Millie had timed her question perfectly: That precise moment, the brougham stopped before the Queensberry residence and no more was said of Isabelle Pelham Englewood or her children, as they entered the house and greeted the gathered friends and acquaintances.
Much to Helena’s displeasure, Viscount Hastings was also present. Hastings was Fitz’s best friend and the one who had informed her family of Helena’s affair—after he’d swindled a kiss from Helena on the pretense of keeping her secret. His cheeky rationale was that he’d only promised to conceal the identity of her lover, not to hold silent on the affair itself.
Fortunately he had not been seated next to her at dinner—she was not to be trusted with implements that could stab him in the eye when she was exposed to his presence for more than a quarter hour at a time. But after dinner, when the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, he did not wait long before approaching her.
She’d been sharing a chaise longue with Millie and Mrs. Queensberry, who greeted Hastings with great cordiality, then, as if by conspiracy, both rose to mingle elsewhere in the room.
Hastings sat down and braced his arm along the back of the chaise, quite effectively letting it be known he did not want anyone else to join them.
“You look frustrated, Miss Fitzhugh.” He lowered his voice. “Has your bed been empty of late?”
He knew very well she’d been watched more closely than prices on the stock exchange. She couldn’t smuggle a hamster into her bed, let alone a man.
“You look anemic, Hastings,” she said. “Have you been leaving the belles of England breathlessly unsatisfied again?”
He grinned. “Ah, so you know what it is like to be breathlessly unsatisfied. I expected as little from Andrew Martin.”
Her tone was pointed. “As little as you expect from yourself, no doubt.”
He sighed exaggeratedly. “Miss Fitzhugh, you disparage me so, when I’ve only ever sung your praises.”
“Well, we all do what we must,” she said with sweet venom.
He didn’t reply—not in words, at least.
The vast majority of the time, she dismissed him without a second thought. But then he’d gaze upon her with that slight smile about his lips and a hundred dirty thoughts on his mind, and she’d find herself fighting something that came close to being butterflies in her stomach.
He’d rowed for Eton and Oxford and still possessed that powerful rower’s physique. The night he’d confronted her about her affair, when she’d allowed him to press her into a wall and kiss her, she’d felt his strength and muscularity all too clearly.
“I’m looking for a publisher,” he said abruptly.
She had to yank herself out of the memory of their midnight kiss. “I didn’t know you were literate.”
He tsked. “My dear Miss Fitzhugh, were Byron to come back to life today, he’d take a club to his good foot, out of jealousy of my brilliance.”
She had a horrible thought. “Please don’t tell me you write verse.”
“Good gracious, no. I’m a novelist.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “I do not publish fiction.”
He was undeterred. “Then consider it a memoir.”
“I fail to see what you have done in your life that is worth setting down in print.”
“Did I not mention that it is an erotic novel—or an erotic memoir, as it may be?”
“And you think that’s something suitable for me to publish?”
“Why not? You need books that sell, to subsidize Mr. Martin’s histories.”
“That does not mean I am willing to stamp the name of my firm on pornography.”
He leaned back, a look of mock consternation on his face. “My dear Miss Fitzhugh, everything that arouses you is not pornography.”
Something hot swept over her. Ire, yes—but perhaps not entirely. She leaned in toward him, making sure she dipped her chest enough to give him a straight line of sight down her décolletage, and whispered, “You are wrong, Hastings. It is only pornography that arouses me.”
As his eyes widened in surprise, she rose, swept aside the skirts of her dress, and left him on the chaise longue by himself.
May I have a moment of your time?” asked Fitz.
Helena had gone to her room the moment they’d returned. Fitz’s wife, after speaking to their housekeeper, had also started up the stairs.
She turned around. “Certainly, my lord.”
He liked her slightly arch tone. When they first married, he’d thought her as bland as water, whereas Isabelle had been more intoxicating than the finest whisky. But he’d since come to realize that his wife possessed a dry wit, a quick mind, and an ironic view of the world.
“Do you suppose it has ever occurred to Hastings,” she asked, as she descended the steps, “that cynical mockery might not be the best way to court our Helena?”
Pearls and diamonds gleamed in her hair: His countess was not at all averse to some glamour in the evening. “I dare say it occurs to him daily, but he is too proud to alter his approach.”