Chapter 5
Aphrodite was, as ever, a lively temple to carnal decadence.
Lively yet haunting music drifted from the grand salon, a low, sinuous thread beneath the buzz of laughter and the clink of crystal.
Perfume hung in the air, sweet as bruised peaches.
Sebastian felt the familiar shift that came whenever he crossed this threshold, as though the world beyond its doors had fallen away and the urge to unwind and indulge uncoiled through his body.
He had not meant to come, but habit and restlessness had carried him here.
The hall was crowded with gentlemen and beauties in silk peignoirs and smiles.
A pair of masked ladies, draped more in confidence than in clothing, measured him with frank interest. He acknowledged them with the faintest nod and let his gaze move on.
Not tonight. A figure detached from the flow near the card room.
Thomas, Earl of Radbourne, lifted a brow as if he had discovered an anomaly in his own drawing room.
Marriage had made him more settled and at ease; happiness had smoothed the old, jaded boredom from his eyes.
Even so, it still startled Sebastian to find him at Aphrodite, though Radbourne now came for company rather than temptation.
“It looks like you could use a drink,” Thomas said, grinning lazily.
“Or perhaps what you need is several rounds of wicked sport. Madam Rebecca has three new girls. Can you believe she tried to send them to me? I am astonished she has no fear of my darling wife carrying out her promise to skewer her for the audacity. Shall I make the introductions?”
“Not interested,” Sebastian said, scanning the room. “I am here for—”
His mind blanked, and he could not finish his sentence. What in God’s name was he doing at the pleasure palace?
“Your refusal explains Madam Rebecca’s despair,” drawled another lazy voice at his shoulder. “She swears she is losing patrons. She named you among the faithless, and I assured her she must be hallucinating.”
Sebastian turned and smiled despite himself. “Templeton.”
George, Viscount Templeton, was everything his enemies in the House of Lords feared and some of his friends secretly envied: a libertine who could skewer a bill with a phrase and charm a duchess out of a prejudice.
Tonight, he wore a black coat, a faintly amused mouth, and the look of a man who knew where all the good cards lay.
Sebastian had met him as a lad at Eton, and they had been fast friends and confidants ever since.
Templeton’s silver-dark gaze gleamed with its usual debauchery and wit. “I arrived with Grantham. I shall fetch him, ah…there is no need. Speak of the devil, and he obliges.”
Kenneth Collingwood, the Earl of Grantham, was another friend whom society had long since judged a scoundrel rather than a gentleman.
Yet he had never taken one of Aphrodite’s celebrated courtesans to his bed; Sebastian sometimes suspected Grantham attended solely to be an irreverent thorn in Madam Rebecca’s side.
“Come,” Templeton said. “The second-floor rooms are quieter. Radbourne, Grantham, and I shall rescue you from the boredom so evident in your gaze.”
Sebastian chuckled. They climbed the broad stairs, passing a coterie gathered at the landing to watch a dancer undulate behind a gauze screen.
The dancer’s shadow arched like a bow and brought a murmur from the crowd.
Sebastian did not slow. The private room they chose had walls the color of good claret and a long table set for faro.
Several lit candles pooled soft light upon green baize; a chandelier gilded the edges of a portrait of Aphrodite rising from the foam, painted with such frank delight that the goddess seemed about to step down and claim a chair.
Two courtesans, beautiful and scarcely dressed, lounged upon a chaise.
They brightened when the gentlemen entered.
“Not tonight, darlings,” Radbourne said, polite and clearly untempted. “We require privacy.”
They pouted prettily and drifted out, leaving behind a ghost of perfume and orange blossoms. A footman appeared with a tray.
They took brandy without speaking. Sebastian let the first sip burn a clean line down his throat.
For a time, he remained silent and let the tension unspool from his shoulders.
He dropped into an armchair by the fire and sprawled there, indolent and wholly ungentlemanly.
Radbourne settled into a chair and stretched his long legs. “Have you heard about Madam Rebecca’s latest scheme to wake the jaded?”
Sebastian frowned. As one of the silent investors in Aphrodite, Madam Rebecca usually shared the schemes she devised to make money and keep patrons eager. He dimly recalled her proposal last week and the role she wished him to play. Bloody hell.
Radbourne continued, “Rebecca claims she is losing patrons to ennui; many long-standing members are marrying or taking permanent mistresses, while others confess themselves bored. She means to give them something worth howling over.”
Templeton laughed. “We are all hoping for another titillating auction like last year’s.”
Sebastian arched a brow. “What will be the new source of delight for her clientele?”
“She is assembling a private art collection,” Radbourne said, swirling his glass.
“Paintings to titillate and shock. She wants real patrons captured in flagrante delicto. She says it will be the height of seduction and scandal. Anyone who wishes to view this titillating gallery must pay a premium for the privilege.”
Sebastian chuckled as the earlier conversation returned to him.
“Rebecca is nothing if not inventive; it will bring half of London’s scoundrels back to her doors.
Her note delivered to me earlier makes sense now; she wrote of a “most delightful indulgence.” She wants me to pose for her painter.
A trial, to discover whether the artist possesses sufficient skill, nerve, and discretion for Aphrodite. ”
Templeton’s smile sharpened. “Will you do it?”
“I might allow myself to be painted while tupping,” Sebastian said, voice dry. “But it is the last thing on my mind.”
“You do look distracted,” Templeton said lightly. “Cards may help. Or confession. I am a dreadful listener, but I can be bribed with an orgy later on.”
Radbourne gave Sebastian a more sober look. “What troubles you? We are here, should you wish to speak of it.”
Sebastian let the silence hold. Somewhere below, laughter rose and fell like a tide. “Three girls and one young woman appeared on my doorstep a few days ago. They claim to be my family.” In a clipped tone, he told them everything.
Grantham studied him. “Despite this indifferent facade you wear, you are bloody furious.”
Sebastian raked his fingers through his hair.
“My mother is unwell. It is why she has been sent to Bath. The physician warned that any severe shock might endanger her heart. If she learns my father kept another family, I believe it may kill her.” His grip tightened around the glass.
“She speaks of their marriage as the great love of her life. It is the reason Caroline refuses to marry without love and why my mother encourages the foolish hope. How am I to tell either of them that the man they worshipped betrayed them for years? That the man she still loves, mourns, speaks to as though he stands beside her, betrayed her faith so completely. I will not be the one to turn every cherished memory into a lie.”
“Then see that she never learns. Settle money upon the women and send them away,” Templeton said coldly. “You owe them nothing beyond silence and distance.”
“I have considered it more than once,” Sebastian said, finishing his drink in a single swallow. “But money and distance are merely a cleaner manner of tossing them to the wolves.”
Grantham tipped his head back, thinking. “If you help them and your mother discovers it, the wound will be cruel. If society discovers it, every gossip in London will delight in proving that the courtship and marriage once envied by half the ton were a sham.”
“I have considered every possibility, including the inevitable scandal,” Sebastian said. “Society is never so content as when it feeds upon someone else’s pain and ruination.”
Radbourne tilted his head. “What have you decided?”
“Nothing that survives more than an hour.” Sebastian set his glass down and looked into the fire as if it promised answers.
“When I look at them, I feel anger, not affection. Yet I cannot cast them out. Do I give them money and send them away? Establish dowries and trust that respectable men will overlook their birth? Hide them in the country and purchase the servants’ silence?
Every solution feels either inadequate or dangerous. ”
Templeton regarded him over the rim of his glass. “Attend to one fact: you are not required to do anything for them. Your only duty is to Lady Raine and Lady Caroline. To protect your family, you may let the wolves have them.”
Cold, ruthless sentiments, yet Sebastian had thought the same more than once. He reached for the decanter, refilled his glass, and lifted it to his mouth. He let the brandy warm his tongue and granted himself the charity of ten heartbeats.
Radbourne sighed. “What will you do?”
I have moved them for the moment to one of my townhouses in Russell Square and given the household a plausible story.
The servants will hold their tongues. A modiste will fit them out with proper wardrobes.
After that, I have no damn clue what to do with them.
The solicitor my father employed to manage the arrangement pretends there is no provision.
My father could be careless in some things; with money, he was exact.
If he loved them as his letters implied, he would not have left them to the wind.
Something is missing, or mislaid, or misused. ”
Templeton leaned back. “Dowries could be settled discreetly and quietly. Five thousand pounds apiece would make a rector’s son see the sun with new eyes and might tempt a conscientious second son from a respectable family.
Find a woman of impeccable standing to present them, and their birth need not be the first fact society learns. ”
Sebastian turned the notion over and found it wanting. Such an entanglement was not feasible, and he felt no call to involve himself so deeply in their lives.
Grantham poured himself a drink, a faint frown settling upon his features as his hazel eyes darkened in thought.
“Their illegitimacy will narrow their prospects sharply. No gentleman of consequence will risk the connection unless their relation to the Earl of Raine is known and publicly acknowledged.”
“And that will never come to pass,” Sebastian said, his tone edged with chilling indifference. “The connection must never become public. “Which means I must sever whatever connection exists between us without delay.”
The door opened after a discreet knock, and Madam Rebecca drifted in, red silk peignoir like smoke about her, diamonds caught in her hair as if she had shaken them down from the ceiling. Her smile was perfect.
“My lords,” she said, sinking into a sensual curtsy. “How delightful to find you all assembled.”
“Never say you have been pining for us,” Grantham replied, rising to kiss her hand. “Does this mean you will at last fall into my bed and favor me with your charms? I have long wished to tempt and corrupt you.”
“Ah,” Madam Rebecca murmured, her striking gray-blue eyes gleaming with wicked amusement. “How shocking that you imagine there remains anything for me to learn, Grantham. Even if there were, a young pup such as you could not teach it.”
“How you wound me,” he drawled, amusement glinting in his hazel gaze. “I am told you have never yet been brought to the pinnacle, that every challenger has failed abysmally. I could have you crying out within ten minutes. What am I saying? Five.”
Faint color touched Rebecca’s cheeks, and for a moment Sebastian was bemused. Was she blushing?
“I have no wish to indulge your flirtation, Grantham,” she drawled. “Find someone more susceptible to your particular species of wicked charm. It will never succeed with me. I have never found a sybarite half so fascinating as he finds himself.”
Yet from where Sebastian sat, he could see the quick, betraying flutter of her pulse at the delicate curve of her throat.
Sebastian found that very interesting indeed.
Grantham, for his part, regarded her with the keen focus of a hawk, while Rebecca maintained a composure her pulse had already betrayed.
“How I admire a challenge,” he murmured. “I confess myself an ardent devotee of luxury and carnal indulgence. I had thought you might relish reforming me of my wicked ways.”
She withdrew her hand from Grantham’s grasp and turned away without answering his provocation.
“Raine, I was hoping you’d come bearing good news about our little gallery. It is fair to say you are one of my most beautiful patrons, and more than a few of my girls have spoken fondly of your… endowment. I think many ladies would be delighted to behold such exquisite art.”
“Listen to you, attempting to rouse my jealousy,” Grantham drawled. “It very nearly succeeded, which I find warrants some introspection.”
Rebecca ignored him, though the flush in her cheeks deepened. “There will be veils, masks, and shadows. No faces revealed unless a gentleman wishes to be so bold. The patrons will only see what I allow. It will do wonders for your legend.”
“His legend can withstand a dull season,” Radbourne said, laughing.
Madam Rebecca’s glance slid to him and softened.
“Yours has been improved by matrimony. Give my respects to your lady. She sent word that if I so much as attempted to offer you any of my ladies, I would wake to find my pleasure palace reduced to ashes by morning. I have already sent a dozen roses in apology.”
“I will give her your regards,” Thomas said, warmth in his tone.
“My artist is visiting me tonight, and will soon arrive,” Rebecca said, shifting her regard to Sebastian. “I thought you might conduct the assessment I mentioned. I know no one better suited. Say you will assist me.”
Her careful emphasis pricked Sebastian’s curiosity. He rose. “Then I shall oblige.”
“Finally,” she murmured, “there is the wicked glint my ladies adore.”
He chuckled. This was why he had come: to drown duty and responsibility in an hour of illicit pleasure and forget the troublesome household that had entered his life unbidden. Tonight, he would indulge every appetite Aphrodite could satisfy, and he would not think of warm golden-brown eyes.