Page 21 of A Kiss Gone Wylde
Payne grinned as he shrugged into a banyan. Walking towards Benny, he pulled her to her feet, retrieved her wrapper and helped her into it. If his hands might have lingered a bit too long in certain areas, it was the price to be paid for dawdling. Once she was suitably covered, he crossed to the wall just beside the fireplace and depressed a single wooden panel that blended seamlessly with the others. But it swung inward, revealing a narrow staircase.
“A secret passage!” Benny gasped. “Oh, it’s marvelous! I’ve always wanted to live in a house with one. Our house in bath is dreadfully dull and I haven’t felt comfortable enough to scour Aunt Marguerite’s for one just yet.”
“Well now you will not have to,” he whispered conspiratorially. He rather liked the way she looked when she felt like she was being naughty. It added a sparkle to her eyes and an excitement that was infectious. “Slippers, though. The floor is very cold.”
Benny then dutifully donned her slippers and tied her wrapper tightly about her. No one who saw her would know that she was completely naked underneath it, but he did. He knew every delicate dip and curve of her figure. He knew where to touch her to make her sigh, to make her gasp, to make her cry out. And that sensual exploration was only just beginning. How glorious would it be when she felt confident and secure enough to take the lead in such matters?
The nature of his thoughts was making it more and more likely that they would never leave the bedchamber and he really did want her to see the library. It was glorious.
Striking a match, he lit one of the many tapers and then placed the glass globe over it to shield the flame. “Come on. You wanted adventure and I mean to give it to you.”
12
White’s was quiet that evening—the crowd thin and not especially entertaining. If Hartley hadn’t gone all missish and was still hosting his lovely soirees, he’d have gone there to scratch his itch. But alas, the most debauched of all rogues appeared to be suffering from such ennui that even the most decadent of orgies could not ease his boredom.
He rubbed his face, his fingertips moving over the furrowed gouges in his cheek from his encounter with the bloodthirsty bitch at Vauxhall. Women, to his mind, were there for a man’s pleasure. She hadn’t been there for a planned tryst with Davenport. He knew it. In fact, he’d been banking on it. But Davenport had surprised him by claiming a relationship and understanding with the woman, Wainwright was certain, he had just met.
Miss Benedicta Wylde.She had humiliated him. His friends had been unmerciful in their ribbing of him because of her rejection of his advances and her escape. And the marks she had left on him. But she would pay for them, he decided. Under any other circumstances, he would respect another gentleman’s right of ownership. Davenport had married her, after all, and she was now his property much as a house or a carriage would be once it had been bought and paid for. But embarrassment and ridicule he was being forced to endure demanded recompense from both Davenport and the hellcat he had married.
Another gentleman entered the club then and Wainwright smiled, waving him over. “Gordon,” he said. “It’s good to see you out and about. No longer rusticating in the country?”
Lord Eadric Gilray, Viscount Gordon, was a man who courted disgrace with abandon. He could never be trusted to be anything but reckless. And in his present circumstances, Wainwright thought, recklessness was precisely what he needed.
“I’d had all the boredom I was willing to tolerate,” Gordon replied. “And then I come to town only to discover that Hartley has closed up house and gone… where the devil did he go?”
“The wilds of Shropshire, I believe,” Wainwright answered. “Brandy?”
“God’s blood, yes! Is it French?”
“Of course,” Wainwright answered. “I’m told two of the smugglers who brought it in actually died in the endeavor. Makes it a bit sweeter, doesn’t it?”
“I shouldn’t think it matters,” Gordon said, but still accepted the glass Wainwright had poured for him. He raised it skyward, “To their sacrifice.”
The brandy flowed and the plots and schemes coalesced in Wainwright’s mind. They were halfway through the bottle when he broached the topic. “You have a deep and abiding disdain for Davenport, don’t you? Something about childhood enmity that developed at school?”
Gordon nodded. “Oh, yes. Can’t stand the holier than thou prig.”
“He married today… amid something of a scandal.”
That caught Gordon’s attention. “Davenport in a scandal? I’d never have thought it.”
“Well, I think he stepped forward to spare the lady embarrassment, though she’s hardly a lady. An aging spinster with a nasty temper.”
Gordon looked at him speculatively. Then he gestured toward Wainwright’s face. “That her handiwork?”
Nodding, Wainwright agreed. “Oh, it is. And I mean to make her pay for it… and wouldn’t that just destroy Davenport? Unable to protect his new bride just as he’d been unable to protect his former beloved… what was her name? Bird something?”
“Bardwell,” Gordon supplied, a hard flash in his eyes. “Miss Anne Bardwell.”
“Right,” he agreed. “Course it was. What say you, Gordon? You up for a bit of mischief to alleviate your boredom?”
Gordon eyed him speculatively for a moment. Then he smiled. “What did you have in mind?”
Wainwright grinned. “I’m going to take what ought to have been mine.”
* * *
The library was twice the size of the one in her aunt’s home and larger still than her father’s. It was a much more inviting room. Thickly upholstered leather chairs, a cozy fireplace, large windows to let in adequate light for reading, thick rugs on the floor to ward off the chill. And the books—the books were glorious. From floor to ceiling, they covered almost every inch of the space. A walkway had been constructed around the upper half of the room so that one did not require a rickety ladder in order to access the top shelves.
