The plain and awful truth of it was that he had almost fucked his nieces’ governess in his brother’s fancy Mayfair library. Had the interruption of the servants not occurred, he would likely still be there, tangled up in her, ballocks deep.
And what a place to be. Paradise, for certain.
He banished the unworthy thought.
This morning had not been one of his proudest moments, Rafe had to admit. Seducing a servant, and one who had previously been the victim of a vile lordling, was not his ordinary modus operandi. Hell, he had never done anything like that in his life. Innocents were not to his taste. Nor were ladies who spoke with crisp accents and could read fluent Latin and wore prim dressing gowns buttoned almost to their chins.
To do penance, he had forced himself to walk the distance from Jasper’s Mayfair town house to the site of the new gaming hell he and his family would soon be opening. He was no stranger to sinning and the furthest one could reasonably find from a saint, but even he knew he had done wrong.
So why could he not cease thinking about her response to his kiss? Why was his mind still haunted by the way her lips had moved against his, so sweetly hesitant at first, and then with greater confidence and enthusiasm? Devil take it. Although the hour was early and the morning was chilly and damp, this vein of thought was heating his blood and proving dangerous, if not disastrous.
She had kissed him first, it was true. But he was no green virgin. He should have resisted the urge to kiss her, to slide his tongue inside the satiny warmth of her mouth. To not have lingered, putting his lips on every part of her he dared, including the pebbled bud of her nipple. He still cursed the layers that had kept him from the warmth of her flesh.
Even so, her moan of appreciation would echo in his mind to his dying day as the single most erotic sound he had ever heard. He was certain of it.
Scowling, he stepped inside The Sinner’s Palace II, forcing his mind to where it belonged: work. This establishment was going to be grander, bolder, bigger, and infinitely more lucrative than its original. All he needed to do was recall why he was in the West End. And it wasn’t to seduce Persephone Wren, damn it. She wasn’t for him, and thinking about her wasn’t going to line his bleeding purse.
He tried to summon a smile as he was greeted by the men who had been engaged to rehang the wall coverings. What a scoundrel he was. He’d had no right to return her kiss, no right to feast on her creamy throat or suck her nipple.
Irritation rose as he nodded to the men and stalked deeper into the labyrinth which was still in the process of being turned into the well-oiled machine The Sinner’s Palace was. Fortunately, his siblings were aiding him in this endeavor.
From around the corner, raised voices reached him, one of them familiar. Speaking of siblings…
Rafe stalked into what would be the main gaming room of their establishment. To his surprise, his sister Pen, who was overseeing the decoration of The Sinner’s Palace II, was in the center of the chamber having a heated discussion with one of the tradesmen. Auburn-haired like their brother Logan, Pen was quick to flush when she was angered or embarrassed. And given her stance and the loudness of her voice, Rafe was willing to wager she was the former rather than the latter.
She was not meant to be here today, curse it. He was going to have to discover just how she had arrived this morning. If she had dared to travel alone from the East End, he would give her an earful.
She paused when she spied him, relief coloring her voice. “Rafe, come here if you please, and explain to Mr. Waters why we cannot have inferior table cloths at our establishment. I have brought him here to show him the precise locations of the tables, and he now insists he cannot have the embroidery we require within the next month.”
Embroidery?
Hell.
She was taking her role seriously, was she not?
“Mr. Sutton,” the linen draper greeted, sounding relieved. “Perhaps you can provide the voice of reason, sir. Miss Sutton’s demands are, regretfully, nigh impossible to achieve.”
He very much doubted it. But the distraction would prove useful.
He looked from Pen to Mr. Waters. “What’s the problem?”
“I want all the table cloths to be embroidered with a palace,” Pen said, her voice taking on the same mulish cast as her expression.
No one was more stubborn than Pen when she was in fine dudgeon.
“A palace embroidered on each cloth?” he repeated, passing his hand along his jaw as he imagined how dear a price such a table linen would fetch.
“Only think how it will set us apart from our competitors,” Pen declared.
He rather doubted the drunken lords and merchants who would haunt these halls would give a damn about whether or not the tablecloths were embroidered. Perhaps Pen was taking her role a mite too seriously.
“I have all the linens you originally purchased at the ready,” Mr. Waters was saying. “But as for the embroidery, I must ask for an increase of price and far more time. I won’t be capable of producing the n
umber requested with the embroidery before you open your establishment, and Miss Sutton refuses to accept this.”
“I won’t accept it because your excuse simply isn’t good enough, Mr. Waters,” Pen said. “If you refuse to give us what we need, then we will take our business to someone who will.”
Damn it, Pen was buzzing like an angry bee this morning. Waters was one of the finest linen drapers in London, and persuading him to sell his fine tablecloths to the Suttons for a gaming hell had required an extra greasing of the palm. It had hardly been the first time Rafe had used bribery to get what he wanted, and he had no doubt it would not be the last. But now Pen was doing her best to undo all the good work he had accomplished.