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“ T ell me once again what we’re doing here, Cross?”

Johnathan rubbed his aching temples, and prayed his skull would have the decency to wait until he returned home before it exploded. He hadn’t ventured out at all today, and now he was regretting allowing Cross to talk him into a meal at White’s.

White’s, of all places. The scene of last night’s crime.

Last night’s first crime, that is. Johnathan vaguely recalled there’d been another. The details of it were hazy, his only clue the violet ribbon he’d been clutching in his hand when he awoke this morning.

Cross didn’t appear to hear him. “Why is everyone gaping at us, Melrose?”

“No one’s gaping at us.” Johnathan passed a weary hand over his stinging eyes. “You’re imagining it.”

“The entire dining room is watching our every move, Melrose. Or rather, your every move.”

“They’re not staring at me .”

Cross glanced around the dining room, his dark brows lowered. “The devil they’re not. Those fools at Lord Quigley’s table have been gawking and sniggering at you like a troop of chattering monkeys since the moment we sat down.”

Johnathan lifted his head. “A troop? Is that what a group of monkeys is called?”

Cross scowled. “I believe you’ve missed my point. I’m telling you, Melrose, something is off. There’s a wager afoot, and I fancy it has to do with you. What in the blazes did you get up to at Lady Fosberry’s ball last night? Do you even remember? I’ve never seen you so deep in your cups?—”

“What do you take me for, Cross? Of course, I remember.” Johnathan pinched the bridge of his nose. Good Lord, even his nostrils hurt. “Most of it, at any rate.” Cross raised a skeptical eyebrow, and Johnathan let out an impatient sigh. “Oh, all right. Very little of it, if you must know.”

“That’s what I thought.” Cross set aside his fork, rose to his feet, and went to consult the betting book.

He was there for some time, turning over page after page.

His face remained carefully blank as he made his way back to the table with every eye in the room upon him, but his cheeks had gone white.

“For God’s sake, Melrose,” Cross hissed as he took his seat. “Were you trifling with some chit in Lady Fosberry’s library last night?”

There had been a library. Johnathan was certain of that much. Logic would suggest it had been Lady Fosberry’s library. As for the chit…

“Not some chit, Cross. Lady Exeter.”

“Whoever you were debauching, it wasn’t Lady Exeter. I saw her leave with Lord Pemberton not five minutes after you left me to go dance with Lady Christine.”

“I’m certain it was Lady Exeter I followed into—” Johnathan broke off, falling silent as snatches of conversation reached him from every corner of the dining room.

“…wouldn’t be Lady Exeter’s first indiscretion with Melrose, but her gown was pink, not purple.”

“Purple?” Johnathan met Cross’s eyes. “What bloody purple gown?”

“Cudworth said the gown was lavender , not purple.” Lord Quigley was several tables away, but his booming voice easily carried across the dining room. “He saw the girl fleeing Lady Fosberry’s library himself, but it was too dark to see her face.”

Johnathan froze. Cudworth. He might have known. If ever there was a man with a knack for being in the very last place one wanted to find him, it was Cudworth.

“I have twenty guineas here that says Lord Dingley challenges Melrose to a duel over this.” A florid-faced man at another table shot Lord Quigley an infuriating smirk. “What say you, Quigley?”

“Dingley’s not such a fool as that.” Lord Quigley gave a comfortable laugh. “Melrose will put a ball in him before Dingley’s finger can twitch on the trigger. I’ll lay you twenty guineas it was Lady Christine Dingley in that library with Melrose. That’s one way to bring him up to scratch, eh?”

Johnathan started to rise to his feet, anger coursing through him. He had no love for Lady Christine, but he wouldn’t sit here silently and let Quigley malign her.

Before he could strangle Quigley, however, Cross stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t, Melrose. It will be taken as confirmation of the rumor, and make things worse.”

Johnathan sank back into his seat and stared at his friend, aghast. “Good Lord, Cross. What have I done?”

Cross gave him a helpless shrug, and Johnathan let his head sink into his hands.

The better question was, what hadn’t he done?

It was all coming back to him now—the spinning ballroom, the nauseating gold wallpaper, Lady Susanna’s white bosom, the chase across the ballroom, and the delirious, heated moments in the library with a lady whose voice he hadn’t heard, and face he hadn’t seen.

Good Lord, how lowering to find all it took to turn him into an utter scoundrel was a few glasses of brandy!

“Quigley won’t be the only one wagering, Melrose.” Cross kept his voice to a murmur, so only Johnathan could hear him. “There are pages of wagers in the betting book already, and the rest of London will know of it before this afternoon. What in God’s name were you thinking ?”

“Magenta,” Johnathan said, stupidly enough, but for some reason, it was the only word that came to his mind just then.

Cross stared at him. “What?”

“Lady Susanna’s gown. It wasn’t pink, it was magenta.”

“It wasn’t Lady Susanna, Melrose. I told you, I saw her leave the ballroom.”

Now that his head wasn’t muddled with brandy and the dizzying scent of sunshine and roses, Johnathan couldn’t imagine how he could ever have mistaken the lady from last night for Lady Susanna.

There’d been a dozen tiny clues—the missing gloves, the lack of a corset—but even putting those details aside, hadn’t he been aware, at least on a primal level, that he wasn’t kissing and caressing Lady Susanna?

He had, after all, kissed Lady Susanna before, and never felt the wild surge of desire he had last night, when he’d held the mysterious lady in his arms.

Her seductive scent was both familiar and wholly unique at once.

Rose, yes, but not like any rose he’d ever smelled before.

It wasn’t a heavy, sweet scent, like so many rose perfumes, but different somehow, though he couldn’t say how, precisely.

Only that it was like the difference between a perfume and a living, breathing, blooming spray of rose blossoms.

Beyond that, he couldn’t be certain of anything.

“Who is she, Melrose?”

“I, ah…I haven’t the faintest idea.” Johnathan blanched at the expression on Cross’s face. “I thought I’d followed Lady Susanna into the library, but it, ah…it seems I was mistaken.”

“You were mistaken,” Cross repeated flatly. “Devil of a thing to be mistaken about, Melrose.”

Johnathan hardly heard him. The lady he’d kissed last night, the elusive lady in lavender—he was sure he’d never met her before. That skin he’d caressed, it had been smooth, flawless, and her hair was thick, the loose waves drifting through his fingers.

And her figure…

Dear God, her figure .

Johnathan closed his eyes as a bolt of heat arrowed down to his groin.

She was slender, her curves slight but perfectly proportioned, and they fit his hands as if she’d been sculpted just for him. If he’d ever been introduced to such a lady as that , he’d remember her.

Cross nudged him. “Are you all right, Melrose? You look as if you’re in pain.”

“The lady, Cross. I’m certain I’ve never been introduced to her before. She’s new to London. How many petite ladies in lavender gowns could have been at Lady Fosberry’s ball last night?”

“You’ve just described half the young ladies who’ve flooded the marriage mart this season, and dozens of them were at Lady Fosberry’s ball.”

“Well, it wasn’t Lady Christine Dingley.” Johnathan was certain of that much, at least. His lady had the softest skin he’d ever touched, the most delectable curves he’d ever caressed, and the most intoxicating scent he’d ever had the pleasure of inhaling.

Cross frowned. “You really don’t remember anything about her?”

Johnathan remembered a thousand things about her—the silk of her skin under his fingertips, the seductive caress of her silky hair against his lips, the curve of her waist giving way to the gentle swell of her hips, but short of kissing, stroking and caressing every young lady in London, he didn’t see how he could…

“Her scent.” Johnathan sat bolt upright in his chair, his gaze meeting Cross’s. “She smells like roses.”

“Roses! Half the young ladies in London smell of roses.”

“No, not like this. Her scent was…” Johnathan tried to think of a way to describe it, his hands fisting at his sides in frustration as words failed him. Her scent was as elusive as the lady herself. “Different. Not like any other scent I’ve ever experienced.”

She was different.

Johnathan flushed, thinking Cross might laugh, but he said only, “There’s one person in London who can tell us something definitive about the young ladies at the ball last night. I suggest we pay a call on Lady Fosberry.”

A lady could do a great deal of damage with a dibbler.

Emmeline grasped the rough wooden handle with both hands and slammed the spiked end into the ground. The blow vibrated up her arms with satisfying force, but instead of a neat hole ready for planting, she found a torn bit of lavender root at her feet.

Oh, dear. She hadn’t meant to do that .

Perhaps it was time she set the dibbler aside.

She leaned the heavy tool against the back of the walled garden where she’d found it, and plopped down beside it, her back against the stone.

The trouble with this garden was there wasn’t a thing to do in it.

Not a single patch of clover to attack, or diseased cane to prune, or soil to improve.

It was as flawlessly maintained as the rest of Lady Fosberry’s home.

It was disconcerting, all this relentless perfection.