There Will Be Phlogiston Read Online Free Page A

think you’d never been
naked with a man before.”
    It was hard to manage hauteur when he could smell
sex on his own skin, but he tried. “As it happens, I am not in the
habit.”
    “You’d better make the most of it, then.” Jones held
out his arms, and Lord Mercury, without entirely realising what he
was doing, tumbled into them.
    The shock of intimacy hit him like cold water, and
made him gasp. After the sins they had just committed, a simple
embrace should have been nothing. He stared helplessly at Jones’s
still-smiling mouth, so close to his own that he could almost taste
his breath.
    If he . . .
    If Jones . . .
    He jerked his head away, and Jones’s lips grazed his
cheek. When he turned back, any trace of softness in the man’s
expression was gone.
    Lord Mercury had intended his coupling with Jones to
be a one-time aberration—a moment of weakness they could both
pretend had never happened—but his will proved unequal to the task.
Unlike his furtive, back-alley encounters, Jones could not be boxed
away and ignored. He was there, present and inescapable, his
clothed body a constant reminder of his naked one, even the most
innocent movement of those big hands sufficient to reduce Lord
Mercury to a quivering ruin of lust and need.
    He always had to instigate.
    Every single time, he told himself it would be the
last.
    But he came to pleasure like an opium addict to his
pipe, and Jones broke him with ecstasy. Made him sob and scream and
beg, utter the most unthinkable obscenities, disport himself with
unspeakable wantonness. But he never held him again. Or tried to
kiss him.
    And it was never quite the same as that first
afternoon.

Rosamond was not enjoying the ball.
    Not that anyone would have been able to tell. She
was too good for that.
    It was not that there was anything wrong with the
ball itself—unless one counted a regrettable lack of care with the
guest list—but she had been to several balls, and they were all the
same.
    The dresses were the same.
    The music was the same.
    The guests were the same.
    Sometimes the very idea of attending another ball—or
another soiree, or another card party, or another opera—made her
want to cry. But she had her pride. She danced, she smiled, she
said the right things to the right people.
    She was sure she was perfectly enchanting.
    And she absolutely did not pay any attention to that
dreadful Anstruther Jones. Of all the nerve. She enjoyed a private
shiver of outrage at the man’s temerity.
    Asking her to dance indeed.
    But . . . why her?
    She was not the richest debutante here, nor the most
connected, nor—bleak candour forced her to concede—the most
beautiful. And from across a room, one could not judge her perfect
manners, her dulcet tones, her many ladylike accomplishments.
    Nothing that would lead the most talked about man in
Gaslight to single her out.
    Unless he thought her the sort of woman easily
swayed by a lot of money, and a few scraps of fame.
    Well, he was mistaken. As he would surely discover
to his cost. Somehow. In some way.
    Perhaps when he saw that she was dancing with a
marquess.
    A proper southern marquess, who owned land, and a
great estate, and could trace his line back twelve generations. Who
knew nothing of factories, or airships, or industry.
    That was the sort of man she could aspire to
wed.
    The sort of man it was her duty to wed.
    Rich, noble, and—if she was fortunate—malleable. She
had no wish of turning into her mother.
    If she married the Marquess of Pembroke, perhaps he
would take her to London. Perhaps the balls would be different
there. Perhaps life would be different.
    She glanced up at him from beneath her lashes. He
was young, and handsome she supposed. Certainly younger and more
handsome than the Phlogiston Baron.
    Who had stood up with several, less discriminating
ladies after she had turned him down. Not that she’d been
watching.
    He danced well. Unexpectedly so for such an
impertinently large man. With ease rather