cass acutely aware of his hands lingering at her waist, his thumbs at her hips pressing lightly, intimately, through the fabric of her gown, of the sparkle in his green eyes, a somewhat predatory gleam. She imagined a tiger’s eyes looked just like that before moving in for the kill.

His eyes dropped briefly to her lips. Cass’s breath came sharp and rapid. She saw it all at once: This was to be a seduction. Eisley’s equivalent to the kill. That flick of his eyes was the only notice she had of his intentions. Then his mouth was on hers with a gentle insistence. She gave invitation, her lips parting for him, his tongue tangling with hers in a slow, languid dance of their own.