Picking up a silver pen holder, St. Raphael deftly suited a beak into the end and made a program of scooping it specifically into an ink bottle.
"Smith, I am doing my finest to comprehend your dilemma. However, an absence of longing is something I have never encountered. I would have to be on my deathbed before I quit longing—no, never mind, I was on my deathbed in the not-too-distant yore, and even then I had the devil's craving for my wife."
"Congratulations," Caven mumbled, relinquishing any hope of meddling a sincere explanation out of the man.
"Let us attend to the report books. There are more significant issues to examine than sexual habits."
St. Raphael scratched out a diagram and set the pen back on its stand. "No, I demand talking over sexual addictions. It is so much more delightful than work."
He soothed in his chair with a deceitful air of indolence. "Discreet as you are, Smith, one can't boost but see how ardently you are urged. It appears you wield quite an appeal for the ladies of London. And from all impressions, you have taken full objective of what has been offered."
Caven gazed at him without manifestation.
"Pardon, but are you heading to a tangible point, my lord?"
Crouching back in his chair, St. Raphael made a temple of his gorgeous hands and scrutinized Caven steadily. "Since you have had no difficulty with lack of longing in the past, I can only presume that, as transpires with other cravings, yours has been assuaged with a surplus of equality. A bit of originality may be just the thing."
Evaluating the message, which certainly made a point, Caven gaped if the nefarious retired debauchee had ever been enticed to stray.
Having noticed Evie since adolescence, when she had come to tour her widowed father at the club from time to time, Caven felt as defensive of her as if she had been his younger sister.
No one would have matched the gentle-natured Evie with such a rascal. And probably no one had been as shocked as St. Raphael himself to find out their marriage of comfort had turned into an emotional love match.
"What of matrimonial life?" Caven inquired softly.
"Does it finally become an oversupply of sameness?"
St. Raphael's mood changed, the light gloomy eyes heating up at the reflection of his wife. "It has become obvious to me that with the good woman, one can never have enough.
I would entertain an oversupply of such bliss—but I distrust such a thing is humanly possible." Shutting the ac- record book with a strong thud, he strutted from the desk. If you will excuse me, Smith, I will bid you good night."
"What about completing the accounting?"
"I will retire the rest in your competent hands."
At Caven's smirk, St. Raphael shrugged innocently.
"Smith, one of us is a single man with gifted mathematical proficiency and no possibilities or the evening. The other is a real lecher in an amorous attitude, with a ready and noble young wife waiting at home. Who do you believe should do such account books?" And, with a carefree wave, St. Raphael had left the office.
"Curiosity" had been St. Raphael's suggestion— satisfactorily, that statement applied to Miss Anderson.
Caven had often yearned for professional women who considered seduction as a game and understood better than to flabbergast satisfaction with feeling.
He had never tossed himself in the position of instructor to an innocent. The possibility of launching a virgin was distinctly off-putting.
Nothing but discomfort for her, and the alarming probability of tears and remorses afterwards. He retreated from the notion. No, there would be no rivalry of curiosity with Miss Anderson.
Quickening his stride. Caven went up the steps to the room where the woman dawdle with the dark-faced chal. Mer-ripen was a familiar Romany name.
Yet the man was in a very unusual position. It seemed he was behaving as the woman's assistant, a strange and objectionable circumstance for a freedom-loving Roma.
So the two of them, Caven and Marvyne, had something popular. Both of them laboured for gadjos instead of wandering the earth voluntarily as God intended.
A Roma did not belong indoors, encompassed by barriers. Residing in boxes, as all rooms and homes were, shut out from the sky and wind and sun and stars.
Inhaling in a musty atmosphere perfumed with food and floor glow. For the first time in years, Caven felt a spurt of mild shock. He pushed it back and concentrated on the assignment at hand—getting rid of the unique pair in the receiving room.
Tagging at his collar to loosen it, he nudged at the half-open door and arrived at the room.
Miss Anderson stood near the entrance, enduring with tightly leashed anticipation, while Marvyne stayed a dark sight in the nook.
As Caven moved toward and glanced into her upturned face, the anxiety melted in a curious surge of heat. Her blue eyes were coated with soft lavender shadows, and her soft-looking lips were mashed into a tight trench. Her hair had been yanked back and clasped, dark and gleaming against her head.
That scraped-back hair and the simple restrictive apparel publicized her as a woman of inhibitions. A reasonable spinster. But nothing could have hidden her radiant will. She was ... luscious.
He needed to open her like a long-awaited gift. He needed her accessible and bare under him, that fluffy mouth swollen from hard, intense kisses, and her soft body glowed with longing. Stunned by her effect on him, Caven made his mood blank as he examined her.
"Well?" Jenny mandated, totally oblivious of the turn of his emotions.
Which was a decent thing, as they possibly would have sent her wailing from the room. "Have you found out anything about my brother's whereabouts?"
"I have." "And?"
"Lord Graham stopped in earlier this evening, relinquished some money at the danger table"
"Thank God he's alive," Jenny blurted.
"—and agreed to pacify himself by attending a nearby brothel."
"Hotel?" She shot Marvyne a drowsy glimpse.
"I testify it, Marvyne, he will perish at my hands tonight." She glanced around at Caven.
"How much did he misplace at the danger table?"
"Roughly five hundred pounds." The beautiful blue eyes broadened in rage.
"He will die gradually at my hands. Which hotel?"
"Bradshaw's."
Jenny attained for her bonnet. "Come, Marvyne. We are driving there to obtain him."
Both Marvyne and Caven answered at the same time. "No."
"I need to see for myself if he is all right," she said calmly.
"I very much question he is." She conveyed to Marvyne a cold gaze.
"I am not going back home without Chad."
Half delighted, half shocked by her force of will, Caven asked Marvyne, "Am I handling with obstinacy, absurdity, or some mixture of the two?"
Jenny answered back before Marvyne had the chance.
"Stubbornness, on my part. The nonsense may be indicated completely to my brother."
She resolved the bonnet on her head and tied its ribbons beneath her chin.
Cherry-red souvenirs, Caven saw in bemusement. That unimportant splash of red amid her contrarily sober attire lived an incongruous note. Coming to be more and more enchanted, Caven heard himself say,
"You can't go to Bradshaw's. Reasons of morality and safety aside, you don't even know where the hell it is."