Free Not Proper Enough (A Reforming the Scoundrels Romance) by Carolyn Jewel Page A

what?” She looked around. She knew the long estrangement between Fenris and Lily had begun with the previous Camber. She knew as well that Lily’s suspicions of Fenris had proved unfounded. For the first time, she wondered if Fenris didn’t deserve a great deal of credit for refusing to continue two generations of resentment. “Of anything exotic or not English?”
    “He’s not quite that bad. But not so far from that, either.” He moved to the doorway and put a hand on the jamb, which was not the usual shape but, rather, had a pointed top with rounded sides that sloped toward the more usual, to her, straight-edged door shape. “I don’t wish to shock you.”
    She gave him a quick look and saw the gleam in his eyes. “There’s a scandal involved in these rooms, isn’t there?”
    Fenris nodded, and she couldn’t help a smile. “This is vastly more amusing than listening to Hester and your father discuss the proper composting of manure. Please do shock me. I won’t tell a soul, I promise.”
    “On your honor?”
    She placed a hand over her heart. “Yes, Fenris. On my honor.”
    “Very well, then. Prepare to be shocked to your very proper toes.”
    “Go on.”
    “My grandfather is reputed to have engaged in immoral conduct in these rooms. Camber, the current one, was furious when he learned my grandfather had brought me here for any reason. My father was certain I’d witnessed one of Grandfather’s orgies and that I was corrupted for life.”
    “Orgies.” She looked around the room. “Under thewatchful eye of Delilah? No, this does not seem an orgy sort of room. It’s rather a pleasant room. I don’t believe you, sir.”
    “Not here. In the Turkish room.”
    “The Turkish room.”
    “It would be wicked of me to show you.” A smile flickered at the edges of his mouth, and then his gaze landed on her rather than their surroundings. Another image flashed through her head. His pale brown eyes locking with hers after he’d come, his arms tight around her. A ridiculous and personally humiliating mental slip. He was laughing, though. Or nearly so. Taunting her with that sly smile. Daring her.
    “I feel I can withstand the shock.”
    “If you’re sure.”
    “I am.”
    He picked up the lantern again and headed for the door. “Have you a vinaigrette on hand in the event your delicate sensibilities are offended?”
    She snorted and felt very wicked, which was, she imagined, precisely what he intended. “Lead on.”
    With a hand on another door, he said, “I’ve seen the bills for the construction of this room. No expense was spared. I daresay that’s the real reason for Camber’s objection.”
    Eugenia put her palm to his chest and pushed her fingers off that broad and solid expanse. He didn’t move. “You, sir, are an awful tease. There weren’t any orgies, were there?”
    He did not open the door. “There were.”
    “You were ten. Honestly. How would you know? No one would tell a ten-year-old about orgies.”
    “As Miss Rendell would undoubtedly point out, I did not remain ten.” Fenris opened the door, and they went in. He set the lantern on a low table. “Voilà. My grandfather’s folly.”
    The Turkish room was a quite large square with a divan constructed along most of three sides of the walls. The chimney glass stretched from the fireplace mantel to the ceiling. The fireplace had been carved in an Ottoman motif, with the same exquisite scrollwork and curlicues worked into the tiles around it. Crimson velvet curtains with goldtasseled ties draped along the walls between the mirrored walls, single pieces of glass that must have cost the sky.
    Hands on her hips, she surveyed the room. “A bit ornate for my tastes. But I fail to see what’s so wicked about this. Why do you call it his folly?”
    “The expense, for one.”
    “Yes. I can see that.”
    Fenris set a hand to the small of her back and walked her along the perimeter of the divan. There were two other doors, one of them