“Did you hear me, sir?” Mary demanded, her chest tight with what she assumed was fear.

It had to be fear making her heart tear about in her chest like a frightened rabbit.

Anything else was unconscionable.

Although, perhaps he wasn’t a mere “sir”. Unlike his disheveled appearance outside the garden fence yesterday morning, tonight his cravat was perfectly tied, not a wrinkle to be seen anywhere on his clothing. But it scarcely mattered if she noticed the way his tailored evening jacket clung to his lean body, or if he carried a title about on those handsome shoulders.

He was a bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool villain.

He appeared young—two, perhaps three years younger than herself. Old enough to be a proper man, though, and larger than her by far. He stared back at her, silent, a wave of longish-blond hair falling into his eyes. She began to form an impression from his silence that he might be stupid. Thank goodness. Stupid villains tended to fare poorly.

It was the smart villains one needed to avoid.

“Are you deaf, as well as incorrigible?” she asked, growing bolder now. She tried to call to mind her favorite heroines, and how they stood their ground when finally facing their villains. But while such examples gave her courage, she needed to remember that while he might be young and stupid, he was also still dangerous. “I asked you to open the door,” she said, repeating her demand.

But he didn’t open the door. He stepped away from her—which made her breathe a bit easier—and set down his top hat on a table—which made her throat close tight. He pulled a book down from the nearest shelf and hefted it in one hand, as if testing its weight.

Mary stared, frozen by the sight of that book in his hand. Her imagination took hold of her thoughts. A book could be an effective weapon, if wielded with enough force.

She recalled a novel she had once read where the villain had merely threatened to use force, and the heroine had capitulated her very innocence. She’d marked the passage and returned to it, over and over again, each night for a month. She was horrified by the tale, to be sure, but there was also something of curiosity lying below the surface of that terror. The heroine—a silly girl, to be sure—had strangely enjoyed the things she had done, though she’d suffered for her sins and died of the pox by the end.

As all proper heroines must.

“Do you mean to threaten me with that?” she asked warily.

“With a book?” He turned it over, as if examining it. “You think I intend it to be a weapon?” His gaze lifted and held hers. “I assure you, I have never in my life threatened a woman. I do not have to, you see.” He smirked. “They all beg me for a kiss.”

Mary flushed. Good heavens. The man was insufferable . . . in a curious, heart-pounding sort of way. “Then what are you doing with it?”

“Perhaps I am reading.” He opened the cover and offered her a flash of teeth against the growing dimness of the room. “It is, after all, what one does in a library.” He waited a beat, then closed the cover. “Unless you have something else in mind?”

She was reminded, in that moment, that he might be stupid but he was also very handsome. In too many books, the handsome ones could be stupid and still cause a good deal of trouble. “Stop lying to me,” she snapped, feeling flushed for reasons that unfortunately had little to do with panic or timidity. “Why did you follow me into the library?”

“I enjoy a good novel.”

“Then you should try Bleak House. Or Wuthering Heights.” She strained her eyes in the direction of the book he was holding, trying to read the gold embossed lettering along the spine. “Not The Prescriber’s Pharmacopeia.”

His laugh caught her off guard and Mary felt a blooming of heat in her abdomen at the sound. She should not be here, listening to this man’s laughter. They should not be here, together in such an indelicate situation. He should have opened the door when she’d demanded it.

But she was capable of opening the door herself, wasn’t she?

He put the book down on the table beside his hat, freeing his hands for other more dangerous pursuits. His gaze met hers. Warm. Questing. She felt an answering heat spreading through her stomach.

That was all the cue she needed to end this now. Mary took a step around him, heading toward the door to the hallway, seeking solace from her own apparent propensity for folly. She reached a hand toward the door, but froze as she caught the faint sound of voices outside, hushed and furtive.

Her mouth went dry. Oh, but could this night get any worse?

A scratch came at the door. She opened her mouth, but without warning, the scoundrel’s hand—good heavens, was it possible she still didn’t know his name?—closed over her upper arm and pulled her behind the nearby drapes, yanking them closed, dust motes stirring. Before she could so much as gasp in outrage, he’d pulled her flush against his very solid chest, her back pressing against his front, one large, capable hand clapped over her mouth. That was when she realized he might be young and stupid, but he was also very strong.

And this night could definitely get worse.

Good God, the woman was going to get them discovered.

Was she really so naive as to think that calling out, identifying their unchaperoned presence behind a closed library door, was a good thing?

Bloody hell, this was why West never dealt with innocents.

They were so damnably . . . innocent.

She might know her way around a library and be able to rattle off an impressive-sounding list of books, but it was clear she knew nothing of how the world—or, more terrifyingly, London society—worked. If they were seen together like this, there would be hell itself to pay.

The scratch on the door came again. West well recognized it, given that he and Grant had used such signals on more occasions than he could count. Another couple wanted to use the library for a clandestine tryst but didn’t want to risk their own discovery. Whoever they were, they were growing bolder for the lack of an answer. A faint knock came next, followed by a man’s low voice, murmuring to someone in the hallway.

In spite of their sticky predicament, West grinned. This could be . . . interesting. Was his poor mouse from the garden going to be forced to listen to another pair coupling? That, surely, would be an even greater horror to her sensibilities than witnessing the harmless desecration of a rosebush, which had probably benefited from his generous fertilization. He drew his hand away from her mouth, letting a finger rest against her lips, the warning clear. Not a sound.

She twisted around to face him. She smelled like . . . lemons. He sniffed, the scent tickling at his nostrils. Perhaps she used a scented soap. Or perhaps she sucked on them, to give her mouth that decidedly prudish pucker.

A knock came again, and a rattle of the door latch. He pulled the drapes more tightly around them, then tightened one hand about her waist, giving her both a warning to stay quiet and a salacious sort of squeeze. “Be still,” he warned in a soft whisper.

“Don’t touch me like that,” she choked out. “I will scream!”

He permitted himself a chuckle. “Oh, luv.” He lifted the offending hand to trail a finger against the curve of her cheek. “I confess I’d like to make you scream.” He paused, one finger lingering at the point of her chin, then gently tipped her head back until she was staring up at him, her brown eyes wide with something other than fear. “But I promise,” he added, “you would do so in pleasure, not fear.”

Her slowly indrawn breath pleased him, teased him with other possibilities. Perhaps she wasn’t as much of a prude as he’d imagined.

But he could scarcely tell her the direction of his thoughts. He couldn’t say another word. Because the door was opening, and someone—several someones, in fact—were moving into the room, multiple voices melding into a low hum of whispers. His grin returned as he caught the timbre of two male voices, and two lighter female tones.

Ah. Four of them, was it?

That was an even more delicious outrage to a mousy virgin than listening to a single pair tup themselves senseless against her precious bookshelves.

The woman in his arms seemed to think so, too. Her chest rose in indignation, and that tempting mouth opened in panic. It was clear she was about to do something imprudent.

He didn’t have time to think, only to act. He needed to silence her, immediately.

The danger of discovery was far more real now that the room had been claimed by others, and now that she’d turned to face him, he was no longer positioned to clap a warning hand over her mouth again. And so he kissed her, muffling her squeak of outrage with a generous sweep of his tongue. She began to struggle against him, her protest muffled against his lips.

“What was that?” came one of the male voices.

She quieted, her mouth going still beneath his, submitting to the invasion with surprising rapidity. She went almost limp in his arms, letting him do what he would.

Smart woman, to finally recognize the danger.

But was it too late?

Footsteps echoed, too close for comfort. West kept his mouth pressed to hers, not even daring to exhale. He could feel the tension in her body coil tighter, until it seemed as though she might shatter beneath his lips. But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t so much as twitch.

“Is someone there?” a female voice whispered, inches from where they breathed.

“There’s no one.” The second woman’s faint laugh echoed. “Just a mouse, I think.”

The footsteps retreated toward the center of the room. The voices shifted, low murmurs and an occasional husky female laugh. Despite the surge of relief he felt to have escaped discovery, West didn’t relinquish his control of her lips. Yes, it was a mouse.

A very tempting mouse, frozen in his arms.

She surprised him. He’d thought, perhaps, that she’d have some bite to her kiss, given the way she’d sniped at him, but this was a sweet surrender.

He slowly lifted his mouth, thinking perhaps she might need to breathe. Her eyes seemed huge in the gathering darkness, her lips swollen from their recent good use. She lifted a finger to her mouth, running a fingertip along her lower lip.

And then with a small hitch of breath, her arms snaked up around his neck, and West found himself pulled back into another kiss, this one far more real than the first.