Every Scandalous Secret Read Free

sideburns that emphasized his angular cheeks. Though not as tall as Lord Swanley, he had enough height to make him rise above most of the other men. With his lean, compact build, she found herself thinking that his clothing restrained him, hid his true nature. She could easily imagine what lay beneath, the long line of muscle that smoothly intersected with the next, molded over bone, the functionality of the human form capable of its own kind of beauty.
    She flushed, then looked down at her fingers, which she’d been twisting together, forcing them to relax before anyone else noticed. Often, she found herself studying the subjects she would draw just like this—but that could never include Leo Wade. She did not want to even attempt to capture those green eyes, full of mischief and laughter. The world was a place he played in—he had no intellectual interests that she’d ever heard of. He cared little for propriety or decency.
    And he was chasing her, she thought, surprised to feel a touch of exhilaration rather than dread.
    Mr. Wade had such a scandalous reputation in Society, that even she, an unmarried woman, had heard some of the rumors. More than once, he’d snuck a member of the demimonde into balls held by the most prominent of peers. He gambled and drank almost every night away. He lured ladies onto shadowed terraces and appeared unmasked at Vauxhall Gardens, only to disappear into the darkness. Susanna knew well enough what sort of assignations happened in such a scandalous place.
    But how could she pass judgment? Not six nights ago, she’d tried to steal a painting off the wall in a gentlemen’s club—wearing boy’s clothing to hide her identity. She could have groaned her mortification. But she and her sister and cousin had been desperate, forced into a reckless adventure that had ended with them being caught by Mr. Wade, Lord Parkhurst—and Peter Derby, the man she knew the best of the three, and the last she had wished to see.
    The men were foxed, the lot of them, or they’d never have challenged each other to that scandalous wager, that even now she could barely think about let alone discuss aloud. Susanna had been trapped into accepting.
    After that, she’d known Mr. Wade might follow her from London—but never guessed he’d so boldly manage an invitation to an exclusive event! Only part of her felt dismayed—another part felt a sense of elation that he would risk censure. Even though he was considered a scoundrel, he’d never done quite enough for people to forget that his brother was Viscount Wade, an influential member of the House of Lords, regardless of his blindness.
    When would Mr. Wade use up the passes Society seemed to keep giving him? He won so often at cards that more than once there’d been rumors of cheating, which he’d amiably denied, and proof had never been discovered. No challenges to a duel for Mr. Wade.
    And the women—she’d heard that he had mistresses through the years, even more than one at a time! Again, his preference for loose women was not all that unusual in the ton, but his openness about it surely was. Although there were highly moral peers who would not invite him to their dinners, others—including industrialists—had no such problem. Mr. Wade didn’t care where he enjoyed himself, as long as he did.
    If only she could stop looking at him.
    It was the artist in her, she assured herself. There were other men equally as handsome to admire. She had not come to the Bramfield house party simply to evade Mr. Wade. She had promised her brother Matthew that she would give the eligible gentlemen another chance to impress her, and she never went back on a promise. Matthew and his wife Emily had risked much to be together, including a false marriage and a secret elopement no one in the family would ever know about except her. Susanna would have been content with her life, her art, her work for her father, until she saw the special happiness that the two of them