Page 26 of The Good Girl's Guide to Rakes
A set of French doors led to a balcony, where the glowing tips of cheroots hovered in the night.
Curses blended with the round vowels of the upper classes, and he glanced at Celeste.
“The language is as unbridled as the game play,” he said, feeling almost embarrassed that she should be audience to such profane words.
“You forget I’m the daughter of a former longshoreman,” she answered, though her round eyes showed shewastaken aback. “It’s rather novel, to catch the sounds of elegant ladies and esteemed gentlemen swearing worse than any stevedore.”
“Places such as thisappearrelatively genteel,” he said.
“A closer examination reveals more raffish details,” she replied lowly.
Once more, he tried to experience the place as if for the first time. Several men had loosened their neckcloths, revealing glimpses of skin shining with sweat. A dowager openly fondled the buttocks of a young dandy, who appeared to enjoy her attentions. The laughter was louder as guests tipped back their heads to unleash full-throated guffaws, no attempts at polite, restrained chuckling. Anger was in fuller display, too, as a pair of men beside a vingt-et-un table shoved at each other until another burly footman separated them.
“It’s as though someone has amplified the volume of more respectable gatherings,” she said. “Granted, no one is drawing blood over a feud or copulating on the floor.”
He chuckled, though it was wiser not to tell her that he’d been to many a gathering where both of those things had happened, andhe’dbeen the one doing them.
“Mrs. Jenkins would doubtlessly forbid such crass behavior,” he said. When Celeste continued to look around, her expression intent, as though she wanted to commit everything around her to memory, he urged, “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
He didn’t know why he needed to know. Only that it mattered.
“There’s a palpable sense of wildness,” she said after a long pause. “As if the tight leashes that bind everyone to a strict code of propriety has been loosened,leaving the guests to indulge their more primal impulses.”
“Is that what brought you here?” he heard himself ask. He grabbed two flutes of sparkling wine from a passing server and handed one of the glasses to Celeste. “Indulging your more primal impulses?”
Her cheeks went pink, and yet she answered, “Would you be shocked if I answered yes?”
“A little,” he admitted. “I’ve no idea what dwells beneath your well-mannered, proper surface.”
“I...” Her gaze held his, and a current passed between them, electric and edged.
Someone shouted, fracturing the connection between Kieran and Celeste.
He took a sip of wine, letting the sharp taste and effervescence on his tongue bring himself back to where he was and who he was with. Flirtation with Celeste Kilburn was a gargantuanly terrible idea.
“We’re here now,” he said in his most jaded voice. “What do you propose to do?”
“First, I’d like to... more than anything, I want to... I...” She shot him a rueful look over the rim of her glass. “I have no idea.”
He lifted a brow. “Coming here was your plan. Surely you have some notion as to what would transpire once you got here.”
“I’ve never truly known what goes on in a gaming hell,” she confessed. “Da’s forever taking Dom to task for coming to places such as this one, so it always seemed forbidden and dangerous. Other than wagering on games of chance, I don’t know what or how it happens.”
He guided her around the room, letting her see what choices were available to her.
“Whatever you imagined,” he said simply as they walked, “do that.”
She stared at him. “Not difficult foryou, but for me, it’s another matter.”
“Perhaps for the other self you left behind,” he pointed out. “But you’re Salome now. Whatever Salome wants, Salome can have.”
Still, she hesitated, and her brow furrowed as if in frustration. “All this time,” she muttered, “I believed other people kept me in line, reining me in, but perhaps they’ve done such an effective job of telling me what I can’t do, now I tellmyselfwhat’s impossible.”
“Implanting the seeds of doubt in you, so they barely have to do the work themselves.” He twisted his mouth sardonically while shepherding her around a gentleman intent on drinking as many flutes of sparkling wine as the establishment would permit. “Seems to be the ways of families.”
“They’re not bad, my father and Dom. They want what’s best for me.”
“You defend those that keep you fettered.”
