Promise of Pleasure Read Free Page A

“Next time you consider embarrassing yourself with a housemaid, please recall that I’m your mistress. No one can satisfy you as I can, and don’t you forget it.”
    “I’ll try not to,” he tepidly replied, yawning.
    “You are such a rude beast!”
    In a snit, her hips swaying to and fro, she sashayed from the room. Mary couldn’t make it to the door without Mrs. Bainbridge observing her, so she dashed over and hid behind the drapes until Mrs. Bainbridge exited into the hallway.
    As her footsteps receded, Mary was anxious to creep away undetected. She peeked out, but Redvers was over by the dressing room, leaned against the doorjamb, waiting for her to emerge.
    She gasped with dismay.
    “She’s gone, my sly voyeur,” he said. “Would you like to continue where we left off?”
    He’d seen her? He was aware that she’d been spying?
    “Aah!” she shrieked.
    “Did you enjoy the show?” he asked, smirking.
    She blushed a dozen shades of red. “You are the most disgraceful, disreputable person I’ve ever met.”
    “I’m sure that’s true.”
    “I have to tell Victoria what you’re really like,” she absurdly threatened.
    “She already knows.”
    Mary spun and fled, his contemptuous laughter ringing in her ears.

Chapter 2

    MARY dawdled in the dining room and stared out the window across the garden to where Viscount Redvers was strolling with Felicity. With him so tall and dark, and her so shapely and fair, they were a striking couple. It was difficult not to watch them.
    Redvers was very dashing, very gallant, and he chatted with Felicity as if she was the most unique woman in the world. His behavior was perfect, providing no hint of the depraved character lurking inside, and Felicity appeared to be charmed.
    Mrs. Bainbridge pranced along behind them, accompanied by Mr. Paxton Adair, who’d been introduced as Redvers’s best friend. He was handsome, too, but with golden blond hair and piercing brown eyes. He seemed of an age with Redvers, and he possessed a similar sophistication and refinement.
    He’d bragged about being the illegitimate son of an earl and scraping by on minimal funds—as was Redvers. Both men had exhausted their fathers’ generosity. Both had been disavowed. Both were flat broke.
    According to gossip, Adair made his living through gambling and vice, and he was purported to be even lazier and more wicked than Redvers.
    With Redvers, Adair, and Mrs. Bainbridge as her guests, Victoria had to be hosting the most scandalous trio in the kingdom. Mary understood that Victoria hoped for Felicity to marry into the aristocracy, but honestly! Were there no limits as to what was allowed?
    Apparently not.
    Victoria was sitting at the table, watching Redvers, too. Her other daughter, twenty-two-year-old Cassandra, sat with her. Mary went over to them.
    “I don’t like Lord Redvers,” Mary said when Victoria glanced up.
    “So?”
    “He’ll make Felicity miserable.”
    “Every husband makes his wife miserable ,” Cassandra interjected. “It’s the way of matrimony.”
    Cassandra, a widow, was blond and blue-eyed, as pretty as Felicity but not nearly so plump. At age sixteen, Victoria had wed Cassandra to an elderly baron who’d turned out to be a brutal despot. Once, she’d been as haughty and sure of herself as Felicity, but time and cruel experience had smoothed over her more disagreeable tendencies.
    She was no longer conceited or confident. She never smiled.
    “I’ve heard,” Mary pressed, “that he has no conscience or scruples.”
    “I’ve heard the same,” Victoria divulged.
    “Don’t you care?”
    “Not particularly.”
    Victoria shifted on her chair, her heavy weight causing the wood to creak in protest.
    As a debutante, Victoria had been a beauty, but at her current age of forty-five, her looks had faded. Her hair was a dull silver, and she had frown lines circling her mouth. She loved to eat, and as a result, was very fat.
    Her baronet father had been strapped