Free The Dangerous Viscount by Miranda Neville

discovery of firsthand details about Diana’s sleeping habits.
    He stiffened like a watchdog at the sound of the door opening below, but another look at his watch told him it was unlikely to be her. A murmur of masculine voices announced the arrival of Blakeney and Lambton. He hunched down in his seat.
    “You’ll have to lend me the money, Lamb.” That was Blakeney, so extravagant and careless in his spending he was always short of cash. “Might as well make it a thousand. You’ll have it back on quarter day.”
    As far as Sebastian could make out, Lambton, an ever-obliging fool, agreed to the arrangement. Notterribly interested in Blake’s financial difficulties, his attention drifted until her name came up.
    “What about Diana Fanshawe?” Lamb asked. “You’re going about it damned discreetly.” Sebastian leaned around the chair so that he could hear clearly. “Have you had her yet? Are you going to give me some details?”
    “Damn it, Lamb! When it comes to one’s wife the secrets of the bedchamber remain secret.”
    “Wife!”
    “I daresay I shall marry her,” Blakeney replied. “Is that necessary?”
    “If I want her, and I do, it’ll have to be marriage. That or risk a scandal at Mandeville and the devil to pay with my mother.”
    “I wouldn’t think the duchess, or the duke for that matter, would like to see that connection.”
    “M’father won’t like it at all but my mother will like it less if I take Diana as my mistress and it becomes known.”
    “Which it will, of course. But why should anyone care?” Lamb sounded puzzled. “Aren’t her family nobodies?”
    “Not quite. They may be a shoal of queer fish but the family’s been here since before the Conqueror. Or perhaps it’s before the Flood. A devilish long time, anyway. The Vanderlins may be ducal now, but the Montroses were already somebody when we were living in mud huts in Holland. The country folk never forget we only arrived with William of Orange.”
    “Still, Blake. Marriage?”
    He’ll never get the chance, Sebastian thought smugly, not pretending to deny that beating hiscousin to the prize added spice to the prospect of his wedding.
    “She’s beautiful, Lamb,” Blakeney said. “Who’d have thought she’d turn out so well? Fanshawe spotted a diamond where none of the rest of us saw it. And Fanshawe’s nabob fortune would be damned useful. I could thumb my nose at my father. Hey, I wouldn’t have to borrow from you anymore.”
    “Rich and beautiful, you lucky dog.”
    “She wants me,” Blakeney said.
    Sebastian could hardly restrain his mirth. How like his cousin to be so arrogant and so wrong. It wasn’t Blake Diana had been pursuing for two days. It wasn’t Blakeney she’d kissed in the moonlight. Thinking of that interrupted embrace almost distracted him from the rest of the conversation.
    “Seeing her with my cousin Owl was quite exciting. The idiot seemed to be getting into the spirit of things. Goes to show Diana’s a hot piece.”
    He could have howled with humiliation that Blake had observed that moment of thrilling intimacy. His own fault, Sebastian supposed, that he’d chosen to kiss her by the light of a full moon in front of a building designed to be seen from every part of the park.
    The first twinge of doubt assailed him. Had he chosen the location or had she? No. He had. He’d still been carrying her when he kissed her for the first time.
    “Rich, beautiful, a hot piece, and a damn good sport,” Lamb said. “Many ladies would have fainted at the idea of the wager, let alone propose it.”
    “Don’t remind me,” Blake said. “That five hundred pounds hurts. I hope Diana thinks it was worthit. Kissing Sebastian Iverley can’t have been much fun.”
    Blake’s scornful laugh pierced Sebastian’s gut. “I almost wish I could tell Cousin Owl she was only making up to him to win a bet. As though Diana of all women, the picture of fashion, could ever be attracted to such a