Read Betina Krahn for Free Online Page B

potential ruin of his reputation.
    Following his lead, they sank back onto their chairs and glanced at each other in amazement. As the shrieks of the interloping female faded toward the street door, their admiration for the unorthodox earl mounted to worshipful proportions. Here, their looks of shared wonder said, was a man who truly knew how to handle women.
    But inside that imperturbable facade, dark fires of anger were scarcely being held in check. For months the heat had been building in him, and this degrading little spectacle—the invasion of his last male sanctuary—had provided the final spark to set his raw pride aflame. Suddenly he was molten, churning inside.
    “Women, gentlemen, are indolent, manipulative, and unpredictable creatures at best,” he said harshly. “They’re also expensive and self-absorbed and devious beyond belief. And it really doesn’t matter whether you’ve wedded them or not … they’ll have their pound of flesh all the same.” The fierce glow in his eyes as he lifted his gaze fromhis cards made his companions stiffen in their seats. “Console yourself with the knowledge that, as married men, you may have escaped the unpleasantness of dealing with aging mistresses. They’re the very devil to dispose of.”
    He picked up three newly dealt cards from the table, but the fury mounting in him made it all but impossible to focus on his hand. He was seized by an overwhelming urge to strike back, to do something to right the balance scales in him that had been knocked askance yet again by a woman’s volatile and demanding nature. He had to do something, to strike a blow for manhood as well as for himself. And when he looked up, he read in the wan and hopeful faces of that company of ruined bachelors the opportunity to do exactly that.
    Lady Antonia. A devious and contriving woman. A plague upon the freedom of mankind. A woman in dire need of a comeuppance.
    “So, Woolworth,” he said, taking a deep breath and feeling fresh resolve pour through his tense frame, relaxing it. “Just what did you have in mind for our diabolical Lady Antonia?”

Chapter

3

    The atmosphere was charged in the House of Commons that sultry afternoon in mid-May. The Gothic arch windows set high in the walls had been opened to provide ventilation, but the only air stirring in the great hall came from the heated blasts of the speakers on the main floor itself. The opposing ranks of green leather benches that lined the main floor were crammed with black-coated members, all exercising the long-standing MP prerogative of commenting on the recognized speaker’s parentage and sanity, as well as his oratorical style and the substance of his discourse.
    Debate on the controversial Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill was under way, and tempers were rising apace with the temperature in the stuffy chamber. The measure was an attempt to change the legal code to permit marriage between a man and his deceased wife’s sister, a degree of relation both the Church and civil authority had decreed too close to permit a conjugal union. The progressive element in the Commons ranted that the “sister prohibition” was a relic of Old Testament days in which the vice of concubinage was rampant, and that it was badly outdated. The conservatives raved that sin was sin, whatever the era, and that if moral law was to be tampered with, the Ten Commandments would soon be reduced to the Ten Suggestionsand the whole empire would go sliding straight into the water pipe.
    Neither side bothered to apologize for its scandalous language, even though the gallery that ringed the upper walls of the chamber was overflowing with observers, a number of whom were female. If women took an unfeminine interest in things governmental, both liberals and conservatives agreed, then they had to expect to be shocked from time to time. Still, in deference to those women who might have come with more appropriate
social
motives—say, to hear a husband’s speech or to