“Suppose he could.” Nick felt a passing relief his impulsive offer was not going to be accepted, though it meant more weeks of Lady Simper and her ilk. “It’s still a thought.”

“Generous of you.” The lady touched her glass to his. “To a knight errant of the ballroom. May you find happiness, despite your apparent fate.”

Nick saluted with his glass. “And you as well, my lady.”

They drank in companionable, thoughtful silence until Nick spoke again.

“What’s going to be the worst part? The worst part of being married to this Lord Hellerington?” He occupied himself with such dolorous musings when he contemplated his own impending marriage.

“Besides the loss of hope?” She was silent a long moment, while Nick tried not to let that term—loss of hope—settle too hard in his mind. “It should not bother me, for a wife must do her duty, but the thought of that man kissing me… His teeth—what teeth he has—are not attractive, and he takes snuff… And this is really more than you wanted to know. I am being ridiculous. The man can’t have that many years to live, after all.”

Nick patted her hand. Kissing, done properly, could be more intimate than coitus.

“I understand. What years you have left, you shouldn’t have to spend trying not to gag in the dark as your privacy is violated in the name of marital duty.” She went still again, shocked maybe, but Nick wasn’t sorry he’d spoken.

“Blunt,” she muttered on a soft exhalation, “and bloody accurate.”

Bloody. He liked her more and more.

“Shall I kiss you, my lady? I have all my teeth, and I am accounted somewhat skilled in the art. I think I shall. You may consider it a kiss for luck.” He set his drink aside and took hers from her hand as well. He kept his movements deliberate, giving her every chance to demur, turn his threat into a joke, or slap him. Nick was no stranger to a woman’s palm walloped across his cheek, though it had been awhile.

But she kept her silence—his liking for this woman was becoming considerable—so Nick followed her arm up with his hand until he could anchor both hands on her neck and cradle her jaw. He could find her lips in the dark easily enough, but he wanted to know the feel of her cheekbones under his thumbs, wanted to experience the exact warmth of that special, feminine place where neck and shoulder met.

“You can stop me,” he assured her on a whisper. “You need only tell me.”

Her breathing had accelerated slightly, though she held still and waited.

Patience in a female is a wonderful quality. Nick let his fingers tunnel carefully into the silky warmth of her hair and his thumbs slide first over her lips. Gads, she was soft, smooth, and warm. A pleasure to stroke, to inhale.

He brushed his lips gently over hers and felt her breath feather over his mouth. When he repeated the caress, her lips closed but stayed unresisting under his.

“Kiss me back, lamb,” Nick whispered. “Give me something to dream about too.”

She made a little sound in her throat, a groan, and she swayed toward him, but still Nick merely sipped at her mouth, wanting to go slowly, to savor and pleasure and share with her just a few moments against all the years they would both be married to other strangers.

Gently, he eased his tongue over the seam of her lips and tasted the surprise his boldness gave her. He persisted, but at an undemanding pace, one that reassured as it teased. Her lips parted, and Nick felt a lick of desire course down past his gut.

Ah, women… He sampled the plush heat of her mouth and felt a tentative caress of her tongue against his. The sweetness of the brandy lingered, blending with her fragrance and the taste of wonder. Slowly, Nick eased back, lightening the kiss gradually, reluctant to end it but knowing arousal wouldn’t serve either of them when the likes of Miss Eulie and Lady What’s-Her-Title were patrolling the corridors.

He kissed her eyes and her cheek, then tucked an arm around her back, drawing her to lean against him.

“If that is somewhat skilled,” the lady whispered against his side, “then your version of an expert kiss would surely inspire me to swoon.” She eased away. Nick dropped his arm and passed her a drink.

His drink, if he weren’t mistaken.

“My thanks, my lady.” He cradled her brandy in his hands, thinking of the taste of that kiss. “Won’t you tell me your name?”

“Are you sure you want to know?” The question was devoid of her characteristic lilt.

“I have been advised one shouldn’t go around kissing strangers.” Though he’d disregarded the warning often and enthusiastically. “Based on the past few minutes, I must eschew this guidance altogether.”

“You are kind, Lord Reston. There is kindness even in your kisses.”

He wanted to touch her again, almost as badly as he’d wanted to escape the ballroom.

“Kindness? I can’t say that particular descriptor has been applied to me or my kisses.” Though there were far worse things a lady could say about a fellow’s attentions.

His companion rose, keeping her back to him, a long, graceful back full of resolution and sorrow. He wanted to touch her back too, to learn the contour of those shoulder blades and the curve of her nape. “I am going to leave you here, my lord. You will wait a few minutes before you leave?”

“Of course, but I will miss your company.”

He meant it, too, as their odd, partly anonymous interlude had pleasantly surprised him and put warmth into an otherwise bleak and boring night.

“Our paths might one day cross again,” the lady said, “but if they don’t, I will always be grateful for these few minutes with you.”

Nick kept his seat and let her move away without showing him her face in any measurable light. She paused at the door, and just before she opened it and slipped through, she went still again.

“It’s Leah,” she said softly. “My name is Leah.”

Then she was gone, her name reverberating in the room silently, like the aural equivalent of a glass slipper.

* * *

A man of Nick’s proportions did not fit easily into life in many ways, not the least of which was the physical. His horse, Buttercup, was a golden behemoth, her gender overlooked in favor of her ability to carry such a large rider with ease. Nick’s beds were built to his measurements, and when he was forced to spend a night between residences, he often chose to sleep on the ground rather than in beds made for much smaller people.

He ate prodigious quantities of food, and could drink more spirits than most mere mortals could safely consume. All of his appetites, in fact, were in proportion to his size. But so too were his conveyances, and thus he frequently took up his friends and acquaintances when they were in need of transportation.

Nick was in the card room, where he’d be safe from all but the oldest females, when Lord Valentine Windham found him lurking in the shadows near a game of whist.

“I am free,” Val informed him with a grin. “What say we take ourselves off?”

“None too soon for me,” Nick replied, shoving away from the mantel he’d propped his elbow on. “What are you in the mood for?”

They ambled off amid cheery, drunken good-byes, and Nick knew a gut-deep sense of relief to be leaving.

“In truth?”

“No, Valentine. You are my friend, it’s well past midnight, and we are both only more or less sober. Why don’t you take up lying to me?”

“I’m in the mood to spend some time with that Broadwood of yours,” Val said. “Not well done of me, I know, but as the weather moderates, your pianoforte is developing the most gorgeous middle register.”

“You are incorrigible, Valentine.”

“I am besotted, is what I am. A good instrument is a precious find.”

They fell silent as they gained the drive, the April air nippy. Nick’s town coach rolled up, to Nick’s eye resembling Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage. The thing was huge, opulently appointed, and pulled by a foursome of equally gargantuan bay horses. It fit him wonderfully, but rendered any hope of discretion laughable.

“How many women have you seduced in this rolling seraglio?” Val asked, settling onto the well-padded seat.

Nick felt a twinge of irritation that his grand conveyance raised questions only about his equally grand reputation with the demimonde. “Enough. Would you like to borrow it?”

Val glanced around as Nick lowered himself beside him. “I could fit a tidy little cottage piano in here.”

“You are not right in the head, Valentine. Or in some other parts.”

“I am right enough. When I first came south from wintering with my brother in Yorkshire, I tended to the obvious priorities, and now it’s my music that calls to me. What about your other parts? Did you find a prospective bride tonight?”

“What do you know of Lord Hellerington?” Nick ignored Val’s question. On first mention, such an inquiry deserved no consideration whatsoever.

Val grimaced. “Unappetizing shift of topics. He is often referred to as Lord Hell-raiser, an epithet he takes pride in. Old as dirt, rackety as hell, and forever trying to knock up his mistresses and trollops. Word is that various social diseases have rendered him incapable of impregnating a female, if not half mad.”

Beelzebub’s balls, no wonder the woman had been crying. “Wealth?”

“Enough for appearances. Nothing of great merit, or he’d have lured some sweet young thing to the altar by now.”

“He’s never married?”

“Three times, and wore them all out.” Val paused to yawn broadly. “Why the sudden interest?”

“Somebody mentioned him in conversation this evening. Does he gamble?”

Val cocked his head and considered Nick by the passing light of streetlamps and porch lights. “He whores, duels, and drinks to frequent excess. He abuses opium, absinthe, and women, and one hears of children coming to harm in his care. His horses are invariably crazy, or they are when he’s done with them. All in all, a stunning exponent of the titled set, and he’s a mere baron.”

“I want his vowels,” Nick said, frowning out the window. The words were unplanned, but they emerged with conviction. “I want his secrets, but I’ll start with his gambling markers.”

“Has he crossed you?” From a friend, the question was reasonable, for Nick was generally known for a live-and-let-live approach to his fellow man. He’d learned long ago to cultivate such a reputation, lest his peace be constantly shredded by those seeking to challenge him physically. The biblical figure of Sampson had always struck Nick as an upstart pest.

But what should Nick say now, when he felt the stirrings of temper on the strength of a mere passing encounter with a woman named Leah?

Who had the softest skin and kisses that tasted of wonder—and courage.

“You describe Hellerington as an embarrassment to good society in general. Perhaps I’m embarking on a public service.”

“Of course. You, who single-handedly—if that’s the appropriate appendage—support at least three of the best brothels in London, have taken a notion to torment one old reprobate who wouldn’t be allowed through the doors of any of them.”

Nick smiled slightly at his companion. “Three brothels, Valentine?”

“For now—according to rumor. You’ll not be frequenting the brothels once you’re married,” Val predicted, crossing his arms. “You won’t disgrace your wife that way, and you know it.”

“I would not disgrace a woman I loved that way, but I have no intention of acquiring a wife for any romantic purposes whatsoever.”

“Then how are you going to get your heirs on the girl?” Val shot back. “Your temperament is such that you at least like the females you bed in such quantity, Nicholas. You aren’t capable of treating a woman coldly, and wives, I am told, have a habit of entangling themselves in a man’s life.”

“I appreciate women, Val,” Nick said, but he was fatigued of the topic, of the night, and of much else in life. “That is not the same thing at all as loving one woman.”

“So refine your tastes,” Val suggested gently. “I know the issue is a sore one, but to see you attempting a calculating approach to your bride search rankles exceedingly.”

Rankle—such a delicate term for unbridled loathing. Rather than endure more interrogation, Nick remained silent until the coach rocked to a halt.

“After you.” The fewer people in the coach when Nick rose, the more room he had to maneuver. Val obligingly hopped out of the coach and waited for Nick under the porte cochere.