“His mother was Irish, I understand.”
“Yes. And he almost seems to take pride in rubbing our English noses in the fact. Insolent devil.” Dare smiled. “I thought Lasseter rash and foolhardy when he opened his club some four years ago. Had the gall to call it the Golden Fleece. But now I realize it was a cunning strategy. That name was like a flag to a bull-a challenge for the wild bucks who fancied themselves gamesters. They fell all over themselves at the hazard table, trying to best the bank. I wouldn’t be surprised if it made Lasseter a fortune. In any event, the Fleece now has the most select membership of any club in London.”
Dare guided the horses onto a quieter street and set them into a trot. “As for the rumors about him murdering his uncle? I suppose they could be true. Lasseter strikes me as dangerous enough. And I’ve heard a wild tale or two about his profligacy. Frankly, I don’t like to think of you being his wife, puss.”
Raven almost smiled at the irony-a rakehell like Wolverton, the Prince of Pleasure, concerned about profligacy.
“Nick won’t be happy to hear of it, either.” Dare grimaced. “He’ll have my head for allowing you to be abducted and forced to marry against your will.”
Nicholas Sabine was the American shipping magnate and privateer Raven had never been able to acknowledge as her half brother. He’d been her legal guardian for a time, before being charged with piracy by the British navy and sentenced to hang. Upon making his escape, he had come to England in disguise, in pursuit of the wife he’d married in desperation. But with war still raging between their two countries, he couldn’t remain. Nick had taken his beautiful English wife, Aurora, home to Virginia, enjoining his friends Dare and Lucian to take care of Raven.
Both men took their responsibility with deadly seriousness. Yet there was no way they could have anticipated or prevented what had happened to her.
“If I had known what that cur intended…” Dare’s handsome features hardened, and Raven knew he was speaking of Sean Lasseter. “Impressment was far too good for him.”
Raven shuddered at the reminder. She’d only just told Dare about the incident at Vauxhall Gardens last summer when Sean had accosted her. Until then, she herself had considered the younger Lasseter a mere nuisance for dogging her footsteps with his unwanted courtship. And in all fairness, he had paid a great price for his actions that night.
“He suffered a good deal during his impressment, Dare. Perhaps that is punishment enough.”
“Not nearly enough.” Turning his head, Dare focused a surprisingly stern gaze on her. “You aren’t possibly excusing what that bastard did?”
“No, not at all. But I see little point in crying over it or in seeking revenge. I am wed to his brother now and will have to carry on with my life.”
“I mean to have a word with your husband, to make certain he understands the consequences of mistreating you.”
“No, Dare, please, there is no need. I don’t believe he would mistreat me. And I would prefer to deal with this myself.”
He hesitated. “Very well, love. But at the first sign of trouble-”
“You will be the first I call to my rescue, I promise.”
He leaned over and pressed a chaste kiss on her cheek. “See that you do,” he warned. “It will be difficult enough to explain to Nick how I failed him. If I allowed any further harm to come to you, he would have not only my head but other delicate parts of my anatomy that I would prefer to keep intact.”
She dreamed of Kell that night. Not intentionally, the way she did her pirate, but just as powerfully. His sensual passion invaded her body, her mind, her very senses, a dark lover who left her gasping… Raven woke, struggling for breath, fighting against the feeling of being overwhelmed.
She would have liked to forget her new husband’s very existence, and yet there were appearances to consider. At the very least she would have to produce Kell for the ball being planned in their honor. But she had no opportunity to ask for his escort until five days after their unexpected union, when she returned home from her morning ride.
Upon being informed that Kell was still in his rooms, she went up to her bedchamber, intending to enter his by way of their adjoining dressing room. She walked in on him just as he was emerging from his bath.
Kell froze at her unexpected entrance while Raven instantly came to halt, staring at the spellbinding sight of his naked male body. Her fantasy lover in the flesh.
His splendid anatomy was the stuff of her most erotic dreams. The powerful play of sleek muscles in his arms and shoulders. The crystals of water glistening in the dark hair of his chest, dripping in rivulets down his hard, flat abdomen to his groin…
Her breath caught as her attention was drawn to that masculine flesh that could give such wild pleasure. His virile maleness made her pulse race and her throat go dry. Worse, it made her recall their wedding night and the ecstasy they had shared.
For an instant she saw the same vivid memory flare in Kell’s dark eyes. But then he casually picked up a towel and draped it around his narrow hips and lean flanks.
“Did you ever consider knocking?”
Her cheeks flushed scarlet. “I beg your pardon…” she stammered. “I didn’t realize…I thought…”
He had not yet shaved, and a bluish black shadow darkened his jaw, accenting the groove in his cheek when his mouth curled at the corner. “Did you want something of me, madam wife?”
“It can wait,” Raven croaked.
Backing out, she shut the dressing room door quickly, but the sight of Kell’s magnificent nudity remained imprinted on her mind. It was only hours later that she realized she’d forgotten in the awkwardness of the moment what she had intended to ask him.
When two more days passed and she still had not managed to have a private word with her husband, Raven realized she would have to go to him.
Girding her loins for battle, as the saying went, she set out for the gaming club on St. James Street. She wore a veil and hid behind the anonymity of a closed carriage, and she took O’Malley with her for protection. But still she felt strangely tense as she mounted the front steps to the house and raised the door knocker.
Some ladies considered it a fashionable diversion to attend a gaming hell, but she had never done so, unwilling to risk her reputation when she was so close to achieving her goal of marrying into the nobility.
Now she had far less to lose. So why did she feel as if she were engaged in a forbidden sin, her heart beating as if she had run a great distance? She didn’t like to think it was in anticipation of seeing her husband again. More likely, her erratic pulse was caused by her remembrance of the passionate night she’d recently spent here in Kell’s bed.
A brute of a doorman opened the door. His hulking frame resembled O’Malley’s, but this man might once have been a pugilist, for his nose was set crookedly and he was missing a front tooth.
She wasn’t required to deal with him, however, for a stately majordomo appeared directly.
“May I help you, madam?” the august servant queried.
“I am Mrs. Lasseter. I should like to speak to my husband.”
A flash of surprise and disapproval crossed his face before he schooled his features to impassivity. “I will ask if Mr. Lasseter is receiving.”
Refusing to be rebuffed, Raven stepped inside. “I prefer not to be kept waiting on the doorstep.”
“Very well, madam. If you will come with me.”
She followed him, not upstairs as she expected, but to the nether reaches of the large gaming house. Along the way, she passed several elegant chambers, similar to those of the more famous gentlemen’s clubs like White’s and Boodle’s she had heard described: a library boasting gleaming mahogany shelves lined with leather-bound tomes; a large dining room with several tables set with gleaming crystal and china; three smaller rooms arranged, possibly, for private games of cards; and finally what must be the public gaming room, where vast fortunes were won and lost.