Potent Pleasures by Eloisa James Page A

laughing, reproachful dance partners whom she had neglected while attending her mother. Alex watched her fending off their imploring gestures for a minute or so. My God, he thought, she is beautiful.
    Charlotte’s color was high. She knew the minute he entered the room. Knowing that he was watching made her feel hot and tremblingly excited. Now she could feel his large hand, just touching her bottom as he rubbed the bruise on her back. She may not have noticed at the time, but now she felt as if her flesh were burning. Thinking of his touch brought on a flood of memories. She was filled with longing to feel his hands on her again, all over her, the way he had touched her three years ago. But at the same time, Charlotte felt punishing humiliation. He had simply forgotten the whole encounter. He didn’t even notice who was in his arms that night. She could hardly think, torn between rage and desire, although none of the men surrounding her noticed her lack of attentiveness.
    Thinking of the garden, Charlotte smiled at Will Holland so suggestively that he immediately dismissed all thought of marrying Sophie York. Charlotte was the one. He bent over her hand, beseeching her to allow him to take her into supper. Or—he looked at her wickedly—dance with him once more? They had already danced twice; a third dance would be akin to announcing an engagement. Charlotte laughed and shook her head reprovingly.
    If Charlotte couldn’t dismiss the gardens of Stuart Hall from her mind, Alex had no thought of his long-ago encounter with a young prostitute as he watched the lovely daughter of a duke joust with her suitors. His memories of the garden, in fact, were keen: the woman’s long, silky hair and skin so white that her hair had to be red, the shape of her small breasts, upturned like champagne glasses, her soft, dusky eyes. But Charlotte had short black curls, eyes that sparkled with life and intelligence, and breasts that made you ache just to see their generous outlines. There was no similarity between memory and the duke’s daughter, even if the possibility had occurred to him.
    Suddenly Alex felt like a cloddish boy, standing by the wall, lusting after the reigning belle of London society. He pushed himself disgustedly into an upright position and turned on his heel. He knew where the Duke of Calverstill lived; why bother contending with the swarm of gnats surrounding the duke’s daughter? Alex rooted a protesting Braddon out of the gaming room and summoned his coach. By the end of an evening spent gambling at Brooks’s, Alex was some six hundred pounds richer.
    By three o’clock in the morning the candles were burning down in what Brooks called the Velvet Room. The room was hung in swathes of dark green velvet, designed to make day seem like night, to make the gamblers feel enclosed in a timeless space. But Alex had won a great deal of money, and although most of the gamblers would keep going until dawn, he was tired and a little bored.
    His eyes flicked about the room. It was filled with aristocrats lounging in the armchairs that surrounded four gambling tables. Only the servant who was replenishing the wall chandeliers looked as crisp as he had at five o’clock when the doors of the club opened. The gamblers had loosened their elaborately tied cravats, or torn them off in pure frustration. They looked untidy and exhausted, feverishly throwing dice or clutching their cards.
    “Well, my lord,” said a drawling, heavily accented voice from the other side of the table. “You have done extremely well tonight.”
    Alex swung his head around and calmly met the eyes of Lucien Boch, a French marquis living in England. Boch had gambled outrageously, and lost.
    Boch leaned forward, his hands squarely set on the green felt lining of the table reserved for the card game ombre. “You are so … lucky ” he said in a soft, poisonous tone. Alex looked at him. Ombre was a game of skill, not luck. Boch had played carelessly.
    “I