The Viscount Always Knocks Twice (Heart of Enquiry Book 4) Read Free Page B

to the incendiary present: the cad was laughing at her. Mortification met fury and combusted.
    “Don’t you dare make fun of me,” she said through clenched teeth.
    His wide shoulders shook.
    She took a step closer, jabbed a finger at him. “I’m warning you. Stop laughing .”
    He held his big hands up in defense. “Or what, Miss Kent?” Mockery glinted in his eyes. “You’ll spell me into submission?”
    Red saturated her vision. Her hands acted of their own volition, shooting upward, planting on his chest. They gave a shove—and time suddenly slowed. She had the sensation of watching from the outside as Carlisle stumbled, surprise rippling across his face as he lost his footing in a puddle of champagne, his large body falling backward like a felled tree…
    The thudding splash brought her to her senses. In stupefied horror, she took in Carlisle sitting on his behind in the fountain. Blood-red champagne rained merrily over his head and shoulders.
    Gadzooks, what have I done?
    She took a halting step toward him… stopped at the hellfire raging in his eyes.
    He growled, “Get out of here. Now .”
    Panic made her obey. She dashed out the back of the grove, slipping between two potted ferns, walk-running until she reached the safety of the crowd. Like a criminal, she continued to sneak glances behind her, her heart thumping and mind whirling with the latest calamity she’d caused.

Chapter Two
     
    Richard Murray, Viscount Carlisle, jolted awake. Angry voices sounded… some fracas in the street. As Cheapside’s thoroughfare was just a few blocks away, such disturbances were not unusual, but it didn’t make them any less annoying. Richard stared through the dimness at a crack in the ceiling, his mood darkening further when he realized that he sported, at present, a raging morning cockstand.
    With an aggrieved sigh, he sat up. The bedclothes slipped down his bare torso, bunching at his waist and catching on his erection. Shoving his hands through his hair, he raised his knees, resting his elbows there and willing the insistent throbbing of his groin to subside.
    “Insolent little baggage,” he muttered. “This is all her fault.”
    He had no doubt that Miss Violet Kent was responsible for the state of his mind and body. Regarding the former, what man wouldn’t be furious at being assaulted— pushed into a bloody fountain and by a mere chit at that? Under normal circumstances, her little tap wouldn’t have budged him, but she’d taken him by surprise and then he’d slipped in that goddamned puddle…
    Embarrassment scalded his gut. In all honesty, the fact that a close encounter with a female had resulted in him emerging a fool should come as no surprise. In his dictionary, women were synonymous with trouble. Miss Lucinda Belton and Lady Audrey Keane had taught him that lesson long ago. In fact, they’d schooled him so well that he’d avoided entanglements with respectable ladies altogether.
    Whenever he required female companionship, he purchased it. A simple exchange and one in which both parties left satisfied. In bed, he dealt with women just fine.
    Outside of bed, however, they were a damned nuisance. All he’d wanted was for Violet Kent to leave his brother alone: was that too much to ask? Instead, she’d made him the laughingstock of the party.
    Well, he’d refused to give the ton the blood they wanted, the satisfaction of seeing his humiliation. He’d exited the gilded arena as if he weren’t dripping with champagne. As if his bloody boots weren’t squishing with every step. He’d walked out of there as if nothing had been out of the ordinary, and he’d managed that by focusing on varied and creative ways of retribution.
    Bending Violet Kent over his knee, for instance.
    Unfortunately, that led to his second—and persistently throbbing—problem.
    He ought to have let her get doused by the fountain, he thought savagely. That would have served the little romp right. But, oh no, he’d had