LITMIR.BIZ

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first, my lord?” Miss Prentice asked, her watery blue eyes rounded in question, in anticipated horror. “My lord, I fear I must insist you explain.”

      “The bloody hell I will!” Banning exploded and bolted for the door, ushered on his way by the lilting trill of Angel MacAfee’s delighted laughter.

      

      IT WAS DARK IN THE private dining room that adjoined his bedchamber at the Cross and Battle, but the Marquess of Daventry made no move to light more than one of the tapers stuck into the small branch of candles sitting at his elbow on the table.

      After all, if he lit the remainder of the candles it would then be possible to see his reflection in the nearby windowpane, and he had seen more than enough of the man he was in the past two hours to wish to look himself in the eye just now.

      It was depressing, believing himself to have turned, almost overnight, from a sober, upstanding man of the world, into a lech. A lusting, dirty-minded lech.

      Yet here he was, a reasonably intelligent man of nearly five and thirty, reduced to drooling over a green goose of an eighteen-year-old woman-child with the come-hither body of a siren, the all-knowing eyes of a vixen, and the brash language and devil-take-the-hindmost attitude of a young buck first out on the town.

      She had no shame, no wiles, no carefully cultivated airs, and no compunction about saying what she thought, doing what she wished, flaunting convention—not because she was being deliberately difficult, but just because she was Angel MacAfee, and Angel MacAfee didn’t give a flying pasty what anyone thought.

      Flying pasty! Christ on a crutch, now he was being reduced to thieves’ cant, taken back to his own fairly rackety salad days—corrupted by a female barely old enough to be out of her leading strings!

      Ah, what imp of mischief had entered Henry MacAfee’s mind that he would christen his sister with such a misnomer as Angel? Banning knew he would say that she had all the makings of a wanton, baiting him the way she had, except that he also knew she had acted more from anger that he would dare to look at her as a woman than she did from any longing to crawl into the nearest bed with him.

      She had dared him with her lush, golden young body, successfully pushed him away by the simple tactic of pretending to draw him closer, made him embarrassed to be a man, ashamed to feel what could only be considered normal male desires, wants, needs.

      Not that her daring warning had been necessary. He was certainly not about to do anything about his absurd attraction to her, save for possibly attempting to drown it tonight, and forever.

      “Damn her for having seen the last thing I wanted her to see, the last thing I wanted to acknowledge, even to myself,” he grumbled aloud, reaching yet again for the wine bottle he had ordered sent up from the common room. It was his second bottle of the evening, and he might just order a third if this one didn’t do the trick.

      Lusting, longing…and now a descent into spirits, a headfirst dive into a bottle. And all because of Angel MacAfee. It was lowering, distinctly lowering, and he filled his glass to the brim, just thinking about it, and ignoring the slight squeak of the door to the hallway as someone, probably Rexford, pushed it open.

      “The lizard said you gave up drinking more than the occasional glass of wine ever since you got yourself so bosky you couldn’t think clearly enough to conjure up a way of slipping free of my brother’s request that you be my guardian. As far as I can see, the next time that woman’s right will be the first time, eh, Daventry?”

      Banning swallowed the wine all at once, tossing it back as he would have done a stronger spirit, then glared at Prudence, who was still in the doorway, grinning at him across the darkness. “That large wooden contraption you are leaning against is called a door, Miss MacAfee. It is employed by civilized people as a method of ensuring privacy. It is also used to knock on, if a person of manners and breeding desires admittance to that place of privacy. Kindly close it behind you as you leave.”

      “Certainly, my lord Grumpus,” Prudence said affably, leaving the door open as she crossed to the table plunking her shirt-and breeches-clad self down in the chair facing his, her forearms resting on the thick oaken arms, her legs splayed out in front of her in the way of a young buck settling in for a night of gaming and drinking. “But seeing as how I’m not planning on going anywhere just yet, maybe you’ll remind me again when I do leave. I’ve got the breeding, or so my brother assured me over and over, but my manners might still need a little work.”

      “I suppose this unexpected visit to my private dining room means you no longer believe I have any designs on your virtue?” he asked, thankful his voice sounded light, teasing, and just a little condescending.

      “Ah, Daventry,” she cooed, pushing the thick curtain of her hair up and away from her neck as she winked at him. “I’d be a damned fool to think an old man like you capable of even planning a seduction, let alone executing one. I was just trying to get your goat, that’s all, and I wanted to let you know you’d been looking. Guess it worked, huh?”

      “You do enjoy baiting people, don’t you?” Banning asked, watching as she leaned forward and poured herself a glass of wine, then crossed her booted ankles in front of her on the table top, tipping her chair back slightly on its hind legs. “Or is it just that you take great pleasure in—you believe—shocking people with your uncouth behavior?”

      She looked at him over the brim of her wineglass, then sighed in patently false impatience. “I’ve already demonstrated to you that I have a fine vocabulary, Daventry. I’ve already promised you that I will be a patterncard of all the finest and most stultifyingly boring virtues whenever I am with your sister. In truth,” she added, her smile as wide and innocent as a child’s, “I am by and large a most agreeable, friendly sort of person, really I am. But I’m afraid you probably will have to indulge me as I go about exacting a small spot of revenge aimed at punishing you for leaving me with Shadwell months longer than necessary. You cut it a slice too fine, so that I’ll have to rush myself into the season. Remembering that fact, I’m still fairly angry with you, but it’s a feeling that’s slowly wearing off as we draw closer to London. As to the lizard? Well, she just plain begs to be shocked.”

      “All right,” Banning said, raising his glass as if in a toast, “I suppose I can withstand the slings and arrows of your childish tantrums for another day. As long as, in turn, you understand why I barely slow the coach as I deposit you at my sister’s doorstep.”

      Prudence’s laugh was full-throated, not the simpering giggle of most society misses, and he found himself joining her in her amusement, feeling better than he had in several hours, several days.

      “Just be sure to toss the lizard out first, so I can have the pleasure of landing on her. She wouldn’t be a soft cushion, God knows, but I have developed a nearly overwhelming longing to knock some of the bile out of her. I’m not used to having enemies, you know, and she has threatened to tell your sister that I’m incorrigible and past saving. The interfering bitch,” she ended quietly, taking a deep drink of her wine.

      Banning sighed, wondering how he could be sitting here, fairly calmly, sharing the night with Prudence as if she were a young chum of his, listening to her swear, watching her drink, laughing with her. He was rather proud of himself and felt slightly foolish for his earlier thoughts, his earlier fears. It was remarkable. He felt no desire for her now, no longing to kiss her, run his hands along the tightly outlined sweep of her hips, press her body close against his own…molding her…shaping her…taking her…breathing in her fire, her vitality, her lust for life….

      He sat forward and poured himself another drink, wondering whether the wine would be of any real benefit to him in merely sliding down his throat as he swallowed the lie he was trying to tell his better self, or if he would be better served to dash the contents of the glass in his slowly heating face, shocking his system back under some semblance of control, of sanity.

      “This patterncard of all the finest virtues soon to be delivered on my sister’s doorstep,” he said after a moment’s internal battle, having reminded himself that he really

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