Chapter 12
Every true rake ranked town amusements with cold precision.
A performance at Drury Lane or the Royal Opera was not merely tolerated; it was fiercely preferred. After all, the darkened tiers and extended acts afforded a gentleman an entire evening to appraise the sopranos and ballet dancers with a connoisseur’s eye—and quietly settle upon his next mistress.
Vauxhall Gardens was a favored haunt where raised hedge mazes and gravel paths offered discreet trysts with bored wives and eager widows. For formal balls and soirées, the social hierarchy grew more complex, while masked balls remained essential stops for every rogue and rake.
A rake rarely minded an extravagant, crowded ball—so long as the guest list promised diversion rather than duty.
Those rare affairs, however, demanded the utmost caution.
For mixed among the glittering demimonde and the reckless beauties were debutantes and starry-eyed bluestockings: proper young ladies armed with matrimonial ledgers, sharp wits, and the most dangerous delusion of all—the dream of reforming a rogue.
Kerr would rather take his chances with pirates in the middle of a sea storm than a marriage-minded miss.
Ballroom soirées and glittering dinner parties? Staunchly avoid. But velvet-draped musicales where hopeful young ladies showcased rehearsed talents? Those invitations went straight to the hearth fire, unread.
A private ball offered midnight supper, a crush of bodies, and a chance to lose oneself in the right woman on a terraced patio. Those rare, sought-after nights fell just a step below a masquerade.
The one Kerr currently attended happened to be the rare private ball, one he’d almost burned the invitation to.
Actually, he had been holding the cream-and-gold invitation to the calm flames of his hearth when his jovial brother, Greyhold, stormed in unannounced, stopped dead, and stared in horror from Kerr to the mantelpiece.
It had stung.
That was the exact moment Kerr realized the truth: his own damned fingers were smoldering. Cursing a black streak, he dropped the crisp formal invitation, missed the grate, watched the thick sheet curl into ash before grinding the embers beneath his boot heel.
He only succeeded in turning a bad situation worse, stamping a jagged, permanent black scar straight into the plush pile of his favorite thick, Turkey-red Wilton carpet.
Greyhold usually knew not to ask certain questions, and that moment at the hearth hadn’t been an exception.
After that spectacle, Kerr had no choice but to attend the private ball hosted by the Earl of Abington’s daughter and son-in-law—the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge.
Then, after days of Andromena running off from him as if he carried the plague, Kerr decided he was quite looking forward to the chase.
Because the chit owed him. She owed him…
Well, blast and damn. He didn’t know what.
An explanation? An apology—she’d likely hold her breath and pass out before giving him that. Answers. He wanted damn answers.
Kerr arrived right on time—before the minx—and endured an hour in the assembly line waiting for his name.
When it finally came, he promptly forgot it.
She had been swarmed by fawning admirers.
He wanted to jeer her for soaking up the attention, but she hadn’t even given him that satisfaction.
Instead, she had furtively sneaked off, leaving the affair—and him—to his own devices.
In every way.
Kerr glowered at his Heidsieck champagne, hating its fruity taste and wanting a strong navy-strength rum. Hiding behind a pillar near the exit, he watched flocks of young women scan the room to spot him.
Him.
One day an object of horror; a monster to be avoided. The next, the scandal sheets trumpeted his name. By God, even his grim wartime triumphs had been dragged back into the light—all because Andromena Smith had deigned to need saving.
I’m going to kill her.
No, he wouldn’t. If he did, she would cry just as she had almost done when that fool Abington rambled about his relics or when he praised her damned brilliant work.
And Kerr would have to say something extremely insulting again, so she turned back into the fiery hellion who unfurled her claws at him.
Which only created problems of another sort because whenever she snapped and hissed like a hellcat, Kerr got harder than a lad with his first doxy.
But that was preferable to her blasted tears. Or, he thought, anyway.
With Andromena Smith, it was always a breathless gamble: she would twist his meaning into an insult one second, then bat her eyes at accidental praise the next.
And he couldn’t even get close enough to figure out why.
All week he had tracked her—the fierce snap of her gaze, the defensive gather of her skirts, her silent retreat.
If she were any other woman, he might have believed it was all a coy act.
There was, however, not a single coy thing about Andromena.
She told a fellow exactly what she was thinking and precisely where he could go.
She was also the one woman who didn’t fall willingly into his arms, but had to be dragged into them.
Which was fine. More than fine, it was a bloody relief. The less time he spent with the chit, the longer he kept his sanity intact—and the safer they both were from his reckless touch.
Except…
He was going mad.
The image of the chit took root in both his waking and sleeping thoughts.
In the dark of his mind, he imagined her on his lap, finishing what they had started in the Rookeries; her gowns were pushed up, his trousers undone, and she rode him hard.
Not all his dreams began with her riding him.
Far worse, it started with him schooling the vexing virgin and relishing every moment before he took her.
He had claimed her every which way: pressed into a feathered mattress, hard against a stone wall, submerged in a porcelain tub, and upon his frigate as the waves rocked beneath them.
Even now, at the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge’s staid ball, Kerr’s blood heated and a familiar hunger ignited just recalling those debauched dreams.
Fortunately, lusting after a virgin in the middle of a ball was enough to kill an inconvenient erection.
That same virgin who captured their volatile embrace and gave it life in her book… his body tightening as he imagined her hands reliving it all while she wrote.
Kerr drew in a ragged breath.
Christ.
He finished his drink.
A uniformed servant was instantly there to take and replace.
Kerr returned to watching Andromena, or rather, the swarm of young bucks that stood like an erected wall between them.
The crowd parted as a tall, charming scoundrel pushed through. Kerr narrowed his eyes. Not a suitor, a fop, or a dandy. A fellow privateer.
A rival privateer.
And yet again, no protective mother, aunt, or sister stood guard. He ground his back teeth in frustration. What in hell was wrong with the lady’s foolish family?
Conveniently, a family member turned up as a place to direct his rage.
“Leave it to you to find the one place to hide at a private ball, Kerr.”
His free hand curled into an iron fist. “What in hell do you think you are doing?” he demanded. Kerr turned his focus on another deserving outlet for his outrage. “With all the harm the lady has nearly gotten herself into, not one of you thinks to stay at her damned side?”
“How very good it is to see you, too, Lord Kerr.” Andromena’s sister, Meghan smiled like he’d delivered a witty quip and not as if he’d berated—as she deserved.
“Kilmartin,” he snapped. “Blasted Kilmartin?”
At her husband’s side, Lady Culross went wide-eyed.
Kerr finished his drink. A uniformed servant was instantly there to take and replace it.
The dotty couple exchanged confused glances. Kerr jammed a finger forward, and the pair wisely followed the absurd, bunny-like hop Andromena and the scoundrel made toward each other.
The countess spoke for herself and her husband, dragging out her syllables: “What… of him?”
His neck went hot. She was reading far too much into his reply.
Nothing else could explain this sudden, inconvenient surge of protectiveness for the young miss—it was nothing more than worry, pure and simple.
He had once been a fragile creature himself, leaving him with a quiet, dangerous softness for such vulnerable souls.
Unlike Kerr at Eton, who had Culross to protect him, the reckless, na?ve young lady lacked anyone with the sense to guide her.
The lady’s recent foibles were a testament to that.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he ground out. “You’re wrong.”
“We didn’t say anything,” Culross spoke with an infuriating equanimity. “You appear to be doing fine enough carrying this entire conversation entirely on your—”
“How in God’s name will you let Kilmartin, of all gentlemen, near your reckless sister-in-law?”
At last, Culross’s expression settled into a proper gravity. “You are right,” he spoke quietly. “We both forget how scandalous the Allemande is.”
“Too bloody right it is. All the bloody hand-holding and—”
“Wicked turning,” the countess correctly added.
“Precisely!” Kerr searched for Andromena and Captain Kilmartin. He easily found them.
Her. Even with the blackguard standing half a foot taller, Kerr found her.
Draped in foamy pink organza and silk, its luminescent sleeves slipped below her shoulders, every inch embroidered with crystals. With every graceful movement, she glittered like a water nymph emerging from the sea.
Kerr pressed his lips to a thin, hard line.
That stunning gown, which dipped too deep at the bodice and revealed the creamy expanse of skin, ought to be outlawed.
Andromena’s fingers entwined, the roguish sailor’s right hand linked with her left, and vice versa in one of those aptly called ‘wicked turns’.