Lady of Desire by Gaelen Foley

brother as he strode toward the entrance.
    All sophisticated understatement, much like its owner, Lord Lucien Knight’s town house had a flat front with small wrought-iron balconies off the upper windows. Brass lanterns burned on either side of the elaborately carved door. In an upper window, where light beamed through the shade, he could see the slim silhouette of Lucien’s young wife brushing her long hair. Reaching the front door, he knocked loudly, then waited. He could feel Jacinda watching him from the coach. An elderly butler answered the door. He asked for Lord Lucien.
    “Tell him it’s Blade.”
    The thin old fellow gave him a guarded look and closed the door in his face. Again, he waited and smoked in restless silence, hooking his thumb idly in the waistband of his trousers. A few minutes later, the door opened again, and a tall, black-haired man stood in the doorway.
    “Blade?” Lord Lucien Knight stepped out of his house, pulling the door closed silently behind him. Though his cravat hung untied around his neck, he was dressed in formal black and white, as though he had just come back from the same ball his sister had fled.
    Blade suddenly wondered if anyone had even realized yet that Jacinda was missing. Maybe she had guessed correctly when she had said that her note might not yet have been found.
    “What’s afoot?” Lucien asked, his silvery eyes glowing keenly in the moonlight.
    “I found something of yours. Thought you might like to have it back.”
    Lucien regarded him curiously. Blade nodded toward the coach, then told him everything that had happened. Well—not quite everything. He wasn’t suicidal.
    “Good God! Is she hurt?”
    “Only her pride,” Blade muttered, but Lucien was already striding toward the carriage.
    “Jas?” He hauled open the carriage door as Blade came sauntering up behind him. “Sweeting, are you all right?”
    “Yes, Lucien, I am perfectly well,” she drawled in a bored, long-suffering voice from inside the coach.
    Reassured by her insolent tone, anger flooded Lucien’s aquiline face. “Perdition, girl, have you lost your mind? Get into the house this instant! You have some explaining to do!”
    Glowering, the young beauty emerged from the shadows inside the vehicle, thrust her satchel into Lucien’s hands, then hopped out of the coach with an air of bristling defiance.
    “And no temper tantrums,” her brother warned. “If you wake the baby, I’ll throttle you.”
    Without a word, Jacinda took her bag back from him and turned to Blade, regarding him in silence for one final, excruciating moment with a look of bitter regret. She needed no words to express her disgust; her slight shaking of her head said it all. Shrugging her satchel up higher onto her shoulder, she walked into the house and closed the door behind her without looking back.
    “What a piece of work!” Lucien exploded when she had shut the door, but Blade could only stand there feeling like an utter Judas.
    “Ah, I had a feeling something like this was coming, but I didn’t think she’d really do it. I don’t know what we’ll do with her. The sooner she’s safely married off, the better—it is her second Season.”
    Blade hesitated, knowing it was none of his business—nor did he really care—but he had to say something to try to help her. “Whoever it is you want her to marry,” he blurted out, “she really hates the notion.”
    “She told you that?”
    He nodded. “Who is the chap, and what’s wrong with him?” he asked cautiously.
    “Wrong with him? Nothing. He’s the marquess of Griffith—only one of the ton’s most brilliant catches. He grew up with us in the North Country. She’s known him all her life. His wife died two years ago in childbirth, and we all think it’s time he rejoined the land of the living. They’d be good for each other.”
    Blade stared at him in confusion. “He’s not an old wigsby?”
    Lucien laughed. “Is that what she told you?”
    Blade