"Well...," she said, a bemused expression on her face. "I will consider our friendship properly renewed." The softness in her demeanor faded as she found her balance. "Now if you will excuse me. I have tarried long enough."

Tucking his hands behind his back, he permitted her to pass. He did not quite trust himself because he had an irrational urge to reach out and give her a thorough kissing. "Worried that your reputation will suffer if you dally with an improper gent?"

This time the door opened effortlessly. Regan glanced back over her shoulder. "What reputation? With you, Frost, and the others, I have been more or less dallying with improper gents all my life," she said with a rueful smile.

She departed with Dare's laughter echoing in the stairwell.

Dare gave his back to the door and braced his hands on the banister. By God, it was good to have Regan back. Although he had long denied it, he had missed her presence in his life. She had been one of the few people who could make him laugh until it hurt.

She could always slip past the emotional barriers he had erected to protect himself.

It was one of the reasons he should keep his distance from her.

Regan had been dangerous as a fifteen-year-old girl. As a grown woman, she was devastating to his peace of mind.

And how are you planning to keep your distance when you are living under the same roof, my friend? a voice whispered in his mind.

A soft thud drew his attention to the stairwell that was cast in shadows. "Is there anyone there?" he called out, suspecting that one of the Quintons' servants had been eavesdropping on his conversation with Regan.

If anyone was there, he or she was too frightened to reply.

After a few minutes, Dare left the stairwell.

Several hours later, Regan heard a soft knock at the door. Reaching for her shawl, she climbed out of bed and wrapped the garment around her as she headed for the door. She was not surprised to see Nina and Thea on the other side.

"I thought you were asleep," she said to them both.

Thea was the first to enter the bedchamber. "How could we sleep without hearing all the details,"

Nina moved to the bed and sat down. "We were dying to ask, but considering how you had departed the ballroom with Lord Hugh, we dared not ask in front of Lady Karmack."

"Did Lord Hugh escort you to your brother?"

"When Lord Chillingsworth approached you at the theater, he did not seem pleased at all."

"Do not worry about Frost," Regan said, waving away her friends' concerns.

Nina frowned. "Then what of Lord Hugh?"

"Dare?" Regan rubbed her lower lip with her thumb and smiled as she thought of his bruising kiss. "He did not approve of my admirers."

With eyes as wide as an owl, Thea asked in hushed tones, "Where did he take you?"

"The servants' stairs."

"Why on earth would he want to take you-" Thea's mouth fell open. "Good grief, he kissed you!"

Regan clapped her hands together, amused by her friends' identical expressions. "Oh, your faces are priceless! Is it truly so astounding, given that the last time Dare kissed me, Frost banished me to Miss Swann's Academy for Young Ladies for five years?"

"What are you going to do if your brother finds out?" Nina asked, fiddling with one of the tiny ribbons on her nightgown.

"Frost is not going to find out," Regan said, her stern gaze meeting her friends' concerned faces. "You both have to swear not to tell another living soul, and that includes your dear mother, Thea. No one witnessed the kiss. And I highly doubt Dare is in a position to brag about it."

"Oh, we swear not to tell," both ladies vowed in unison.

"After five years of separation, the kiss must have been dreadfully romantic," Nina sighed.

Regan scowled as she thought about Dare's kiss. "Not exactly."

"What do you mean, 'not exactly'?" Thea pressed.

Her arms parted in a gesture to convey her confusion. "He was rather angry with me for kissing dozens of admirers."

Both Nina and Thea seemed baffled by her admission.

Nina was the first to recover. "Miss Swann runs her school like a nunnery. When were you kissed by dozens of admirers?"

"More to the point, where were we?" Thea teased.

Laughing, Regan sat on her bed with a playful bounce. "There were no admirers, silly," she said to Nina. "I was merely taking revenge on Dare's insulting comment that I was a lousy at kissing."

Her friends gasped.

Regan nonchalantly brushed a stray strand of hair from her cheek. "Do not fret. The next time Dare kisses me, it will not be in anger," she assured Thea and Nina.

With Dare residing with her and Frost, Regan predicted that she would have many opportunities to provoke him into kissing her again.

Chapter Seven.

"For a gent who spent the night pleasuring the beautiful Mrs. Randall, none of us expected to see you until evening."

Dare winced, forgetting that Vane had disappeared from the Quintons' ball after his friend had been introduced to several ladies who were the product of his mother's latest matchmaking efforts. According to Sin, Vane had been polite, but refused to dance with any of the ladies.

Needless to say, his mother was displeased. However, no amount of tears could sway her son. Before he had made good on his escape, Vane had whispered into Sin's ear, "Bluestockings! Egad, my mother is now presenting them to me in pairs." No one had seen him again until he had wandered into Nox.

Dare closed the ledger he had been studying and calmly entwined his fingers together. "Mrs. Randall was obliged to find her way home without my assistance."

"What?" Vane gaped at Dare. "The widow had picked you out of all of us to be her lover, you lucky ungrateful bastard. How could you be so cruel to her?"

Had he not chastised himself for the same thing? Still, it chafed his pride to be scolded by his irresponsible friend. "While you were fleeing your inevitable fate, I was keeping Fothergill and his friends from chasing after Regan."

Vane sneered. "Fothergill? What the devil was he doing at the Quintons' ball? I thought he and Lord Quinton had once come to blows over a mistress."

"It went as far as a dawn appointment at Battersea Fields," Dare said, trying to recall the details of the event, which had taken place three years earlier. "I believe Quinton fired into the air, while Fothergill used his turn to aim his pistol at his opponent's head. Quinton lost a piece of his left ear that morning."

Vane leaned against the large mahogany desk. "I heard that Quinton conveyed his apologies while the surgeon was attending him. If I had been him, I would have called for my sword." The earl picked up the silver letter opener and tested the sharp edge. He flipped it in the air and caught it by its handle.

Dare smiled. Fothergill had never challenged the Lords of Vice. He preferred to improve his odds by challenging weaker opponents. "If anyone issued Fothergill an invitation to the ball, it was most likely Lady Quinton. Rumor has it that she has not forgiven her husband for the mistress or the duel."

"Another reason why I do not want a wife," Vane said, snatching the rotating letter opener out of the air. "They are vengeful, humorless creatures."

Dare slid the chair back from the desk and stretched his long legs. "Sin and Reign have fared well in their marriages."

Vane jabbed the point of the letter opener in Dare's direction. "Our friends are too besotted with their wives to stray far from their skirts. Besides, if either one of them seriously considered dallying with a mistress, I wager Juliana would shoot Sin between the eyes, and Sophia would crack Reign's skull open with her walking stick."

Dare grunted his agreement. Both ladies were wholly capable of managing their households and their husbands. "And what of your lady?"

"I do not plan on being leg-shackled," Vane said with resounding confidence. "Why settle for one woman when I can have them all?"

"Your mother seems to have other plans for you, my friend," Dare said, sympathetic to Vane's plight.

Vane set down the letter opener and moved away from the desk. "Eventually, she will grow weary of the hunt"-he shrugged and offered a careless smile-"or run out of marriageable ladies."

Dare and Vane laughed at the outrageous thought. London seemed to have an inexhaustible stable of young, unmarried ladies.

"So was Frost properly appreciative that you had sacrificed your evening with the widow to rescue Regan from Fothergill's clutches?"

"Bolton and Radcliffe, too," Dare said, recalling that Regan had not glanced in his direction for the rest of the evening.

Fortunately, she had possessed enough intelligence to remain close to her friends until they took their leave with Lady Karmack.

"I decided not to mention the incident to Frost."

Vane snorted. "Frost does not need your protection against Fothergill."

"I did it for Regan," Dare said mildly. "Frost is already looking for a reason to stuff her in the first stagecoach out of London. It is not her fault that Fothergill will pursue anything wearing a petticoat."

"How very chivalrous of you, Lord Hugh," Vane mocked. "Tell me, does Regan know that you are quietly protecting her from Frost and unscrupulous admirers?"

"No." It did sound damn noble of him, he thought, the notion ruining his good mood. "If you want to keep your teeth in your head, you will not tell a soul."

"But I have not told you my price."

Dare lunged out of the chair, his fingers missing Vane's coat sleeve by mere inches. Almost. The earl feinted to the right and stumbled out the door of the study with Dare on his heels. When he caught up to the grinning fool, Dare would ensure that his friend was more amenable to keeping his mouth shut.

If not for Regan's sake, then for his own.

"Nothing has really changed," Regan murmured as she casually surveyed the drawing room of her family's town house, taking in the veneered walnut wainscot, the marble chimneypiece, and the tapestry of Apollo and the muses that covered the far wall. She walked over the tapestry to admire the scene. When she was a child, Frost had told her that the artisan had used their father's image to represent Apollo. She had believed the lie for years, and used to slip into the drawing room so she could share secrets with her father.

"What did you expect?" Frost said, causing her to turn away from the old tapestry. He had settled in one of the chairs, his turquoise-blue eyes watching her intently.

Regan offered him a faint smile. "I cannot explain it. Perhaps I thought you could get rid of our family history as casually as you did your only sister."

"Regan," Frost drawled in warning. Fascinated, she noticed that his bare hands were gripping the ornate carved wood of the armrests until the veins on the top of his hands were visible. "What else did they teach at that school of yours besides sharpening your tongue?"

"You are responsible for my sharp tongue, brother," Regan countered, amused that she had managed to ruffle his composure so easily. "I fear Miss Swann's lessons were rather mundane in comparison with my education at Nox. Not a single fireworks rocket, sword, or brace of pistols on the property."

Frost's eyes narrowed at her sarcastic inflection, but he refrained from commenting on it. "Did you enjoy yourself last evening?"

"Very much so," Regan said, trailing her finger down the edge of the mantel. She paused to examine the five-inch figure of a white parakeet with a pale yellow beak and bright blue tail. "It was good to see everyone. While we were at Lord and Lady Quinton's, Sin introduced me to his wife, and to the lady's sisters."

"And what was your opinion of Lady Sinclair?"

Regan forgot about the parakeet and walked over to her brother. "I found her delightful. I think she and Sin are a good match."

"Hmm."

"You believe otherwise?" Regan sat down on the settee and smoothed the lines of her skirt. When her brother said nothing more, she brought her fingers to her lips to hide her smile. "Oh, my!"

"What?"

Regan leaned forward, unimpressed with his growled response. "Well, it is apparent to everyone that Sin is smitten with his wife, and you, being one of Sin's closest friends, would naturally want him to be happy. So..."

"Quit equivocating, little sister. I have taught you to behave better than that," Frost snapped.

Regan sobered at once, and then spoiled it by bursting into a fit of giggles. "Well, yes, and I must tell you that my forthright manner was quite a bane for Miss Swann." She held up her hand to silence Frost. "It was a matter of simple deduction, really. Lady Sinclair does not approve of you."

Her brother did not even blink. "Define approve."

She gave him an exasperated look. "Come now, brother. I have watched you charm legions of females from mere infants to elderly spinsters. What did you do to gain Lady Sinclair's disapproval? Did you steal a kiss from her?"

A tiny muscle under Frost's right eye twitched. With a snarl rumbling in his throat, he pushed out of the chair and began to prowl the room. "I have had quite enough from you, Regan Alice Bishop! Why are you so fascinated by Sin's wife?"

"I am not. I was merely curious about why you do not like her," she said, arching her right eyebrow.

Frost stalked toward her. "I am content with Sin's choice of wife. We will leave it at that."

"Very well, brother."

Frost raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and slumped onto the settee next to her. "I am surprised you have not inquired about Dare."

Regan expected a little more subtlety from her brother, but she let the subject of Lady Sinclair drop. "Do you refer to his whereabouts or the fact that he is residing with us this season?"

"So he told you?"

Regan nodded. "He happened to mention it when I encountered him at the Quintons'."