Sin. Sharon Page

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      “Not until I told him yesterday afternoon.”

      “It seems to me it is his dilemma to solve.”

      With sarcasm, she said, “He creates the troubles that must be fixed. At first he assured me that her intention was to hurt him, not me. He insisted that she had no intention of revealing what she knew but that we should pay her. He decided to set off last night in her pursuit—or he would have done, but he had a mild attack of his heart.”

      The earl’s brows shot up. “He survived, I gather?”

      She nodded. “I was summoned by his footman and sent for a physician. The doctor looked dour and serious, and lectured, but he’s confident my father will recover. Still my father is in no condition to go to Mrs. Harcourt and I fear about what will happen to his health if he is trapped in bed and worrying.”

      “And what does the orgy have to do with this, love?”

      The earl smelled delicious from his ride—of leather from the saddle and his riding boots, heady sandalwood, his perspiration. Even his library was a delight for the senses. The room contained lavish color—rugs of crimson, indigo, ivory; a daybed heaped with silks and pillows of scarlet, sapphire-blue, deep green. Pillows were strewn on the floor, beside low tables, as though he sprawled there to read. Her book was there, on a table inlaid with jade.

      “I went to Mrs. Harcourt’s house this morning and learned she has gone to Lord Chartrand’s orgy.”

      “You went to her house?” The earl’s brows rose, then he strolled over to his desk. He picked up a card. Presented it to her. “Chartrand’s bacchanalia. Held in the Cottswolds. Near Moreton-in-Marsh.”

      Venetia could barely breathe as she stared down at the printed card, tracing the gilt design with her thumb. It was not addressed to him in particular. With this in hand, she could easily attend.

      “You aren’t going to attend an orgy.” He plucked the card from her fingers, tossed it back to his desk.

      “But I must go. I can’t wait for her to return! What if she talks before then?”

      “Hell and damnation,” he muttered. “You want to go to an orgy because you are afraid that anxiety will kill your father? I would say that he deserves some anxiety.”

      But that would only cause her more, so she could not agree. “I believe if I go, I can understand what kind of woman Mrs. Harcourt is. And plead with her not to ruin my family.”

      He sauntered over to a bookshelf, with his long predatory stride, and pulled out a slim volume. “A Gentleman’s Choice,” he read off the spine. “Or a Guide to the Fashionable Impures of 1818. Anything you wish to learn about this Season’s courtesans can be found in here. Lydia Harcourt is featured.”

      “Someone publishes an annual guide to courtesans?”

      “Illustrated as well.”

      Given her own pictures, why was she blushing? “Do you select your mistresses from descriptions in a book?”

      “You disapprove?”

      Well, she did, but she had no right to.

      “But you know how enticing a book can be. Here, take a look.”

      She found Lydia Harcourt’s picture near the back of the volume, a voluptuous woman shown wearing only a corset. Large breasts pointed boldly at the viewer, her legs were crossed to hide her quim but to reveal her full thighs and generous bottom. The sketch was ink, in black and white, depicting Mrs. Harcourt with a pretty face and masses of black curls.

      “Lydia Harcourt was once the Queen of London’s courtesans,” he said. “But now she is nearing forty, her charms are fading, and the men she once entranced are seeking out new, younger lovers. Rumor has it that she raved at the publisher of that book for placing her at the back and blackened his eye before he had her thrown out. Under her veneer, she’s a coarse scrapper who will do anything to survive.”

      “Not very sympathetic, then.” She read the text that accompanied the picture. Magnificent forty-inch breasts…most skilled mouth and clever hands…conquests include the Duke of Montberry, the Earl of Brude…Rodesson’s mocking pictures…

      “My father painted her picture.” She hadn’t even thought to look.

      Trent nodded. “Several unkind ones that revealed Lydia’s origins as a coarse butcher’s daughter and mocked her aspirations to bed dukes.”

      Venetia frowned. Yet Lydia had still let Rodesson come to her bed. Why? Had revenge been Lydia’s goal all along and her father had stupidly played into her hands? Venetia closed the book. “Then I shall have my father write out an apology and take that to her. Surely that will help.” Now she understood—Lydia wanted her father to suffer, she wanted to torment him by threatening to ruin his daughters.

      “You can’t go to an orgy, my dear.”

      “I want to see what an orgy is really like,” she protested. “It would be…an adventure. I don’t wish to be good and proper and pure anymore! I want adventure. Even if only for once, I want to be part of the world I draw.”

      “Have a love affair then, sweetheart. Do you ride horses?”

      That surprised her. “Not well,” she admitted.

      “Would you want to climb on the back of Zeus, my horse, and race him down the Row?”

      “Heavens, no.”

      “Then your first sexual adventure should not be an event that exhausts even London’s most experienced and randy men. At Chartrand’s orgy, you would be seriously out of your depth.”

      “I know what happens at orgies. I’ve drawn them!” Venetia cried.

      Marcus picked up Venetia’s book, Tales of a London Gentleman, and flipped the pages until he found an orgy scene. Rodesson had drawn dozens of such scenes and his father had insisted he look at every one. For his sixteenth birthday, his father enacted his favorite at a brothel. A bloody wretched night it had been, he reflected. Six young ladybirds had sprained their ankles, three of his father’s friends were laid up for a month, and he’d spent the entire occasion fucking one woman with his eyes shut, embarrassed by the wild, heaving display—

      Venetia Hamilton’s orgy scene was unique, set amongst gods and goddesses in a temple in the clouds. She had succeeded in turning a tangle of naked human bodies into something playful and undeniably romantic.

      He looked away from her picture and sighed. “My dear, you have a very starry-eyed view of an orgy.”

      She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I am well aware that reality does not sell books, my lord. After all, when is the hero of a romantic story ever balding, pot-bellied, and riddled with gout?”

      He laughed. God, she was enchanting. And mulishly stubborn.

      “Besides.” She stuck out her chin. “Some Rodesson paintings are more humorous than erotic. A set of plump buttocks sticking up, a gentleman’s tilted sword, a lady tumbled on her back with legs waving СКАЧАТЬ