Pleasure For Pleasure Read Free Page A

imagine how Hellgate had time for anything other than dalliance. Why, I’m only on the seventh chapter and his behavior is beyond scandalous.”
    â€œI think the true wonder is that Hellgate wasn’t compromised and forced into marriage,” Josie said. “Daisy Peckery’s mother allowed her to read it, and Daisy said that Hellgate bedded any number of young, unmarried women.”
    â€œAnother reason why a similarity between my brother and Hellgate should be dismissed at once,” Griselda pointed out. “Mayne has only slept with married women.”
    â€œA wise decision on his part,” Josie said. “From the reading I’ve done, together with my observations of the ton in the last month, I would say that any man engaging in indelicate behavior around a young, unmarried woman is extremely imprudent. All sorts of marriages result from the most innocent, if foolish, kinds of dalliance.”
    â€œI can attest to that,” Annabel put in. She had married her husband after a scandal broke in a gossip column.
    â€œIn fact,” Josie added, “by my estimation a woman who does not have a solid offer would be extremely foolish not to engage in a measured amount of imprudent behavior.”
    Suddenly she realized they were all looking at her.
    â€œNo one has made the slightest approach to me,” she pointed out. “My remarks were intended to be purely theoretical.”
    â€œI was remarkably fortunate to find myself paired with Ewan,” Annabel pointed out, frowning at Josie. “Other young women have not been so contented with a choice made rashly and under difficult circumstances.”
    â€œI understand that,” Josie said. But inside she felt all the frustration of a theorist who has worked out a brilliant theory—and been given no material on which to practice. She could hardly create a scandal when men wouldn’t go anywhere near the Scottish Sausage.
    And yet even sausages had to get married. More and more, she thought that she would have to obtain a husband in a less-than-honorable fashion. Of course, she didn’t mean to share that salient fact with her sisters.
    Annabel turned to Tess and Imogen. “So how long have you two been aware that Josie was planning to create a scandal?”
    Imogen popped a grape in her mouth. “I should think she came up with the idea about a year ago, didn’t you, Josie?”
    â€œActually,” Tess corrected her, “I would place Josie’sresolution about the time she first began reading all those novels printed by the Minerva Press.”
    Josie gave a mental shrug. So her plans were known to the family—and now to Griselda, who was looking up from her book, rather startled.
    â€œThere is a trifling detail that you have overlooked,” Josie said.
    â€œAnd what may that be?” Annabel asked.
    â€œIt takes two to create a scandal, and since no man will even dance with me, I think the Essex family is likely to be free from the taint of a contrived marriage.”
    â€œI certainly hope so.”
    â€œI should amend that: yet another contrived marriage,” Josie said. And then ducked when Imogen threw a grape at her.

2
    From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the First
    Perhaps others who embark on a life marked by Sins of the Flesh realize in their infancy that they are born to a life of notorious liaisons. I, Dear Reader, was raised in blissful ignorance of my future infamy.
    In fact, it wasn’t until the tender years of my youth, when I in all my innocence visited the Court of St. James—oh, I loathe to set down the words—that I met a duchess. The episode of the green stockings is known to some, but I can tell you now that…

    St. Paul’s Cathedral
London
    I t was a serious wedding, plump with pomp and circumstance. Imogen made her way up the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral to be greeted by no less than the Bishop of London. She was exquisitely