afraid I don’t understand.”
“She doesn’t eat meat,” Emma said.
He paused. “I still don’t understand.”
“Here, try the cakes.” Miss Mountbatten passed them to Emma. “Nicola baked them.”
Ash took one, eyeing it with suspicion. It appeared innocent enough. “I thought Emma said you were a scientist, Miss Teague.”
“Baking is science,” she answered. “Success is all in the precision.”
Ash took a bite, and found the cake to be precisely delicious. A great improvement over the sham.
“Well,” Penny announced brightly. “We all have tea and refreshments, and now we must have conversation. What shall we discuss?”
“If only there were a current event occupying all London’s attention.” Miss Teague’s speech had a stilted tone.
Almost a practiced tone.
“Oh!” Miss Mountbatten perked. “What news do you hear of the Monster of Mayfair?”
Ash put down his teacup. He turned his head to regard his wife.
Emma stared into her cup with great interest, as though the tea leaves were performing an underwater ballet.
Penny turned to him. “What is your opinion, Ash?”
“Dastardly fellow, to be sure,” Ash said. “Dangerous. Vile. Reprehensible.”
“I have a suspicion he’s misunderstood,” Miss Mountbatten said.
The salon was quiet—that was, until Miss Mountbatten nudged Miss Teague’s knee.
“Oh! Oh, yes. This part is mine, isn’t it?” Miss Teague cleared her throat. “You may be correct, Alexandra.”
“I’ve just recalled that I happen to have some of the recent broadsheets.” Penny turned to the table behind her and retrieved a stack of newsprint.
The truth was undeniable now. Ash had been lured into the spiders’ web, and now he found himself at the center of delicately woven conspiracy.
A sham sandwich, indeed. One that sat on a tray of lies.
Penny leafed through the broadsheets. “Oh, look! ‘Thousand-Pound Donation to War Widows Fund Credited to Monster of Mayfair.’” She turned over another. “‘Monster of Mayfair Turns Cruel Taskmaster Out of Workhouse. London’s Downtrodden Cheer.’”
She picked up the next sheet and, instead of reading it, turned it face-out to display the headline.
Ash grabbed the broadsheet from her hand and regarded it with horror. “‘Monster of Mayfair Saves Puppies from Burning Storehouse’?”
This . . . this was an outrage.
Widows. Downtrodden.
Puppies.
Someone was chipping away at the legend he’d so carefully constructed. He took the stack of broadsheets and leafed through them, skimming the stories themselves. A pattern of suspiciously similar phrases began to emerge.
This paper has it on the highest authority . . .
An anonymous source of great repute . . .
“The pups wouldn’t cease licking him in gratitude,” a lady of Quality reports . . .
So. Emma and her friends hadn’t merely collected these stories. They’d concocted them, the little coven of witches.
“It’s just as we suspected.” Miss Mountbatten grinned. “The so-called monster is merely misunderstood.”
“If you want to know my opinion . . .” Emma began.
“I don’t,” he muttered.
“I don’t think he’s a monster at all,” she finished. “In fact, I heard that he stopped by a foundling home with great sacks of sweets, and that they mobbed him with hugs and kisses. I suspect that will be in the broadsheets tomorrow.”
“I suspect,” he said through a tight smile, “there will be a story of a duchess and her three accomplices jailed for slander.”
After a brief pause, the four ladies broke into simultaneous laughter.
Penny offered him the odious tray of edible deceit. “Do take another sandwich, Ash. Or was it lambkin?”
“It’s starshine, I believe,” Miss Mountbatten said.
“No, no,” Miss Teague said. “I could have been certain it was hot cross bun.”
As they all slipped into giggling again, Ash accepted the sandwich and arrowed a look at his wife.
Emma sipped her tea, casting him a coy smile over the cup’s rim.
Just you wait, he thought, taking a resentful bite of vegetable falsehood. Just you wait until we get home.
As it happened, Ash had no opportunity to hold his wife to account for her perfidy. The moment they passed through the door of her suite, she closed the door behind them and pinned him to it, drawing him down by the neck for an enthusiastic kiss.
“Thank you,” she said. “You were wonderful.”
“It was nothing.”
And truly, it hadn’t been much of an imposition. Once all their merciless teasing was out of the way, he’d even enjoyed himself.
“I can’t believe you ate two of those dreadful sandwiches.”
Correction: He’d enjoyed himself—save for that.
But he would eat “sham” twice a day without complaint, if it meant coming home to this. Emma’s hands—and even better, her lips—were all over him.
She tugged his cravat loose and unbuttoned his waistcoat. He did his part to assist, shaking off his topcoat and tossing it . . . somewhere. He didn’t bother to look.
Emma slithered down his body, then sank to her knees before him. She undid his trousers, pushing them down his thighs. His erection sprang free, all but begging for her attention. With one hand, she lifted the hem of his shirt, pushing the excess flat against his abdomen. She took his shaft in the other, rubbing her thumb up and down the underside.
She licked her lips and bent forward.
“Wait,” he choked out.
She paused.
