Mad for Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 2 by Lynne Connolly

your mother will drive him off as soon as she sees you with him. Which will give me a chance to reclaim you. Enjoy your dance.”
    With a small bow he left her, ignoring her muttered, “Damn you.”
    As well as being a gazette fortune hunter, Harry Widnes had to be the most conceited man here tonight, convinced his birth was superior to anyone else’s and he had a right to whatever he could gain by marriage. He was unlikely to snag an heiress, even a desperate one, unless his quarry could bear his incessant preening.
    Aurelia had to acknowledge Blaize had a point, and his tactics were sometimes as martially correct as Lyndhurst’s. In fact, wilier at times, since Lyndhurst tended to think in straight lines. He saw his objective and he went the shortest and most direct way to achieve it. Blaize didn’t mind smelling a few flowers on the way.
    Now, stuck with Harry Widnes prosing on about his mother, his house, the repairs to his house and God knew what else, because she stopped listening after a time, Aurelia would have done a great deal to excuse herself from his company. Anything but let the more spiteful of the people here tonight accuse her of being too superior for anyone to please.
    Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was on the raffish side of society, even though the King’s favourite composer, Handel, had an association with the owner of the Gardens. The place contained many small groves and darkened walkways where, since entry was open to anyone with the requisite fee, people who were most definitely not approved by society congregated. It had a reputation for trysts.
    Aurelia was usually strictly chaperoned when she came here, but tonight her mother eased her strictures. She even smiled graciously at Blaize once or twice. She might break her teeth if she held her jaw any more rigidly. But Aurelia appreciated the effort.
    She’d brought the stickpin, rather daringly stuck down her bodice, but for the last time. She’d lost it at dinner, and the footman gave it to her mother rather than to her. Her mother had produced it at breakfast the following morning and, not surprisingly, ordered her to return it to Blaize. It was a costly gift, and she should never have accepted it, because it showed too much favour, but she would enjoy it one last time.
    They had one of the charming but flimsy booths, where Blaize hosted a small party of gentlemen and ladies who disported themselves in a more decorous way than some of the people around them. However, they gained great enjoyment from watching the people around them.
    “Did you see that man?” Vanessa Howton asked, her fan before her mouth so as not to allow her words to be seen. “I swear he had his hand down the front of that lady’s gown!”
    Aurelia obligingly looked and saw. “That is no lady,” she offered. “It’s more of a femme du soir. ”
    “She’s very elegantly dressed.”
    “Indeed she is, but no lady would behave in that manner.”
    Vanessa sniggered. “You think so? But possibly not here, in the public area.”
    This part of the Gardens consisted of booths set in a line, and a central area where people could parade and move around the front of the booths to chat with the inmates. Flowers, probably brought in from the market gardens that surrounded the city rather than grown on the premises, twined in a charming display around the front of the booths.
    “And what,” said Blaize, proving he had ears as sharp as an owl’s, “would you two well-brought-up young ladies know of femmes du soir ?”
    Vanessa turned and grinned. “You have to ask two women who have been on the town for more than one Season? How do you think we travel around London? With our eyes closed?”
    Blaize let out a bark of sharp laughter. “You have the right of it. I do appreciate an honest woman.”
    “I can be franker,” Vanessa suggested, but since the plump, dark-haired beauty was one of the toasts of the Season, Aurelia wasn’t entirely keen to let her too close to the man