Well, she wasn’t so easily intimidated. She snorted softly and turned to look him in the eye. “No. No, I can’t conceive of a wrong so terrible that you would vilify your brother’s character to me.”
“Perhaps, then, your imagination is defective,” he said, his eyes hooded.
“Or perhaps it is you who is defective.”
“In your eyes I probably am. After all, I do not possess the perfections of my brother. I am not a leading member of parliament, and I do not have his beauty or his grace. And”—he leaned close again—“I do not have his lofty title.”
For a moment, she stared at him in disbelief; then she laughed softly under her breath. “Are you so jealous of him that you think I’m marrying your brother only for his title?”
She was gratified to see him jerk his head back, a scowl on his face. “I am not jealous—”
“No?” she interrupted him sweetly. “Then perhaps you’re merely a fool. Mandeville is an honorable man. A good man. And, yes, a man respected by his peers and by everyone he deals with, as well as my brother’s friend and ally. I am proud to be his fiancée.”
The dance broke them apart, and when they rejoined, he nodded stiffly. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I’m merely a fool.”
She blinked, caught off guard. The rogue she’d thought him would not admit so readily to a human failing.
He glanced at her, a corner of his mouth quirking up as if he knew her thoughts. “Will you tell Thomas about our meeting?”
“No.” She didn’t even have to think about it.
“That’s wise. As I’ve said, my brother would not think the better of you for your involvement.”
Uncertainty whispered in her mind. As much as Hero didn’t want to believe it of Mandeville, her fiancé might just jump to the wrong conclusion.
She shook off the thought and looked Reading in the eye. “It’s your reputation that I seek to preserve with your brother.”
He threw back his head and laughed, the sound rich and masculine, drawing stares from the other dancers. “Didn’t you know? I don’t have a reputation to preserve, my Lady Perfect. Put away your shield and sword; lay down your shining armor. There is no dragon to slay for me. Nothing to protect at all.”
“No?” she asked, sudden curiosity making her speak without forethought. She’d heard a few whispered rumors about her fiancé’s mysterious brother, but they’d been maddeningly vague. “Are you so irredeemable?”
“I am a veritable blackguard.” He circled her, pacing slowly to the music, whispering so only she could hear. “A seducer, a rake, the worst sort of profligate. I am notorious for my pleasures—I drink too much, wench with abandon, and belch in mixed company. I have no discretion, no morals, and no desire for either. I am, in short, the devil himself, and you, my dearest Lady Perfect, would do well to avoid my company at all costs.”
A BURST OF male laughter made Thomas Reading, the Marquess of Mandeville, glance at the dance floor. Griffin had thrown his head back as he laughed with unbecoming abandon at something Lady Hero had said. Fortunately, the lady appeared less amused. Still, Thomas couldn’t help the instinctive tightening of his shoulders.
Damn Griffin to hell.
“Your brother seems to be enjoying his dance with my sister,” Wakefield murmured.
Thomas looked at the duke and met cool brown eyes. It was always deucedly hard to puzzle out what Wakefield was thinking, but at the moment the man could’ve modeled for a male sphinx.
Thomas grunted and turned his gaze back to where Griffin paced about his intended bride. “He does indeed.”
Wakefield folded his arms across his chest. “Hero has been sheltered all her life—as is proper for her station—but her personal morals are of the highest. I know she will not fall even if presented with temptation.”
Thomas nodded, feeling a flush of mortification creep up his neck. He had an urge to tug at his neckcloth at the duke’s veiled admonition. “I believe you, Your Grace. Lady Hero has my complete faith, and I shall never treat her in any way other than with respect.”
“Good.” Wakefield clasped his hands behind his back and was silent a moment as they both watched the dancers. Then he said quietly, “The clause is ineffective.”
Thomas glanced at him sharply. In an effort to act against the scourge of gin drinking among the poor of London, they’d attached a gin clause to parliament’s Sweets Act last June. The clause gave a bounty to informers who brought in illegal gin sellers.
“Every day more gin sellers are hauled before the magistrates,” Thomas said slowly. “How is this ineffective?”
Wakefield shrugged. His voice was low and controlled, but his ire was plain. “They drag in the poor women who sell that devil’s drink in wheelbarrows. Wretches who make only pennies a day. What we need is to catch the men distilling the gin. The powerful ones who hide in the shadows growing rich off the backs of those poor women.”
Thomas pursed his lips. On the dance floor, Lady Hero was frowning at Griffin and the sight relieved him. “Catch enough of the gin sellers and it will impact the makers as well—I assure you. The clause is only months old. We must give it time, my friend.”
“I haven’t time,” Wakefield replied. “London is wasting under this plague. More citizens die than are born in our great city. Bodies litter the streets and garrets of the East End. Wives are deserted by their drink-destroyed husbands, babes killed by their drunken mothers, children abandoned to die or prostitute themselves. How can England prosper if the workers deteriorate in mind and body? We will wither and fail as a nation if gin is not eradicated from our city.”
Thomas knew that Wakefield was concerned about the gin problem, but to care so deeply about this one cause? Such passion didn’t fit the man he knew.
A movement from the other side of the dance floor caught his eye and scattered his thoughts. A woman stepped to the edge of the crowd. Her skirts were a flaming orange over primrose petticoats. Her hair was a deep, impossible wine-red, her lips and cheeks artificially rouged. Every man on that side of the dance floor watched her as she flirtatiously rapped her male companion’s arm with her folded fan. He said something, and she arched her white throat and laughed, making her breasts jiggle.
“… only if a man of substance is brought to account for gin making,” Wakefield said.