Viscountess of Vice by Jenny Holiday

Author:Jenny Holiday
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Tags: viscountess; regency; spy; widow; undercover; social reformer; england; london; secrets; historical romance; Entangled Select
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC (Select Historical)
Published: 2015-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

As James trailed Catharine down the back steps into the garden, he thought back to the narrow stairwell that led to her room at Madame Cherie’s. On both the occasions he’d followed her up it, his body had thrummed with anticipation. Then, she’d been dressed as Lady V, masked and mysterious. Today she was Lady Cranbrook, elegant in lavender muslin with a deep purple spencer atop. Her auburn hair was swept up into a high chignon and he could see the chain of her ever-present necklace on the nape of her neck, peeking up over her collar. His heart began to thud, and he suppressed the urge to reach for the chain where it tangled with a few tendrils of hair that had escaped their confines. Lady V or Lady Cranbrook, it hardly seemed to matter what name she used, what she wore, or whether she led him up into a bedchamber at a whorehouse or down into a garden outside a reform meeting, his reaction was the same: immediate and utter attraction. Despite his best efforts to rationalize it away. Despite the fact that he was angry with her, disgusted with her carelessness and her games.

“I thought you were in Birmingham,” she murmured as they reached the gate at the back of the small garden.

He opened the gate for her. “I was. I’m just back for today’s meeting.”

“An awfully long journey for a meeting.” She was fishing for information. He didn’t reply, only followed her into the lane. She glanced back at him. “Unless you don’t want your colleagues to know you’re not in town.”

“I haven’t told them. They wouldn’t approve.”

“They wouldn’t approve of helping children?”

He sighed. She wasn’t going to relent. “Shall we walk a little?”

“Aren’t we already?”

They were indeed several lengths away from the Society’s gate. James grinned in spite of himself. “There’s no escaping you, is there?”

She took his arm. “I was just thinking the same thing about you. You were supposed to be in Birmingham.”

He was going to have to explain it to her. As much as he’d hoped not to have to associate with her anymore, she had set him on this path, so he supposed she deserved to know what was going on. “The Society is very…how to say it…concerned with process, with governance. They’d never allow me to just impulsively take on a project they hadn’t already studied and debated at great length.”

Catharine raised her lovely brows. “How surprising. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like that.”

He was beginning to thaw despite himself. “Don’t tease. They’re right, really. If one ran off unthinkingly after every stray whim, then where would one be?”

“I can’t possibly imagine. Perhaps one would find oneself strolling in the sun on an unseasonably warm autumn day. Perhaps one would find oneself on the way to the park?”

The invitation in her sparkling eyes was impossibly tempting, though following her recent snub, it bewildered him. He dipped his head. “If you like.”

“If we walk briskly, we can be at St.

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