Jane wasn’t about to drive directly home with her intoxicated cousin in the carriage. It was far too probable that he’d accidentally let it slip that she hadn’t attended a perfectly respectable soiree at Upper Wimpole Street like she’d told her parents.
Of course, it was equally probable that the Viscount and Viscountess of Hollybrook would dismiss his drunken rambling. Their nephew rarely fell under their notice. In fact, they hardly knew their own children existed. For most of their lives, Jane and her seven younger brothers and three younger sisters—the horde, as she affectionately called them—had been very much on their own.
Nevertheless, there was one thing that Lord and Lady Hollybrook could never abide, and that was an unfavorable light shining on the family name.
As such, Jane had learned to embrace her invisibility since entering society. And until tonight, she’d never come close to ruination.
Newton’s apple! Who’d have thought that plain Jane Pickerington would ever be alone in a scoundrel’s bedchamber? A breath of astonishment escaped her lips in a puff of lamplight-gilded mist.
She drove by rote through the streets, distracted by her thoughts. With her hands gripping the reins, her fingertips tingled at the recollection of touching his warm, bare skin. And he had touched her too, in ways that no man—pink or otherwise—had ever done.
She should have stopped him, she knew. But the sensations had been so startlingly unfamiliar that she’d been unable to resist the opportunity to explore them further. Her pulse had reacted with a foreign and pleasantly labored arrhythmia. Her nerve endings had seemed to multiply beneath her skin, welcoming the heated press of his hands over her hips and midriff with exhilarated enthusiasm. Even her inner organs quivered in heady delight.
In fact, if not for the somewhat alarming giddiness—which surely had resulted from a series of shallow breaths—she may have decided to see what would happen next. For research purposes, of course.
In hindsight, however, she doubted Raven had any intention to do more. His flirtations had coincided too conveniently with her probing questions. It was clear he’d only meant to distract her. And, therefore, the guarded scoundrel’s caresses had been little more than a blockade.
She closed her eyes briefly, acknowledging this truth.
Then, all at once, the excitement of the night began to take its toll and weariness crashed over her on a great yawn.
It was no wonder, for she hadn’t slept in twenty-two hours. So she decided to drive to Upper Wimpole Street, toward the modest brick town house where she was supposed to have dined.
Seeing the pale golden glow of a lamp beyond the white framing of a narrow second-story window, she smiled with gratitude. Her friend was already awake. Then again, it was nearing five o’clock in the morning and Elodie Parrish was a notoriously early riser.
If there was anyone who would be eager to learn all about her findings on the habits of the primal male, it was one of her co-authors. Not only that, but a short visit would allow Jane to rest her eyes while her oblivious, slumbering cousin found sobriety.
Leaving Duncan to the land of Nod, Jane stole inside the town house through the servant’s entrance by way of the small back garden. She crept up the stairs to Ellie’s room, making certain not to disturb either of the spinster aunts whose chamber doors flanked the wainscoted hall just beyond the shadowed portraits of their niece’s late parents.
Scratching quietly on Ellie’s door, Jane turned the knob. She saw her friend at the vanity table, tucking a tortoiseshell comb into her twisted mane of glossy black hair, and already dressed in a morning gown of apricot taffeta even before the servants were about.
Catching a movement in the looking glass, Ellie turned with a start, amber eyes wide.
“Jane!” Then her breathless exclamation turned accusatory in a blink. “Whatever have you done this time? If I’m not mistaken, you’re wearing evening attire. Please don’t tell me you’ve stayed out all night . . . and without me.”
Jane held a finger to her lips and closed the door with a quiet click. “I had to this time.”
“Had to,” Ellie tutted. “You know very well that I had no engagement last evening.”
Crossing the room with familiarity, Jane ensconced herself in the window seat. As she spoke, she issued an inconsequential shrug to lessen the alarm she knew would follow. “Well, I knew you would not approve of this particular errand.”
“Surely, it cannot be worse than when you . . .” Ellie’s voice faded and her next words came out in the barest whisper. “You went through with it, didn’t you? That preposterous idea you blurted out last week about visiting a . . . a . . .”
“Take a breath, Ellie. It was only a brothel.”
In the steady blue flame of the oil lamp, Ellie’s porcelain skin appeared ghostly beneath her dark fringe, and a whimper of distress escaped her.
Jane sighed. “This reaction is precisely the reason I didn’t tell you that I’d already made up my mind about going. You do have a tendency toward fatalism, after all.”
“I should think it understandable in this particular instance. You just casually told me that you’ve broken into a house of ill repute—this very evening—as if it was nothing more than a shopping excursion for ribbons and gloves.” Ellie scoffed, her concern rapidly altering to irritation as twin spots of pink rose to her cheeks.
Accustomed to these diatribes, Jane eased back against the recessed shutters and tucked her feet beneath her. She was far too tired to argue. “Every subject requires a firmly established foundation of knowledge. Especially this one.”
“Perhaps that is the problem. You have convinced yourself that all knowledge is good.”
“And it is.”
“No, it isn’t. After years of listening to sermons about Eve, I’m sure of it,” Ellie said, lamenting. “Oh, couldn’t we return to a time when all I had to worry about was you setting yourself on fire? Or kidnapping Lord Holt off the street?”
Then Ellie stood and began pacing the floor while wringing her hands. Once she was in a dither, it was nearly impossible to get her out of it.
“That kidnapping was an accident and you were part of it,” Jane reminded on a yawn.
“Hmph. Well, it was your idea to tie him up and put a sack over his head. I wanted to release him straightaway.”
Jane flitted her fingers offhandedly and rested her heavy lashes against her cheeks for a moment. “It all worked out well enough in the end. After all, he married our Winn and they are still basking in the glow of nuptial bliss on their honeymoon.”
“But it could have been much worse. Oh, and I should hate to think about what might have happened to you tonight!” Ellie exclaimed, each breathy syllable enmeshed with fresh, well-rested dread. “A brothel, Jane? How could you! You might have been ruined just like our dear Prue then eschewed from London like a criminal. And all she had done was fall for the charms of a disreputable rake, certainly nothing compared to this. The loneliness in her latest letter should have served as warning enough for you to reconsider your foolish errand.”
Jane recalled the last lines of the letter, as if she were staring at the page right then.
I know you would not have been swayed by moonlight and soft words. No, you would have kept your head firmly on your shoulders and saved yourself. And, therefore, you would never need to live your days from one letter to the next.
Until the next . . .
Your Friend,
Prudence Thorogood
Jane expelled a slow breath, thinking carefully about her decisions this evening. Yes, her errand had been dangerous. But she wasn’t filled with doubt and repentance. Quite the opposite, in fact. The words in the letter only reinvigorated her determination.
“Prue’s situation reaffirms that the risks I took tonight will only serve a greater purpose in the future, once we finish our book.”
“You and I know very well that no one will print it if there’s a single mention of”—Ellie cast a fretful glance over her shoulder to the closed bedchamber door before whispering—“prostitution. As women, we are taught to pretend we’ve never heard of the practice.”
“I wonder if there are a pair of prostitutes having a conversation right this instant, pretending they’ve never heard of debutantes.”
“Do be serious, Jane.”
Still in hysterics, Ellie continued pacing back and forth between the rosewood vanity and a mossy green canopied bed. Her skirts shushed loud enough to rival a squirrel crunching through a walnut shell.
Blocking out the noise, Jane closed her eyes again and lifted her shoulders in a soundless shrug. “We’ll simply use veiled references in the book.”
“Veiled? They would need to be stitched in a shroud if we expect anyone like the persnickety Miss Churchouse to teach a lesson in her class. She nearly had an apoplexy when you inquired about the acceptable moment for a gentleman to press a lady’s hand. And the answer was never.”
“Which is likely the reason she is still Miss Churchouse,” Jane said with a smirk. But when her attempt at humor was met with silence, she cracked one eye open to see her friend glaring at her. In her own defense, she said, “I’ll have you know, I gained valuable research. Sometimes calculated risks must be taken. After all, we’re doing this for our own friends as well as for ourselves.”
“If you ask me, you are doing this more to satisfy your own rapacious curiosity,” Ellie sniffed. “And you know what happened to the cat.”
It was not the first—or even the fiftieth—time Jane had heard this argument. “Yes, yes. The poor fabled creature was killed by inquisitiveness. But instead of always thinking about that one singular feline, try to concentrate on the millions of others with nine lives, hmm?”
“Then you are likely down to your last one.”
“Nonsense. I’m certain I have at least . . .” She paused, mentally recalling the number of experiments that had gone awry and ticking them off one by one. But when she ran out of fingers, she cleared her throat. “Well, the number doesn’t really matter. Every misstep has offered new insights.”
“Perfect. That’s precisely how I would have comforted your brothers and sisters if you’d been caught tonight. Never fear, children, your sister likely gained some ‘new insights’ before her untimely demise.”
“I’m certain that Death isn’t looming nearby with a scythe in a skeletal grip the way you are forever thinking he is,” Jane said with nonchalance as if the chastisement hadn’t struck a chord within her. But it had.
She loved her siblings dearly and couldn’t imagine ever being separated from them. Before she’d even entered society, she’d vowed never to wed a man who didn’t love her family. And after Prue’s unfortunate expulsion, Jane had also decided never to allow herself to be seduced outside of marriage and sent to live apart from them.
Not that it had ever been a viable consideration. Of the three admirers who’d demonstrated a passing interest in being invited to tea, each were quickly frightened away as soon as they’d met the horde. And since she hardly inspired men with the desire to dance with her at assemblies, let alone conjure illicit fantasies, she’d been certain imminent seduction was an impossibility.
Of course, she’d never once imagined herself venturing into a scoundrel’s bedchamber. And, had he been genuinely interested in seducing her, she might have need to worry. But in the end, as always, her plainness had been her virtue’s savior.
“I should hate to think of what might have happened if you’d encountered a man who was more determined than you,” Ellie said, as if reading her mind.
“Actually, I did,” she said, matter-of-fact. But seeing her friend’s eyes alter from almond-shaped, to round and stark like amber gems dropped in snow, Jane realized how her statement must have sounded. “Not more determined. Perhaps, similarly would be a better adverb. I left unscathed. Well, minus a glove but missing nothing irreparable. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say the gray-eyed scoundrel was quite chivalrous at times and . . . Oh, bother.”
Ellie had gone still and white as paste, her breaths shallow like froth on a pot of boiling potatoes. Her fingertips were fanned out over her lips as if to stop a sudden torrent of unwarranted, retrospective panic.
Jane began hastily fishing through her reticule until her hand closed around a brown flacon. Standing, she lifted it and removed the stopper. “Breathe, Ellie, or you’ll force me to deploy this vinaigrette.”
Her hyperventilating friend’s porcelain features grimaced in swift distaste. “Put that away, if you please. The last time you waved it under my nose, I couldn’t smell anything for a week.”
Jane took no offense. Even though it was her own concoction, she wasn’t yet satisfied with the results.
Dropping it into her bag again, she watched absently as Ellie walked over to her bed, pulled back the coverlet, and slid in—fully dressed—and closed her eyes tightly.
The melodramatic scene caused a spark of mirth to erupt in Jane. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve determined that this has all been a terrible dream and I am preparing myself to awaken at any moment.”
Jane shook her head in fond exasperation and glanced out the window to see her cousin had emerged. The lantern light cast slanted shadows over his squared jaw and confused expression as he scratched his chin and gazed from one town house to the next.
“I’d better go before Duncan decides to drive off without me. I’ll have to share the details from my errand with you on the morrow. And trust me, they aren’t as dire as you might imagine.” Especially since she’d just decided to keep the more salacious aspects of what happened at his bedside to herself.
What Ellie didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, she thought as she went to the door.
“Jane,” her friend sleepily called, halting her for the moment. Ellie turned her head on the pillow, her gaze curious despite her fatalistic fears. “What did it feel like when you met the gray-eyed scoundrel? Was it different than meeting an average gentleman?”
Jane considered her answer carefully, making a mental note of the sudden escalation of her pulse as she pictured Raven’s face. How peculiar.
After forty-seven rapid beats, she said, “Do you remember when it was our last day at the academy and Prue and Winnie and you and I were being terribly silly and dancing the waltz until we were all so dizzy we had to lie on the grass for our heads to stop spinning?”
“I was certain we were all going to die of some strange spinning brain fever.”
“Well, I felt like that again tonight,” she admitted and her cheeks grew hot. “What do you think it could mean? Part of me fears that it is a warning from my mind to steer clear of him. But the other part wants to spin around in circles and laugh.”
Ellie closed her eyes on a fretful sigh. “I think you should avoid anything that makes your head spin. It almost always means something dire is about to happen.”