Page 4 of To Dance with a Devil

“There you are, old man. Been looking everywhere for you!”

Bonnie had to stamp on the urge to crow with laughter as Jerome jolted in response to her hearty slap on the back. He glowered at her, affronted by the temerity of the young man who’d taken such a liberty when they’d not been introduced.

“Who the devil are you?” he began and then stopped, the colour leaching from his handsome face as his gaze travelled over her, from tip to toe and back again. “B-Bonnie?” he stammered, quite obviously horrified.

“You didn’t recognise me, did you?” Bonnie barely restrained herself from doing a little dance of triumph. She couldn’t afford to draw attention to them.

“Hell and the devil, you’ll be the death of me, Bonnie Campbell,” he cursed, before his mouth fell open. She’d thought he’d seemed quite horrified enough before but now he looked like he might swoon. “Oh, Lord.” His voice was rough, almost breathless. “Your hair! Bonnie, what have you done to your hair?”

Bonnie felt a tremor of regret as she lifted a hand to her shorn locks. She’d almost changed her mind when her maid had burst into tears, begging her not to make her cut off the thick, dark tresses. The sight of it piled on her bedroom floor had almost made Bonnie weep too, but what was the point? Jerome didn’t think it her crowning glory. He didn’t think of her at all in such a way. She was just one of his chums, not a woman whose appearance he admired, so what difference did it make if she cut it off or not? Except now, looking at his appalled expression, she wanted to cry. Stop it, she scolded herself. You couldn’t seduce him when you were all but naked and flat on your back. Cutting off your hair won’t make him want you any less, you ninny.

“It’s fashionable to wear it short,” she said defiantly. “And I can hardly pass as a man with long hair, can I?”

Jerome took her by the arm and hauled her into a quiet corner where he proceeded to scold her and do his best to wriggle out of his promise. Bonnie held firm and refused to budge. He’d promised her, and she was holding him to it. She didn’t care if she was ruined. It wouldn’t change anything. Morven had told her she’d marry Anderson, no matter what she did to try to get out of it. She believed him. All she could hope was that good old Gordy would be so disgusted with her that he’d refuse, dowry be damned.

Jerome muttered and cursed some more as Bonnie reminded him he’d not recognised her. This did not seem to appease him one little bit.

“Ah, don’t be like that,” she coaxed, reaching for his hand and giving it a squeeze. “We’ll have fun, I promise.”

Jerome stared back at her. “Oh, I don’t doubt it, you little devil. I just wonder how long I’ll be paying for it afterwards, that’s all.”

“It will be worth it, I promise.”

Something in his eyes softened, and she knew she had him.

“I know,” he said, before giving a short bark of laughter. “Well, then, if we’re going to the devil, we may as well do it in style. What am I to call you, sir?”

“Bartholomew Camden, a distant cousin on your mother’s side, Jerry, old man.”

Jerome snorted. “Well, Coz, I’m very pleased to know you. Why don’t we leave this place and find a bit of life?”

Bonnie grinned at him, wanting to hug him for forgetting his concerns and getting into the spirit of it. “I thought you’d never ask.”

***

Jerome’s heart had been lodged firmly in his throat for the past hour or more but, as he looked around the card table at the disreputable faces of some of his friends, it cautiously returned to the vicinity of his chest. Bonnie grinned at him, a cheroot clamped between her teeth, and Jerome had to bite back the desire to snicker.

Cholly or, more correctly, Lord Chalfont, Mr Gideon Newman, and The Honourable Algernon Fortescue—known appallingly and affectionately as Algae to his intimates, had all accepted Bonnie as his cousin Bart without so much as a blink. Admittedly, by the time Jerome had tracked them down through a variety of dubious drinking places, they had all been drunk as wheelbarrows, but nonetheless… were the brainless idiots blind? How could they possibly not see she was a woman?

Her skin was too soft, too perfect, and her heart-shaped face far too pretty. There were pretty lads about, he knew, but surely not with the lavish curves of waist and hips belonging to the dreadful girl across the table. Bonnie had bound her breasts so severely her shape had morphed into something that gave her the silhouette of a plump pigeon. It made him want to laugh every time he looked her. It also made his hands itch with the desire to unwind her like a spinning top, unravelling whatever was restraining her charms as his palms burned with the memory of having those generous mounds in his grasp. He rubbed a hand over his face, increasingly heated and agitated. Hell and the devil, he didn’t even want Bonnie, not like that. He loved her company because she was impossible not to like, but he’d not given her a second glance when she’d turned up with her friends at Green Park, and would have continued to not glance her way if not for her outrageous sense of humour and devilish tongue. It was those things that had caught his attention, and held it too, but not her body nor her face. Here he was though, lusting over her breasts. He wanted to kiss and lick and soothe that tortured bounty once he’d freed them from the ridiculous cage she’d trapped them in, and then he’d….

Jerome cleared his throat and returned his attention to his cards. Behave, Cadogan. Grimacing at the inadequate hand he held, he threw it down on the table in disgust.

“I’m out,” he said with a sigh.

“Bad luck, Jerry,” Bonnie murmured as Jerome scowled at the tidy stack of counters before her.

Why he should be surprised she was wiping the floor with them, he had no idea. She was utterly diabolical. He watched as she took a draw on the cheroot and blew a perfect smoke ring across the table to him with a wink. He glowered back and snatched the brandy decanter from her vicinity before she could reach for it. She’d already had a generous measure, and he dared not think what might happen if he allowed her to get foxed. There were limits to his depravity. Allowing a virginal young woman to cut off her hair, dress as a man, and gamble in a low dive like the one they were at present inhabiting would put quite enough paving slabs on his personal road to hell for one night, thank you very much.

Bonnie returned an impatient glare but said nothing, instead spending the next half an hour relieving his friends of what remained of their coin. Algae groaned and put his head in his hands.

“Someone will have to pay my shot,” he said, shaking his head mournfully. “I’m cleaned out.”

“I say, Jerry,” Cholly said, throwing down his cards with a grimace. “If you’ve any more cousins, do us a favour and leave ’em where ye find ’em.”

“You need have no fear on that score,” Jerome muttered. “Come on, Bart, my lad. That’s enough excitement for one night. I’d best get you back, or we’ll both be in the basket.”

“Oh, but, Jerry—”