He sidled closer and stood on the dance floor side of the statue, where he wouldn't be seen but could peer from behind the exaggeratedly endowed naked man by tilting his head to the left a little. There were two women, both masked and wearing very low cut and rather sheer gowns. The woman dressed in red tugged at the bodice of her high-waisted gown, but to no avail. The skimpy strip of red fabric was barely wide enough to stretch across the woman’s ample bosom and the tiny edging of lace refused to budge. Full-breasted ladies had always appealed to Brent, despite him marrying a lady whose breasts hadn’t increased past a small handful even when swollen during pregnancy. A closer look was needed. He couldn’t say for sure, but he thought Candace’s breasts were smaller than this lady’s. The thought of Candace slipping away from the safety of her home and mixing with these people dismayed him and would shock her father. However, the image of his sweet Lillian entering this den of iniquity confused, bewildered, and terrified him.
He looked again, on one hand cursing masked balls because he couldn’t see the faces and on the other, blessing those same masks for preserving anonymity. Lillian had large bosoms, so beautifully rounded that he’d often drawn on every ounce of willpower that he possessed to focus on her eyes when they spoke, rather than act the cad and drop his gaze to her magnificent chest.
He was no saint and he knew his limits. Knew he’d struggle to drag his gaze upwards if he even once viewed her incredible breasts at close range. Far better for his sanity and her modesty to admire the size and shape of her breasts at a respectable distance, and not risk doing something foolish. Schoolboys drooled when a maid bent to her work and inadvertently exposed the tops of milky-whole breasts, but Brent was well over thirty and hoped he was mature enough to have put his drooling days behind him. Though to be honest, if Lillian bent over and revealed her creamy flesh to his hungry eyes, he was likely to regress and gawk and gape like the gangly youth he’d once been.
Many years ago, he’d set himself strict limits with regards to Lillian and her sisters and he’d kept to his self-imposed rules. Other men stared at Lillian, and her beautiful sisters, though two of them were barely out of the schoolroom, but he’d always been drawn to women with substance and experience of the world, rather than blushing girls. Which, of course, was his present problem. Was one of these scantily clad women one of the ladies he knew? He had no definite proof, so he moved even closer to the two ladies.
Lillian was his best friend, plus a beautiful woman with a seductive feminine form and, right at this moment and in his direct line of sight, a pair of familiar bountiful breasts spilled over the top of a too-small red bodice. He blinked, and looked again. Heaven help him, it was Lillian. His friend who’d been targeted by unscrupulous women who, wanting to pull her down a peg or two, had blamed her for her husband’s impetuous nature. A titled lady who, according to convention, should be secluded from society while she mourned her husband. Lillian, his Lillian, stood before him drawing the eye of every discerning gentleman at a courtesan’s ball. Shock robbed him of breath and froze him in place. His head spun as he tried to imagine why she’d come here, and with whom.
As a duke’s daughter, she’d been taught the rules for mourning and for the behavior of widows all her life. A minimum of six months wearing black and withdrawing from society, followed by another six months wearing mauve and lavender and socializing only with family and close friends. Brent could think of no reason why she’d be here, flaunting herself in that red slip of a gown. What had possessed her to attend a ball, any ball, so soon after her husband’s demise?
More importantly, Brent’s mind was so numb that he couldn’t formulate a plan to hadn’t smuggle her out and away from the dance floor before masks were removed and someone recognized her as the duke’s daughter. Or before one of the lecherous men present realized that those were Lillian’s breasts squeezing past them and through the crowded room.
First step was to uncover the identity of her companion, a woman insensitive enough to introduce an innocent to this sort of event. Couples were finding quiet corners and getting to know each other better, much better. Some of the ladies, and he used that term loosely, had already shed layers of clothing and their remaining garments were so thin that they revealed rather than concealed their shapes. Personally, he preferred to unwrap his presents, piece by piece, and he liked to do it in private rather than in an overcrowded room full of peers he didn’t particularly like and took great pains to avoid.
Looking towards Lillian’s position, Brent cursed his inattentiveness. The lady in red and her companion had disappeared. He pushed between companionable couples, past clutches of leering youths, and dodged ladies of the night who were advertising their wares so blatantly that the slightest movement would topple their breasts out of their bodices and into full view. Hell, if that green buck on his right peered any further down the neckline of that redhead’s gown, they’d need to haul him out by his boots.