Susan Johnson - Gorgeous As Sin

When both her breath and invective had run its course, she lay panting. In that small lull, she found herself peevishly contemplating her blackened and besmirched reputation. And allocating blame where blame was due.

To the dissolute Groveland, naturally.

At present, logic and reason were truant with hell-hath-no-fury in charge.

How dare he view her as some whore or doxy who could be bought off with a few sparkling bits of jewelry! And prior to that, she hotly contended, how dare he invite himself upstairs! And prior to that, why did he present himself as some benevolent noble interested in buying all the art on display! Fraud and charlatan! He was nothing but a scurrilous rogue as everyone well knew, and she had mistakenly forgotten after several glasses of champagne! She softly groaned-not only galled at her blunder but also concerned that she might have hurt her vocal cords while tantrumishly screaming. Damn-it hurt when she swallowed. Reaching for the bottle of champagne left on the bedside table, she thought to remedy her sore throat with a soothing draught.

As she rolled over, the scattered jewelry laying at the base of the door suddenly hove into view. And there were considerably more than a few sparkling bits.

Not that it mattered one whit that Groveland could afford piles of jewelry, she rancorously thought, putting the bottle to her mouth and swallowing some overly warm wine. He was no doubt in the habit of dispensing lavish gratuities to all his lovers.

Oh hell. She flushed red-hot. Now she was one of that ignoble rank.

Damn his seductive allure, she lamented. Damn his dark beauty and his magnificent-she stopped in midthought, refusing both the image and coarse word that had leaped into her mind. And yet, she silently wailed, how could she have succumbed like some shameless hussy to his… his… virility.

How could she have so forgotten herself?

Not that remorse was likely to nullify either her shame or her fall from grace, she sensibly decided. And rather than dwell on regret-Edward’s gambling habit having caused her to be mindful of its uselessness-she devoted herself instead to the more profitable exercise of devising various vile and devious schemes of retaliation.

Revenge is sweet had been coined for just such occasions.

She considered accosting Groveland in numerous ways or mortifying him in some other yet to be determined fashion-cutting him down to size, as it were-preferably before an audience. Not necessarily achievable, she acknowledged, since she lived outside his fashionable world, and was not likely to receive any invitations from those in the beau monde. She also doubted that he’d respond with favor should she call on him at home. In fact, she’d probably be turned away if she appeared at his door. Nor could she challenge him to a duel, even if she could afford passage to Calais where duels took place now that they’d been outlawed in England. She wasn’t a good shot.

She swore, more softly this time, thinking, What a pity.

So, in any real sense, retribution was futile. Save for one instance alone, she reflected with a cool, slightly sinister smile.

And she’d see him rot in hell before she’d ever sell him her bookstore.

Marginally and perhaps ungenerously mollified by her power over the duke in that single area at least, she allowed herself a small moment of triumph.

As if penalized for her transgression, she was precipitously jerked from her victorious fantasy by the ring of church bells announcing the hour.

Glancing at the clock, she let out a yelp of surprise, leaped from her bed, and was stopped in her tracks by a stabbing pain. Hardly daring to breath should she accidently move in the process, she realized that engaging in sex for an entire night apparently left its mark. Good Lord, she was sore.

How fitting.

Groveland’s departure had left her disenchanted in more ways than one. Her next thought-thoroughly unwanted and also unseemly-took center stage in her brain: was Groveland as sore or did he have callouses after so many years at stud?

She literally shouted, “Stop!” because she didn’t wish to pursue such a debauched train of thought. In fact, she would not, under any circumstances, spend another minute thinking about the vile scoundrel. She would not!

Concentrating on her own affliction instead, she slowly made her way to her minuscule bathroom, taking very small steps to lessen the pain. Filling up the tub with steamy hot water, she lay back, soaked her tender parts, and half dozed. Only when the church bells rang the quarter hour, did she reluctantly set about readying herself for the day.

The decision to go without drawers was simple. Any chafing no matter how rudimentary would have been insupportable in her present condition. Slipping on a chemise, she chose a simple printed linen frock from her limited wardrobe and dressed without so much as looking in the mirror. Today would essentially be a matter of counting the hours until she could close the store and go to sleep. She was exhausted. And sore.

After tying her damp hair back with a bow at the nape of her neck, she ate three large pieces of bread and jam. That she was outrageously hungry did not bear close scrutiny when she had vowed to not think about Groveland.

By the time she left her apartment and slowly made her way down the stairs, it was past ten.

She would have given anything had it not been Mrs. Beecham waiting at her door. But she was being punished for her sins, she suspected.

“Tsk, tsk,” Mrs. Beecham chided as Rosalind unlocked the door. “Keeping a customer cooling their heels is not good business, my dear. My heavens!” Wide-eyed, Mrs. Beecham surveyed Rosalind from head to toe. “You look like you haven’t slept a wink. Are you ill?” She quickly took a step back. “I dearly hope not since my frail constitution leaves me quite defenseless against the smallest malady.”

“Rest easy, Mrs. Beecham. I am quite well, although I admit the heat last night interrupted my sleep,” Rosalind lied. And your corpulent form, Mrs. Beecham, looks anything but frail.

“Ah, yes, this sweltering August weather. My sleep suffers as well.” Mrs. Beecham smiled. “Which accounts for my early arrival, my dear. I am quite addicted to Mrs. Thornhill’s works, but I’ve read them all. Might you have something comparable for me to read?”

FITZ SAW THE luggage piled in the front hall as he entered the house and silently groaned. Not that his mother’s schedule was ever certain. She did very much as she pleased when she pleased.

As a footman approached him, he handed over his hat and gloves. “Where’s the dowager duchess?”

“In the breakfast room, Your Grace.” Not so much as a glance for his master’s disheveled appearance.

“Has she been here long?” Although it couldn’t have been long or her luggage would have been carried upstairs.

“No more than twenty minutes, Your Grace.”

“Did she say why she arrived early?”

“I believe she told Mallory she missed London.”

A platitude. “So what’s the ever popular Pansy having for breakfast?” Fitz muttered, running his palms down the front of his wrinkled waistcoat.

The young man’s lips twitched. “Fresh beefsteak, Your Grace. Cooked three minutes on a side.”

Fitz rolled his eyes. “I should have known. I’ll announce myself, Norton. Bring me a brandy.”

A few moments later, he shoved open the double doors to the breakfast room at the back of the house and entered the sun-filled chamber.

“You darling boy!” A slender, elegant, russet-haired woman whose youthful beauty was still much in evidence, gazed up from the breakfast table and opened her arms wide. “Come give your adoring mother a kiss!”

Ignoring Pansy, who was racing at him, yapping like a banshee, Fitz smiled. “You’re early.”

“I couldn’t wait to see you, so I took an earlier packet. You haven’t slept much from the look of things,” Julia Montagu sweetly said, surveying her son’s rumpled evening clothes and lack of tie with a twinkle in her eyes. “Pansy, be good now. Hush. Don’t growl like that. You know Georgie.”

“I expect the truth was you were bored,” Fitz lightly countered, thinking how satisfying it would be to launch the pesky lapdog across the room. “And you needed a change of scene.” Bending down, he held his hand out to be inspected by the odious little animal.

“Perhaps,” the dowager duchess said with a coquettish smile. “But you’re always the main reason I come home.”

He glanced up from under a wave of black hair as Pansy licked his fingers. “Is Kemal in town?”

“We traveled together from Paris.”

That answered all his questions: his mother’s sudden change in plans, her ostensible annoyance with Lady Montrose, her early arrival. Kemal must have some urgent business in the city. Picking up the dog after it had decided Fitz smelled familiar after all, he carried it to the table, handed it to his mother, and kissed her cheek. “Are you staying long?” Taking a chair beside her, he held out his hand for the brandy Norton was carrying his way.

She smiled. “Some people would think that an insensitive question.”

“You know very well it’s not.” He smiled back. “You’re my only love. I was simply wondering whether we have any common social engagements in store, whether you’re on your way to Green Grove or planning on settling in.”

His mother waved her slender hand in a fluttery little gesture. “I have no plans.”

“You’re waiting on Kemal, you mean.”

“Only partly. I wanted to spend some time with you, darling.”

Fitz drank down half the brandy in one swallow. Not that he didn’t adore his mother, but she had no compunction interfering in his life. Which always required he give the appearance he had nothing of interest for her to meddle in.

“I hear you’ve been unable to charm some young lady into selling you her bookstore. I thought your seductive charms were quite unrivaled.”

He almost choked on his brandy. “Good God, mother,” he said, swallowing to clear his throat. “You don’t believe that rubbish.”

“Of course I do. Everyone does. And why shouldn’t they? It’s no secret you’re much in demand with the ladies. So tell me, what does this young lady not like about you?”

Not very much, he decided, recalling last night with an unexpected jolt of pleasure. “It’s not about me,” he said, taking pains to show no emotion. “She doesn’t want to sell her store.”

“You haven’t offered her enough.”

“Yes, Mother, I have. Apparently, it’s not about money.”

The dowager duchess’s brows rose. “You don’t say. The cardinal virtues are not yet dead,” she sardonically noted. “I expect she’s holding out for more,” she cooly added.

“If you don’t mind, Mother, Hutchinson is very capable of taking charge of the situation. You and I need not bother ourselves.”

“I heard you may lose ninety thousand if your development has to be suspended.”

“You’ve heard a great deal it seems.”

“You needn’t be grouchy. I’m simply concerned. I’m your mother. I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy. Rest easy in that regard. As for this bookstore, all will be resolved in good time,” he gruffly said.

Julia Montagu smiled sweetly. She knew better than to continue to press her son when he spoke in that tone. “Were you with anyone I know last night?” she pleasantly inquired. “Clarissa perhaps?” She reconsidered. “Of course not-her husband’s back in town, and he does have his rules, doesn’t he? What a strange little man. But then he’s in biscuits or something, isn’t he?”

“Soap,” Fitz corrected.

“You don’t say.”

“I do. It’s very good soap according to all reports,” he mildly noted. Clarissa, the fourth daughter of an impecunious earl, had married one of the new multimillionaires recently brought into the peerage thanks to the Prince of Wales’s penchant for gambling. Wales liked to surround himself with arrivistes who didn’t mind lending him money-never to be repaid, of course.

But unlike the aristocracy who had learned long ago to discreetly look the other way when it came to the little peccadilloes of marriage, Lord Buckley insisted Clarissa keep him company when he was in town.

“So,” the dowager persisted in honeyed accents, “if not Clarissa, was she anyone I know? And you needn’t look at me like that. I’m sure the news is circulating below stairs as we speak and the whole town will know by teatime.”

“For heaven’s sake, Mother. Since when have you become a voyeur?”

“Don’t tell me then,” she soothingly replied, recognizing whomever he’d been with was not someone of her acquaintance. As aware as she that gossip traveled at lightening speed, Fitz normally would in some minimum fashion at least tell her who he’d been with since inevitably everyone in society would soon know anyway.