It did seem that every unmarried man in London society had been invited to this ball and many of them had accepted, lured by Lady Hollen's persistence, Sir Hollen's reputation as a wealthy and indulgent papa or, just possibly, by the undeniable if conventional charms of young Miss Hollen.

The earl surveyed the ballroom, his monocled gaze lingering not on Miss Hollen, who was a fresh-faced if frivolous chit, nor on any of her contemporaries in the marriage mart, but on Mr. Chartley's exquisite inexpressibles. They were slightly more exquisitely filled than Lord Bevair's, slightly less so than Mr. Selbyson's. Any of those young gentlemen were even fresher than Miss Hollen could ever conceive, in more ways than one.

Dorian, Earl of Redgloria, smiled reminiscently and sipped at his glass of wine.

The young lady was presently in converse with a dowager in sober dark green, a friend of Lady Hollen's, the earl recalled. The elder lady had a son who'd been off making war on the Continent for several years and who was not, to the earl's knowledge, married. That might explain it. Lady Hollen had not scrupled to make a delicate appeal to the Earl of Redgloria himself on Persephone's behalf, when the earl had been ignoring the fairest offerings on the marriage mart for nearly a decade. She would hardly ignore a respectable friend's son in her search.

A stir at the ballroom entrance drew the earl's attention. It was someone tall -- as tall as the earl -- and possessed of elegant military bearing. The ballroom's hundreds of candles glinted on his sleek black hair, classical features and colorful regimentals. The earl sighed again, this time on quite a different note. Manly beauty was not in short supply in London, but it seldom came in so dangerously fascinating a package.

The newcomer greeted Lady Hollen with a reserved nod, and kissed the hand of the dowager in green. Only then did he allow himself to be presented to Miss Hollen, and his smile to her was equally reserved. The earl only hoped that the handsome officer might not be smitten by instant infatuation for Persephone Hollen. He wished he could hope that the dark-haired man might entertain other desires; but no, he was bowing -- very properly and with a grace that quite took the earl's breath away -- to Miss Hollen, with a look of dutiful interest on his face.

Who was he? If he was the son of the dowager in green, who was she? The earl recalled after a moment: Lady Calliope Everbrook, the late Baron Everbrook's relict, not seen much in society since her husband's death. If this was her son, the new baron would be more of a distraction than the Season had presented Dorian, Earl of Redgloria, in some time.

The new Baron Everbrook, if it were he, exhibited concentration but no other sign of loverlike infatuation as he led Miss Hollen into a set of country dances and later into a quadrille. He danced with no one else, only nodding politely when some female other than the dowager baroness or Miss Hollen spoke to him. The rest of the time he sat on the uncomfortably fragile chairs the ballroom provided and conversed steadily with the young lady.

At length Sir Hollen called his new guest away from his daughter and the earl was able, at last, to request an introduction.

"Lord Redgloria, this is Major Baron Everbrook, newly returned from Portugal. Everbrook, the Earl of Redgloria."

"I'm very pleased to meet you," said the earl, sizing up the baron as best he could through a deepening haze of lust. At close proximity, the man was even more overwhelming than from halfway down a ballroom.

"Thank you."

"Would you care for a hand of piquet later? Sir Hollen always provides a card room."

The baron frowned. Dorian, entranced, observed that it only improved his looks, but when he put on an expression of polite neutrality, that too only improved his looks. The man was damnably attractive.

"I'm sorry. I don't play," said the baron. He closed his mouth quickly as though to prevent anything more from escaping it.

The earl swallowed. He wanted the baron's mouth, wanted to feel it soften under his lips, to see it swollen with kissing and other attentions. He wanted the sleek hair ruffled with passion. It didn't matter whether the baron played piquet, horseshoes or hard to get. The earl wanted this man in his arms, in his bed and if possible in his arse.

Soon.

"Lord Everbrook and I have matters to discuss this evening, I'm afraid," said Sir Hollen. "I shall sponsor him to White's, if he likes, however."

"I would be pleased to add my voice," said the Earl.

Sir Hollen clapped him on the shoulder of his sapphire-blue jacket, dislodging a ruffle of lace from his neckcloth. "Excellent, my lord." The earl smiled through the destruction of his careful arrangement. "It would be an unlooked-for honor, but if you will excuse us for the moment...?"

"Of course," said the earl. "If I may render the baron any trifling service to welcome him to London, he has only to ask."

That won him a reserved "Thank you" from Everbrook and a parting nod from Sir Hollen. The earl returned to the crowd of dancers and onlookers, defeated for the moment.

He fetched himself a glass of champagne, watching the dancers as a waltz was struck up. Miss Hollen smiled winsomely upon Mr. Chartley, who seemed to be asking for the dance, but did not accept his offer. The young man was still exquisite, but his curls were light brown instead of sleek ebony and his slim figure was suddenly too... juvenile, in the Earl of Redgloria's eyes.

What were Everbrook and Sir Hollen discussing? The man's sudden appearance and singular focus of attention made it far too clear. He'd come back to England from fighting Napoleon and found it necessary to provide for the title's future existence. A wife and nursery were the obvious goals. Were they talking about settlements, dowry, a wedding date?

Probably. The earl's gloom deepened. Suddenly, he could not endure the polite chatter and restrained gestures of society's glittering surface. He lifted his glass in passing to the twirling couples on the floor, found his hostess, and took his leave. His composure was not improved by an overheard scrap of conversation between two beribboned damsels near the doorway: "... they say he's known the family since Persephone was a baby -- too terribly antiquated, don't you think?"

Followed by her companion's, "But does he think so?"

The baron gave no sign of being anything but a wholly dutiful son and family friend. A prig, in fact.

Dorian, Earl of Redgloria, wished he could believe that were true.

# # #

Two hours later the earl sat at a dirty table at the back of an establishment dedicated to gambling, drinking, and sordid encounters for pleasure or profit of all kinds. It was a useful haunt for a member of the *ton* intent on heavy-duty slumming and the earl maintained a frequent presence at this place in a district far removed from Mayfair. The clientele knew him primarily as "Mr. Eroica," and if some were so foolish as to assume from this that he was a native Italian, he did not dissuade them from calling him "Il Signore."

The earl was cultivating a mood of wistful languor, helped by a bottle of port. He ignored the puzzled glances of certain of the clientele whose companionship, under more carefree circumstances, he might have welcomed. The habitues of this dark club -- as exclusive in its way as White's, though on vastly different lines -- knew enough to leave him alone when he desired it, and there were no females who required to be danced with.

For the second time that evening, his attention was drawn by a new arrival to ongoing festivities, signaled this time by a disturbance at the door. From the sound of it, it might be a customer unknown (as yet) to the proprietor. Who had come to this district of London in search of such diversions as an underworld gaming hell and place of genially ungenteel solicitation could provide?

The earl peered through the gloom at the source of the disturbance, and was surprised -- but not *too* surprised -- to discern glossy black hair, an aquiline profile, and an elegantly dangerous figure in dark clothing that could not be identified either as tonnish or countrified by its cut. A Portuguese style, perhaps? But what was the erstwhile major doing here, if all was well with his alliance with Miss Hollen?

Or was it? Everbrook's face was set in lines of anger, although he had bypassed the excuse to give Jem and Jerry so much as a set-down, let alone any harsher threat. His bearing was no longer merely military; it positively reeked of primed powder ready to be touched off by the smallest spark. He'd evidently come to a more suitable part of London than the Hollen House ballroom in which to explode.

Dorian's opinion of the baron rose. A thoughtful, dutiful son and guest avoided scenes in front of his mother and her friends. He'd even had the sense to change out of that exceedingly conspicuous uniform.

Dorian gestured quickly to Jem, the tap-man, and gave him a message for Jerry, the door guard whose quandary it was to admit or deny the stranger. "I believe the gentleman will provide entertainment. Let him in." No more than a moment later he found himself confronting Major Colin Everbrook, the new Baron Everbrook, who was clearly in no mood to willingly provide entertainment for anyone.

"My-- Mr. Eroica," he said, fire in his eyes and smooth arrogance on his tongue. Dorian would have liked to taste it, there and then.

"So they like to call me, here," Dorian said equably. "Would you like to be called anything in particular?"

A hard smile ignored his question. "Why did you have that peon admit me?"

"Well, now, it *would* be unusual for another of Lady Hollen's guests to show his face while I'm here... unless you want to meet me. I merely oblige you."

"Nothing could be further from my mind."

"Perhaps not, but it remains that you are here, and so am I. May I be of any assistance in finding what you might want?"

"I doubt it," said the baron.

"Just for the interest of it, what *do* you want tonight?" Redgloria waved a hand negligently. "Many here, not excluding myself, are at your disposal if you are looking for, perhaps, a bout of fisticuffs. If you will forgive the freedom from so new an acquaintance, you give every sign of wanting to hit something, and on very little excuse."

"All of you?" The baron's eyes raked the earl's satin and lace, and took in his slim, white hands. "You may be right. You decadent coward."

"Excellent," said the earl, rising to face Everbrook eye to eye. "That's a lovely insult, all the better for being so far off the mark that I need not regard it seriously. Will you have us all, or myself alone?"

Large, strong hands clenched on the edge of the table. "Suppose we leave your associates here out of our discussion."

"Willingly," said the earl, heart racing. Decadent, if not cowardly, visions of hard male anatomy danced through his head in a coruscating fire suited to touch off the baron's primed temper in an instant, if the baron had only known it. "I know a boxing trainer whose salon is near enough to be reached within a few minutes. Will that suit you?"

"If not here and now -- yes."

The earl pushed his port aside. "Then let us be off."

# # #

The unlit reaches of a capacious upper story rose above the pair of bodies grappling on straw-matted flooring. One, dark-haired in dark trousers, was more often the aggressor, but his lighter-maned partner in pale satin smallclothes and white stockings held his own, if any hypothetical observer had been present to witness the impromptu bout.

It was curiously unregulated, and not only in the lack of observers. Both participants began by testing the other's reflexes before committing to a course of action, but eventually they gave every sign of trying sincerely to knock each other apart. Neither, it seemed, could succeed. More blows were countered than landed, and only after a prolonged bout did a final blow lay the dark one on the floor. A look of comical astonishment passed over his features as he blinked up at his blond opponent, momentarily dazed.

"Enough?" inquired the earl.

"How did you...?" Everbrook shook hair out of his eyes.

For someone just recovering from a well-aimed body blow the motion must have been painful, Dorian thought, but the man made no sign of it. The earl said, "We're not so backward in London at the science of war, for all that the Peninsula has had more field practice lately."

"This is hardly war," said Everbrook. "It's been no more than an exercise."

"Then I am just as happy not to participate in a true battle with you, sir. I fear you've exhausted my repertoire for the evening. If you are quite finished with your compulsion to pummel your fellow man, will you come home with me for breakfast?"

The baron did not respond to the offered hand, so Dorian occupied himself in brushing stray pieces of straw from his person, picking a few fragments of it out of his hair. At length he heard from the floor, "As you say. I believe I owe you that, do I not?"

"Indeed," said Dorian, restraining a gloat. It had been easier than he'd feared to hide his reaction to grappling with the beautiful baron, body to body with only a few layers of cloth between them ... Or the baron had been more than usually willing to put off understanding the obvious message until later.

Such as some time soon after breakfast.

Dorian did his best to restrain a cackle of pure, triumphant glee, and succeeded only with difficulty.

# # #

Over a breakfast of steak, ale, eggs and some oddments of toast and jellied game-bird pies, the baron ate but said nothing for some time. At length, the earl said as calmly as possible, "Do you intend to marry the Hollen chit?"

The baron raised his eyes. In the dawn light shining through the breakfast-room windows they were revealed as a marvelous smoky emerald which the earl admired inordinately. "It is my mother's wish, and her father's. I see no reason not to do so."

"But is that what you want?"

"What do you think I want?"

The earl shrugged. "You seemed to want Miss Hollen's company, yesterday evening. You were remarkably dutiful about it."

The baron spit out an oath that would have been inappropriate -- in the extreme -- in mixed company.

"Dear me," said the earl, thinking that it had lacked only the capacity for such crude speech to make his infatuation with Everbrook complete. "Why don't you want to marry the girl? She's quite pretty, her family won't embarrass you, and she has a decent dowry."

The baron swallowed a morsel of partridge in sherry-and-cream sauce. "I am afraid that I must marry, now that I have returned to England. My past conduct leaves me no choice."

"Surely you don't need the money?" said Dorian, throwing polite convention aside. If he and the baron weren't past breaking some conventions, it was time they began. It could lead to other, pleasanter ways of ignoring society's dictates.

Everbrook didn't flinch by so much as a hair. "Not at all. It is only that one prefers to sell oneself more dearly than cheaply." The light of irritation was back in his eyes, turning them smokier and more desirable than ever.

"Sell yourself?" queried the earl. "What are you selling?" *What does it cost to buy you?*

"I beg your pardon, my lord. I should not express myself in that way. It is most improper. You took me by surprise."

"Does that mean you said aloud what you have been thinking all night? Don't apologize. That's what I want to hear."

Level dark brows flew upward. "Why? I am a stranger to you."

"Not after that boxing match," Dorian pointed out.

"Perhaps less so," Everbrook conceded. "What makes you interested in me at all?"

The earl waved an arm swathed in a rose brocade dressing gown. "A whim. You're something new to relieve the boredom of life. You're a new face, a source of intrigue and conversation."

"Is that all?"

There was a curious note to the question, a touch too much eagerness in contrast to Everbrook's previous reserve. The earl smiled at him, a slow, sensuous stretching of parted lips. "No. Not for me."

Everbrook put down his knife. "Then, what?"

Dorian blinked. "What would you have me say?"

"It is not my habit," said Everbrook, "to deal with persons I know nothing about. Your reputation, my lord, includes certain... practices."

Dorian supposed that it did. He cultivated some aspects of a rake's reputation, the better to camouflage other aspects he might wish to deny at times. But not at all times. "Does that mean you sought me out last night of a purpose?"

Eyes of emerald fire veiled by powder-smoke met his. "Yes."

"And?" offered the earl. At the continuing silence, he dragged his imagination away from growing visions of unnamed bodily ecstasies, realizing that he must earn this man's trust before any of them might be enacted. "Your past conduct, you said. Someone, somewhere, might give you a reputation that implies similar practices. Thus, your anxiety to marry respectably as soon as possible."

Everbrook's look of chagrin confirmed Dorian's deduction in the instant before it was hidden by a mask of polite inquiry, but the baron said only, "That is nothing surprising in a peer with no heirs, I am told."

"Indeed not," smiled Dorian.

"*You* haven't."

"I'm young yet."

There was no answer but a lift of dark, level brows. Dorian's heart lifted and other portions of his anatomy threatened to follow suit. He replied with another brocade-sleeved gesture and a return stare, waiting.

"And I am not. I shall have to marry Miss Hollen, you understand, if she and her family will have me."

Dorian shrugged. "I know of no reason they should not."

Their eyes held.

Dorian stood slowly, letting his movements proclaim a meaning that he could not make articulate, even now. "Come with me." He held out a hand. "If you will." Another flicker of eyes to meet the green ones. "My lord?"

The baron stood. "My name is Colin."

Dorian smiled again. "Dorian."

Their eyes met in perfect agreement.

# # #

The high ceiling in the capacious master bedroom suite of the earl's townhouse reflected morning light over a pair of bodies grappling enthusiastically on the linen-sheeted bedding. One, dark-haired, scarred, and browner from sun than any gentleman but a soldier would allow himself, was more often the aggressor, but his yellow-maned partner with the petal-smooth, satin-white skin held his own, if any hypothetical observer had been present to witness the impromptu bout.

It was curiously unregulated, each participant testing the other's responses before committing to a course of action. Caresses were exchanged and often countered but it was only after prolonged experiment that an urgent and mutual finality came, inevitably, to rule their movements, until both of them fell back onto the linen-covered mattress.

The darker one blinked at his blond lover, momentarily dazed with exertion. Sable locks fanned out on the white sheet opposite splayed gold curls as the two of them lay motionless in the shared serenity of the moment.

"Enough?" inquired the earl. "Although, I hope it isn't."

"How did you do... that last?"

"I'll tell you," Dorian pulled in a deep breath and smiled, "in a moment." Another breath. "If..."

"If?" inquired Everbrook in a dangerous, if still unsteady, voice.

"If you want to know."

"Adequate intelligence is essential to a successful engagement."

Dorian twisted closer and stroked a palely olive-tinted flank. "I see. On the other hand, I wouldn't have rated that engagement as anything less than successful."

A very small smile and closed eyelids met his look. "Agreed."

Dorian regarded the man who faced him now and hoped that he would not be driven away by the knowledge of what was possible between them. "It is curious, is it not, that the act is irresistible even though it cannot be called comfortable?"

"Are you a *philosophe*, Dorian?"

"I shouldn't have said so."

"I was stationed for a time in Paris at the beginning of my career. One saw many strange varieties of humanity there -- the French have a passion for organizing themselves into categories."

"What category are the *philosophes*?"

"They are the hairsplitters, the endless talkers, those who would rather define a thing than perform it." Everbrook opened his eyes and looked into Dorian's. "I would not have said that you fit the description, earlier."

"Nor you," said Dorian. "Yet perhaps I can demonstrate a use for some varieties of verbal definition, my-- Colin." He stroked Everbrook's back and the lean, hard curve of his buttock.

"In fucking?" Everbrook did not move away from the caressing hand, but his muscles twitched under it.

Dorian marveled at the romantic sound of the word in his love's mouth. "In bodily intercourse of all kinds." He shifted closer to Everbrook and let his fingers play up and down the long spine as he spoke into one exposed ear: "The pursuit, Colin, isn't of comfort or discomfort. The pursuit is of pleasure, of an irresistible sensation that whispers through your limbs, from fingertip to heart..." he pressed one of Everbrook's hands to his own left breast and relished the sensation as fingers spread and pressed closer. "From foot up to belly and groin..." His feet brushed around and over his partner's, and his hands drifted, with purpose, to a belly and groin that shivered encouragingly under their touch.

"You are very forward," said Everbrook.

"I mean to be. The first one to an engagement chooses the ground, does he not, and thus increases his chances of winning?"

"You are frivolous."

"Is this frivolous?" whispered Dorian, curling his hand around a not-quite-lax member in loving attention. "I will call it so if you prefer, but I shall say first that I don't believe any part of you is frivolous."

"No.... Of course not."

"The pursuit of pleasure, like any other pursuit, is best practiced in full awareness of the nature of what one pursues," continued Dorian, relentlessly, fondling with one hand and drawing fingertip lines on his lover's chest with the other. Colin's mouth slackened in a tiny gasp. On inspiration, Dorian stroked the dry, parted lips with his tongue, first the upper and then the lower, welcoming the brush of Colin's breath on his own lips before he began nibbling at the mouth in earnest as his fingers squeezed and nibbled elsewhere.

Colin couldn't or wouldn't speak, but his hands clamped onto Dorian's sides with bruising strength. Dorian continued his attentions, pushing the other man onto his back so that he could kneel straddling the narrow hips. Colin's hands on his waist loosened and moved over him, eloquent in their own way of sensation that might begin at an outer edge of awareness, at an elbow or shoulder-blade or thigh, but which wound its way inexorably inward to fuel a renewed fire between the legs.

He remembered his desire of the night before: his first view of Colin had led to an instant ache for this man to lay him down and enter him, hot flesh in a hot hole that strained to encompass it. That fantasy had not played a part in their coupling... as yet. He bent to kiss parted, acquiescent lips and drew back to meet the smoky green eyes.

Colin's voice was harsh with desire, but clear: "What... ground do you prefer? For... advanced encounters?"

"Ah," whispered Dorian, and bent again to apply his mouth to a rapid pulse-beat at Colin's throat. "Do you wish to be the tiller or the field, the arrow or the hind, the, ah, the cannon or the stronghold? Or both by turns?" The pulse-beat raced faster at each word and a rising erection pressed into Dorian's groin, nudging an equally aroused member there. "I confess that I favor them all. One may take pleasure in every encounter with a well-favored partner." He wrapped a hand around the two organs, matching their lengths and heads as he rolled and molded them delicately, pleasurably, together until they might crave more pressing stimulation.

"You are truly perverted," said Everbrook, while his erection bucked and swelled in Dorian's hand.

"I am," said Dorian. "Does it displease you?"

The smoky eyes closed in an expression near pain. "An honest enemy is the most worthy, and the hardest to defeat. I am not displeased."

Dorian crouched lower so that their bodies nearly touched, each man's breath stirring in the other's hair. "Am I your enemy?" he whispered.

A sobbing gust of breath. "I would... surrender... to you." A tense inclination of the body beneath him hinted at a possible change in position.

The desired fantasy shifted in an eye-blink: Dorian wanted to bury his hot flesh in a hot hole that would strain and squeeze around it, open deeper with each thrust and swallow him to the limits of pleasure. He opened his mouth to draw in air and, unable to speak, nodded. He could see the motion mirrored in Colin's eyes.

He leaned down to lay one more kiss on the softened, flushed lips before he lifted off, just enough and for just long enough to let Colin turn over, before he settled again over the spare, muscled body. He leaned down, brushed dark hair away from the bent neck, and kissed the nape. "Wait for me, Colin," he husked, hearing his own voice as distant, one hand sweeping down the vulnerable back to the defined cleft at its base. "Let me smooth the way."

There was a minuscule nod of the dark head. Strong thighs parted under Dorian, inviting. Dorian bit delicately at the dense bulk of one shoulder as he toyed with the warm rosebud under his finger, teasing it to bloom. Colin gasped as it did and Dorian's finger slipped in, smoothed by a coating of oil.

"That's not..."

"This is a civilized, decadent way of going about it," said Dorian, and gulped as the little opening closed tightly, trapping his finger. Colin drew a sharp breath and pushed up a fraction, as if asking for more. Wordless now, Dorian eased out and back in, and at his partner's continued movements he thrust a pillow beneath Colin's body to ease the strain. That, too, was a way of doing things that Dorian saw no reason to ignore. He himself on occasion had taken a most memorable pleasure from the juxtaposition it enforced between lover and beloved.

He smoothed the oil on himself and applied his very eager cannon to the fortress below, nudging into the very gates with his first push and into the inner chamber with his second.

Colin gasped again, shuddered once, and clutched at the bedding, body held tense and still. "Not enough," he groaned, although the passage that contained Dorian manifestly held everything it could take at the moment.

"Presently. Let me choose my time." Dorian tried to withdraw, braced himself and waited for the pressure around him to ease. When it did, he pulled out nearly completely before thrusting in again, deeper. Colin gave a little cry that sounded of pain, if one knew nothing of such sensations, and sounded of intensely pleasurable pain if one did. Dorian himself was hardly in better case; the besieged stronghold threatened to become a locked prison with every thrust, so that each stroke was a hard-fought advance and retreat in itself.

More cries, so soft as to be little more than imagination, sounded at each thrust, and Dorian found himself responding in kind, the tiny, effortful noises firing him higher than had ever seemed possible. He drove in on a moan and held the advance as deeply within Colin as it was possible to be. This was going to end soon, but he wanted the conquest to be quite complete for both sides. He reached to encase Colin's abandoned member in his fist and brought it to full attention... primed for firing...

Colin groaned aloud, clenched all his muscles, and came to the final convulsion of pleasure on a shudder that echoed through Dorian from loins to outermost extremities before both of them collapsed, exhausted.

"That," said Dorian some time later, "was worth any amount of trouble."

"I fear it was," said Everbrook.

"Fear, Colin?"

The aquiline face was composed. "I had planned to forget... this... when I returned to England. There would be no need of it when I have a wife and household, one would think."

"One might think that," said Dorian, "but do you agree?"

The smoky green eyes moved over his face and throat and shoulders and downward. "Miss Hollen is most personable, and has a little sense and a good nature. And yet, I had no wish to take her to my bed, with or without matrimony. The thought sent me looking in the stews of London for... you. A greater prize than any I expected from my search, I will grant."

"What will you do?"

Everbrook shrugged. "I don't know. Let us speak of something else, please."

# # #

Dorian, Earl of Redgloria, gave himself the pleasure of calling upon Lady Hollen and her daughter two days later, and found them in the company of several female friends, all gathered to exclaim over the newly-announced betrothal of Miss Hollen and Baron Everbrook. The prospective bride was in her best looks; the prospective bridegroom was absent, having the day before accomplished his only necessary contributions to the ritual until the wedding itself, which was set for four months hence.

"I wish you happy," said Dorian, wondering if happiness would be possible for Colin's wife. "If you are staying in town for the summer, will Everbrook not stay also?"

"Yes, of course," said Lady Hollen. "How could he not, with Persephone staying here, and all the thousand preparations for a proper wedding?"

Persephone said, "I hope he will. Do you mean to stay as well, my lord?"

Perhaps I shall, this year," said Dorian. "The company promises to be amusing. One may hope for an interesting summer."