Her Notorious Viscount by Jenna Petersen Page A

part of the celebrations or consolations after them.
    A weathered barkeep stepped up and gave what was as close to a smile as one was going to get on such a scarred face. “Rage, Stone, haven’t seen you two for a bit. What’s your poison?”
    “Whiskey for both. And is Ruby here tonight?” Rage asked as he motioned his head toward the back where most of the higher stakes gaming went on.
    “Ruby’s here,” the barkeep said as he set two grimy glasses on the tabletop. “Be up soon enough when word gets around that you two are here.”
    Then he turned away, making no further effort to make conversation. In the hells, it was best not to hear or see anything when you weren’t invited, and everyone knew it.
    “So, Jane Fenton,” Rage said as he took a sip of his drink. “How did she chase you into the hells? Were her lessons so dastardly?”
    Nicholas groaned. “The lessons were hardly anything to speak of. She asked me to move for her—”
    Rage interrupted with a devilish grin. “And I’m sure you were most happy to oblige her.”
    He shrugged. “She seemed immune to my subtle attempts at charm. And then to my blatant ones. I’ve never seen anything like it, actually. And then I, er, kissed her.”
    Rage set his drink down with raised eyebrows. “And this set you on your heels…how? You’ve certainly kissed women before her, and I’ll wager you’ll kiss plenty more after. No kiss has ever sent you running from your own home.”
    “But Jane isn’t like the other women I’ve kissed,” he explained, trying to clarify the problem for himself as much as his friend. “She isn’t some whore or an opera singer or a married woman slumming in the hells with a fighter. She is a lady, whether she is still treated like one or not. And if I’m to become a gentleman again, I cannot just go around kissing ladies like her without consequences.”
    Rage shivered. They both knew the consequence Nicholas referred to. Marriage. It wasn’t something often forced upon those who lived in the world around them. But in the ton , one could be shackled to a woman faster than one could say devil’s daughter.
    And while Nicholas knew that his new life would eventually lead to marriage, he wasn’t about to be run into it by a careless kiss. He would choose the woman he took for a bride carefully. A woman of influence would be best, one who could continue to improve his reputation.
    “The last thing I need is for it to be said that I seduced some poor fallen lady,” he groaned. “My reputation is wretched enough as it is.”
    Rage shrugged. “Is she the type to spread such stories, perhaps in order to better her situation?”
    Nicholas paused. He hadn’t even considered that idea. But as he thought of Jane, he couldn’t imagine her doing such a thing. After all, she had been offered an escape from her current position by her cousin’s offer of marriage. If she had refused that, it didn’t seem likely that she would use their strange situation against him to force a union.
    “I couldn’t see her doing that. She is the one who insists on secrecy and propriety,” he said, though he couldn’t help but think of her brief responsiveness before she turned the fiery spark of her anger on him.
    And what a spark it had been. He smiled just thinking of it. It might be worth kissing her again, just to make her rail and flush like that.
    “My boys!”
    Both men looked up as a woman entered the main room from the back gaming hall. With a grin, Nicholas pushed to his feet to greet her.
    Ruby Hathaway had long passed the bloom of her youth, but there was still something about her. A middle-aged queen who ruled her gaming hall with an iron fist. She had been married to the man who first put Nicholas in the ring, and though he was gone, Ruby still looked at the fighters her husband had trained as her own children.
    “Didn’t think we’d see you back, Stone, after your poor brother cocked up his toes,” Ruby said as she pressed a