Free Never Entice an Earl by Lily Dalton Page A

intricate tangle of not-necessarily untruths would fall to
     pieces. If Lady Harwick ever learned the truth of this night, Daphne feared the viscountess
     would expire on the spot.
    “Pirouette.”
    Mr. Bynum’s command jerked Daphne into the present. She mimicked the movements of
     the young woman on the stage beside her, and twirled like a ballerina. More like a drunken ballerina. Her throat still burned from that single gulp of gin. While spirits no
     doubt took the edge off her present humiliation, she hadn’t anticipated its strength.
     To her good fortune, no one seemed concerned about talent or proper form, only that
     they prance around under the pretense of being actresses, wearing unseemly costumes
     for the illicit pleasure of the men salivating at their feet. Coming to a stop, she
     sashayed to the next corner and took the place of the girl who had just vacated the
     spot.
    Mr. Bynum shouted a French command. “Parader!”
    Truly, he had the most appalling accent. Yet she complied and executed a different
     “classical” pose, her arms thrown wide.
    He blathered on, this time about Helen and the Spartans. In that moment, she desperately
     tried to forget where she was at the moment and mentally transport herself a thousand
     miles away. She imagined herself as Helen, the face that had launched a thousand ships.
     She had always had a flair for the dramatic. She and her sisters had always put on
     productions for the family, and in secret she had dreamed of a life onstage, of a
     life of adventure. In some ways, tonight’s daring excursion had been exceedingly exciting,
     and she might actually enjoy herself if not—
    If not for the fact that she, Daphne Bevington, the Earl of Wolverton’s granddaughter,
     was at this moment standing on a stage in London’s most notorious bawdy house, half
     foxed, half naked, and making a naughty spectacle of her jiggly bits for the entertainment
     of strangers.
    Daphne bit down a gasp. Not all strangers , for there , having just come through the back doorway, was—oh, of all people—Lord Rackmorton.
     She’d sensed he was a rat. Now, at the earliest opportunity she could rebuff him without
     the slightest guilty conscience. Look how he laughed, with a salacious turn of his
     lips, and greeted the ladies, all the while appearing so at ease.
    A sudden terror struck her. What if, even though her face was half-concealed by the
     mask, he saw her and recognized her? For the first time, a different terror struck
     her—the realization that not only her family might discover her secret, but the entire ton as well.
    Yet in a blink, two women plastered themselves to His Lordship’s side and escorted
     him off, laughing, into the shadows, past another gentleman who, strangely, had concealed his face with a dark hood—
    “Pirouette!”
    Just then, a big hand smacked her buttocks, latched there, and squeezed .
    Daphne squawked and jumped. A glance over her shoulder confirmed her assailant to
     be the same cretin as before, looking rather pleased at getting such a solid handful
     of her. Indeed, in the next moment, with the help of a friend’s knee, he hurled himself
     half on the stage, reaching for her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like a hound
     on the street. “Come on, sweet, how about a little ballum-rankum? Just tell me how
     much?”
    Lunging away, she somehow managed to twirl with one leg raised—
    Only to crash into Cleopatra the Cat. The room erupted in laughter. In her discomposure,
     she’d gone the wrong way. The girl shouted a vulgarity a lady ought not to even know,
     and gave Daphne a shove in the opposite direction—
    Just in time for her to see the most attractive gentleman plant his fist in the face of the man who had affronted her.
    Looking up, he glared at her, rather ferociously, something that ought to have frightened
     her but instead inspired everything inside her to tingling. In that moment, everything
     inside her arrested completely,