Page 29 of A Relentless Rake

“A disreputable one.” She frowned. “And please do not call me by my Christian name.”

“Ah, but that’s what we disreputable gentlemen do, I’m afraid.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother’s curious stare at the woman on his arm. “We become far too familiar with beautiful ladies. We flatter. We flirt—”

“You seduce.”

She said that with such disdain, such boldness, even for a private conversation, that he bit back a laugh. She had no idea of the truth about him!

“Is that what you want, Olivia?” he murmured, unable to help himself. “For me to seduce you?”

“I’d rather be thrown to the wolves.”

He murmured wickedly, “Same thing.”

The pink in her cheeks blossomed into scarlet. Amazing…he never knew that a woman could turn so red so quickly. Her reaction intrigued him. If she blushed so deeply from only a casual innuendo, what would she do beneath a determined touch?

She yanked her hand away as if he’d burned her and turned to leave.

“Wait.” He took her elbow from behind and stopped her, then lowered his head over her shoulder to bring his mouth as close to her ear as he dared and said, “Give me another chance.” The husky tone of his voice softened the order into a request. “Dance with me again tonight.”

“No.”

The bluntness of that brought him up short. “Afraid people will gossip if we share a second dance?”

“Look around you.” Her slender shoulders slumped. “They’re already gossiping.”

He stiffened. Was that a flicker of pain in her eyes? But before he could discern for certain, she curtsied deeply to him. An unequivocal signal that their conversation was over.

So was any chance he had to learn more about her brother and the building plans.

“My apologies,” he offered sincerely. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Thank you for the honor of the waltz, my lord.” The mask of propriety once again veiled her face, and she walked away.

Biting back a curse, he stalked across the room toward the refreshments table. He needed a drink, but his mother served nothing stronger than Madeira tonight, sorely tempting him to bribe a footman to smuggle out brandy from his study.

Christ.His plan to charm her wasn’t working. He’d had better luck getting information from her while she’d been blackmailing him.

He glanced across the room at Lord Liverpool. The prime minister was always a welcome visitor at St James House. Tonight, he was also a stark reminder of how little Alec had learned about Scepter’s plot and how far he was from stopping them from attempting to kill the man again.

A faint commotion near the entrance caught Alec’s attention. Captain Reed. Not bothering to be introduced—and not invited in the first place—Reed waved away the master of ceremonies and ignored the whispers that went up around him as he approached Alec through the crowd, which parted almost magically to let him pass.

Reed reached him and nodded curtly. “Sinclair.”

“Captain.” It wasn’t lost on Alec that Reed had purposefully used his family name and not his title. Or that his half brother’s unexpected presence at his mother’s ball set far more tongues wagging than Alec’s waltz with a schoolmistress.

But when Alec nodded toward him in greeting—and didn’t either call the footmen to toss out Rupert Sinclair’s bastard son or attempt to do it himself—the guests lost interest, and their whispers died away.

“Good God,” Reed muttered with a scowl at the crush of bodies, noise, and heat of the ball. “How can you stand these affairs?”

“I usually don’t. But tonight, I have good reason to tolerate it.” Alec snatched up a glass of wine from the table and surreptitiously gestured across the room with it. “Our mission.”

Reed followed the movement to Olivia. “Have you learned anything more from her?”

“The night’s still early,” he dodged and lifted the glass to his lips. The last thing he wanted to do was admit to his half brother that he was failing his part of the mission, that he still had no idea why either of the Everetts would provide mathematical equations and building plans to Scepter or what the group planned to do with them. “You have news?”

Grimly, Reed shook his head. “Everett went out, just as we’d expected. But I lost him in the City when he ducked into an abandoned building. I went in after him and found a hidden passageway in the cellar that he used to get away.”

Damnation.