Roberta felt like moaning. Thankfully, Jemma was smiling and didn’t seem inclined to throw them all out.
Suddenly a large hand squeezed Roberta’s. “Don’t worry about it,” Damon said in her ear. “This house is big enough for all of Miggery’s Traveling Circus.”
Even as Damon spoke, her papa was delightedly accepting the duchess’s invitation to stay. “But only for a night or two,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind to open up my house. I have one, you know, child,” he said, turning to Roberta. “I expect you’ve forgotten that.”
Forgotten? How could she possibly have known that?
“A large one it is, on St. James’s Square as I recall,” he said, frowning a bit. “I inherited it from someone or other. My relatives have dropped like fleas in the past few years,” he told the company at large. “I’m composing a sort of universal poem of commiseration that can be applied to many occasions. It’s the only prudent thing to do.”
“But you will leave Roberta here with me, won’t you?” Jemma asked.
The marquess frowned. “I hadn’t thought—”
But Mrs. Grope proved herself a true friend. “If—” she said magnificently, viewing them all, a duke, an earl, a marquess, a duchess and Roberta—“I am to achieve the fame which I heartily deserve, I cannot be disturbed by the presence of a young lady in the house.”
“But dearest—” the marquess bleated.
She raised her hand. Just so did Moses part the Red Sea. “No!”
“It is for the best,” Jemma said.
“I agree,” Villiers put in, rather unexpectedly.
“You think so, do you? And why is that?” the marquess asked.
“I could not pay my addresses to a young lady living in the proximity of an actress,” he said, “even such an exquisite woman as Mrs. Grope.”
Mrs. Grope bowed her head magnificently, as one receiving her due. Damon’s hand fell from Roberta’s.
“Pay your addresses, eh?” her father said, looking rather deflated. “I suppose the world is coming to a place where I might have to give my only daughter to one who doesn’t understand poetry.”
Villiers looked at Roberta and she felt the thrill of it to the bottom of her spine. “She has not yet accepted my hand,” he said.
Roberta couldn’t think what to say. Was that a proposal?
“Doubtless she will consider your merits in due time,” her father said. “Roberta can look to the very highest in the land when she decides to choose a spouse.”
Villiers’s sardonic look indicated that he was the very highest in the land, but luckily, Fowle reentered the room and announced that the chambers had been prepared if Mrs. Grope and the marquess would be so kind as to follow him.
Jemma led the way, the marquess’s hand tucked in her arm, and Villiers held his arm out to Mrs. Grope. So Roberta and Damon followed. For some reason she felt rather shy about meeting his eyes.
He pulled her back as they were about to leave the room.
“Damme,” he said and she could hear incredulity in his voice. “What the devil are you about, Roberta?”
“What do you mean?”
“Villiers? How did you manage that?”
She bristled. “Need there be an explanation that involves trickery?” Although to tell the truth, she couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
Neither did Damon, obviously. He raised an eyebrow at her. “What in Hades did you do to the man, to get him to the point without witchcraft?”
She turned up her nose. “Why wouldn’t he wish to marry me? Don’t you think I’m desirable?”
The moment she said it, she knew she had said the wrong thing.
“You’re particularly desirable now that you’re almost engaged to someone else,” he said, and sure enough, there she was backed up against the silk paneled wall of the drawing room as Damon pushed the door shut behind Mrs. Grope.
“There’s nothing more desirable in the world than a woman planning to marry someone else,” he whispered, brushing his lips against hers.
She felt as if heat struck her in the face the moment he tasted her. Or perhaps it was the moment she tasted him. There was something deliciously wicked about kissing one man when another has almost asked you to marry him.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispered back. He kissed her harder. She discovered she was breathing in little pants.
“I should be doing this,” he said. His hands were on her breasts as if they belonged there. Her bodice skimmed below her nipples without putting up a fight. Damon was looking down at her with an odd little smile on his mouth and doing something with his hands.
“That—” she said foolishly.
“Feels good?” he asked, crooking one eyebrow.
“Interesting,” she choked.
With one swift movement he pulled down on her bodice again and it slipped below her right breast as simply as if it weren’t designed to do precisely the opposite. Her breast spilled into his hand.
“Roberta,” he said, and the huskiness in his voice made a strange warmth grow between her thighs. Or perhaps it was what he was doing with his thumb.
Roberta clutched his forearms. “This is scandalous,” she whispered.
“You’re not engaged yet,” he said, sounding happy. And uncaring. “Besides, it’s all the more delicious for being surreptitious.”
And then, while she was still figuring out what he meant because her brain seemed to have taken a little holiday, he laughed and said, “I’m writing poetry!”
Just when she would have kicked him in the ankle, his mouth replaced his hand at her breast. Roberta was no fool. There are times in life when sagging against the wall is exactly the right thing to do, and luckily one of his arms held her up.
Arching her back toward his mouth felt like the right thing too. And whimpering when he took that delicious warm mouth away.
“Darling,” he whispered
Her eyes opened lazily. “Yes?”
He pulled up her bodice and rather to Roberta’s surprise, it slid back into place as if it had always been there.
“Your father is doubtless wondering where you are. He is endearingly fond of you.”
Roberta didn’t feel like being a daughter. She felt like lying down, and she saw the same thought in his eyes. So she scowled at him. “You were no help to me whatsoever. I thought you were going to help me steer my father toward returning to the country.”
He tucked a stray curl back into the elaborate nest of curls her maids had created that morning. “It was impossible.”
“Why impossible?” she asked, feeling churlish.
“He loves you too much. Jemma and I never saw much of our parents except when my father lectured us about chess, but I can recognize parental love when I see it.”
“Because of Teddy,” she said as he opened the door.
“I should warn Teddy now,” Damon said, looking faintly horrified. “I’ll embarrass him in public, falling on my knees and imploring docile young ladies to marry him.”
Roberta sighed. “If only papa wasn’t so demonstrative. If only he didn’t cry so frequently.”