A man will only propose when thoroughly cornered.
Advice to Felicity Langley from her Nanny Lucia
Minerva had no idea what it was Langley was about to do until his lips captured hers and his arms wound tight around her.
There was no escape from his trap—for quite frankly, she was trying like the very devil. Her hands on his shoulders balled into fists and pummeled at him, all to no avail, for the wretched scoundrel had her exactly where he wanted.
A collective gasp rose up as the door swung open to reveal his neatly staged tableaux. A perfect scene of uninhibited seduction, his lips covering hers, his hands cradling her in his steely grasp, the rakish lines of his body entwined with hers.
As if they cared not that the entire household was witness to their passions.
When Minerva tried to twist free, he added to his deception by dipping her back, so her body arched into his and it appeared to all that he was devouring her, for in truth he was—his hands roaming over her back, along her spine, teasing her, touching her, as if he could not get enough of her . . . which made her struggles appear more like . . .
Oh, heavens, she didn’t want to think about how she appeared, not when she was more worried about how it actually felt.
For as shocking as it was, the words “delicious torment” seemed to have found a new place in her vocabulary.
“Langley! Whatever are you doing to her?” Nanny Lucia said in a high-pitched voice that verged on a horrified shriek.
That was the question Minerva wanted to ask—that is, if she could have managed—but right at that moment her lips were occupied, and unfortunately she was having trouble breathing.
Having trouble thinking.
For traitorously, seductively, and eloquently, this wretched, practiced rake was plying his trade over her like a maestro might roam a bow over a violin.
And yes, her strings were trembling. Vibrating with a music that begged one to listen, to move, to respond.
How could she not? What with her breasts pressed to his chest, his hand cupping her . . . her . . . good heavens, her backside, and his lips, oh, those lips, plying hers, nibbling at hers, teasing her to open up to him.
Give in to his seduction.
Give in? She hadn’t been dubbed the icy Lady Standon for nothing. She had dodged, avoided, and quelled the aspirations of every ne’er-do-well who had veered in her direction over the last eleven years, since the death of Philip Sterling had freed her from the bonds of marriage. Years of maintaining her spotless reputation were gone in an instant as this one man breeched her defenses without so much as a hint of flirtation.
So even as she considered raising one final note of protest—a knee to his infamous manhood—something unexpected happened.
Unexpected in that Minerva would never have thought such things could happen. At least not to her.
As hastily as he’d caught her up, as tightly as he held her, his lips touched hers with a tenderness, a reverence, that belied his reputation. He wasn’t so much devouring her, but teasing her. Tempting her. Tasting her. Slowly, deliberately. His strong lips covered hers, murmured over hers, but what they were saying was like a whisper in a foreign language. She hadn’t the vaguest idea what was being said, but all of a sudden she longed for the translation.
Desired it with all her heart.
And as that awareness, the spark of need flared to life inside her, at the very moment when she could feel the traitorous acquiescence in her body, he pulled back, just enough to look into her eyes.
And what she saw there inflamed her. That brazen light of mischief sparkling at her. As if he knew the battle going on inside her . . . and worse yet, that he’d begun to win it.
“My apologies, dearest,” he whispered loudly. “There will be time enough for us later.”
Later. The word purred over her with a heady promise of passions yet to come.
Like hell, she would have told him, if he hadn’t just then set her back up on her feet and she found herself wavering, her knees knocking about beneath her as if her house had suddenly been launched to sea.
In the middle of a storm. With nothing to lash herself to.
Save this solid, muscled man beside her.
I’d rather drown, she fumed silently, staggering a few steps back and catching hold of her dressing table.
“Awch! Schatzi!” Nanny Helga cried out, elbowing her way past Brigid and Lucia. “What has become of you, my Langley, that you would stoop to . . . to . . .” Her hands fluttered at Minerva while her nose wrinkled in dismay.
Not to be outdone, Nanny Lucia came bustling forward as well. The elegant lady wore a robe and night rail in a sapphire blue silk that clung to her curves and was so gossamer that next to nothing of the Italian woman’s bountiful charms were “hidden” beneath. If the color wasn’t enough to catch the eye, she also wore a matching necklace, ear bobs, and bracelets, as if she were about to attend the opera. “Dolce cuore,” she purred. “Obviously you have lost your way.” She tossed a derisive snort at Minerva and at the margravine. “Now, I am here to help.”
“You?” Brigid laughed and set down Knuddles. “Look, darling, it is Langley.”
Knuddles, true to his affenpinscher nature, set out directly for Langley and promptly clamped his teeth down into the heel of the man’s boot, staking his mistress’s claim. Even the baron’s determined shaking of his foot would not dislodge the little monkey-faced dog.
“Brigid, call off this beast,” he muttered, shaking his foot and teetering about with the stubborn little dog attached to his heel.
Which gave the lady the invitation that no one else had received, and she queened her way past the rest of them, pausing before Langley and casting him a seductive glance before she bent over, slowly, purposefully, so that her low-cut night rail billowed out and gave anyone willing to look an eyeful.
Utterly shameless! Minerva stood there stunned by the lady’s brazen antics, and her furious glance—why she was furious, she wasn’t certain, but then again it wasn’t every night she had such a circus parading about in her bedroom—rose to meet Langley’s, for he was the catalyst of all this.
As far as she was concerned, they all could have him. While she wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of them setting up a brawl in her bedroom, if it would expedite them on their travels, then she would risk a bit of damage and scandal.
Yet to her surprise he wasn’t looking down at what the woman was offering, but instead his gaze was on her, and when their eyes met, he had the nerve to wink.
“Ah, thank you,” he said as his boot came loose. Immediately he stepped away from the lady and closer to Minerva. “There now, that is better.”
Better for who? From Minerva’s vantage point it only put her in harm’s way, for there was still the Russian princess and her Cossack forces in the background awaiting an opening to make their charge.
And charge they would eventually, she had to imagine, given the narrow glint to the lady’s darkly kohled eyes.
Heavens! They were all made up like that—rouged, primped, and gowned as if they had been lounging about waiting for this man to arrive. Next to them she was like a solitary daisy in a hothouse of orchids and orange blossoms. A vestal innocent in a decadent harem.
Her house a harem? Not if she had anything to say about it.
“Out!” She pointed at her door, which now hung by one hinge. “All of you!”
Nanny Brigid put her dog down and her hands went to her hips. It managed not only to show the woman’s determination to do just the opposite, but also managed to give her another opportunity to push her breasts up and nearly out of her evening wear.
Really, didn’t they make sensible flannel night rails on the Continent?
“Dearest, that isn’t necessary,” Langley said, sidling up to Minerva and wrapping his arm about her waist, cinching her up against him like one might an unruly mount. “They’ve come to wish us well.”
A suspicious silence fell over the ladies. Including Minerva.
Us? Had he just said “Us?” As in her and him?
Even Knuddles stopped his snuffling and sniffing about to glance at the man.
“Whatever do you mean?” Nanny Tasha demanded. “Langley, you can’t be saying—”
“That is exactly what I am saying. I’ve come home. To marry the woman I love.” He gave Minerva another hug, drawing her even closer. “Adore,” he confessed. “Allow me the pleasure of introducing the future Lady Langley.”
The future Lady Langley? He didn’t really mean . . .
Minerva gaped at him just as the others were—good heavens, what had he said just before he’d kissed her?
Exactly what you told me to do. Taking a wife.
Her hands went to her lips as she realized that he’d meant her.
The margravine sputtered something in her own language before she got command of herself and managed to get out in English the one word they were all thinking. “Ridiculous!”
Yes, even she had to agree with the lady. Ridiculous. And outrageous. And utterly impossible.
Marry him? She’d rather walk naked through Almack’s. She twisted out of his grasp and turned to glare at him, to add her own imperious gaze to the four others that were blazing into this obviously ramshackled rake.
“Married? To such as this?” Nanny Lucia tossed her head, her dark brown locks tumbling around her shoulders in an elegantly tousled state of dishabille.
Minerva glanced over at the lady and felt a pang of envy mixed in with her growing annoyance at this pushy bit of Neapolitan temptation. Truly, there was an art and gift to looking like that, one Minerva didn’t possess.
Nor do I want to, she told herself, if it had one prancing about in the middle of the night all trussed and trimmed like a holiday pudding.
“Truly, schatzi,” the margravine said, sending her own scathing glance at Minerva’s flannel covering, one brow arching to say in so many words that she wouldn’t be caught dead in such material—not even for her shroud. “You tease us, certainly.” She sidled once again in front of the duchessa, much to Lucia’s annoyance. “Marry this one? Why it is impossible! She has no . . . no . . .”
“Passion,” Nanny Tasha finished for her rival. The princess made her move then, taking center stage. “No essence, no fire. Nor has she wit enough to keep you entertained. No offense meant, Lady Standon.”
Minerva would like to have possessed enough manners to manage a “None taken,” but she found herself boiling mad and filled with an insensible . . . an enflamed . . . well, passion, that suggested the princess had it all wrong. They all did.
“How could she be offended when it is so very obvious,” Nanny Lucia sniffed. The others nodded in agreement, as if Minerva wasn’t even in the room.
She drew a deep breath, even as her fingers balled up into an uncharacteristic fist. Echoes of her grandmother’s taunts that her father would never get away with marrying her to the Marquess of Standon. That he would be doing naught but making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, to all their ruin.
“Oh, but looks are deceiving, ladies,” Langley was saying. “And I assure you, Lady Standon possesses all those qualities and more. She has made me the happiest man in England by agreeing to be my bride.”
Minerva’s head swiveled toward him. His bride? Was the man mad? First he came tumbling into her bedchamber and now he thought them engaged? No, not just mad. Utterly insane.
She should have pushed him out the window when she’d had her chance. And it was on the tip of her lips to call him out, to denounce this lie of his and then happily feed him to these imported wolves, but once again he caught her unawares.
For while she stood there fuming and plotting, he moved closer and slipped his hand around hers. The second their fingers twined, something very odd sparked, a flicker that ran from her fingertips through her limbs as if tapped from a Leyden jar. She couldn’t help herself, she looked at him.
And discovered that it only took a spark to ignite a blaze.
His blue eyes danced with a naughty, wicked light that would make a less sensible woman believe they gleamed like that only for her.
Minerva considered herself far too sensible to be swayed by a pair of mesmerizing eyes, by handsome Roman features, by stone chiseled lips and an air of confidence that could inflate a balloon and send it aloft to the farthest corners of the earth.
No, this is naught but more of his rakish parlor tricks, she told herself even as he drew up her hand and then tipped his head down to place a kiss on the tips of her bare fingers.
When his lips touched her, that rare fire burned anew, as if his very breath reignited the smoldering embers. Her knees knocked and trembled in a most insensible fashion.
How could they not when his lips whispered once again over her, a warm, heated kiss that sent shivers trembling out in hurried waves up her arm and down through the rest of her limbs?
His other hand curled around her waist, catching hold of her, drawing her in closer so that she was encircled by him, protected, desired by him.
“Darling, dearest girl,” he mused. “I fear our secret is no longer that . . . our secret.”
If she hadn’t been doing her best to keep upright, she swore she could have mustered a snort of derision that would have met with even the approval of Knuddles. But good gracious heavens, how this man could utter two words, “our secret,” and make them run down her spine with the same sensual tease as his fingers had earlier.
“You want us to believe you are engaged to her?” Nanny Helga did manage to make an indelicate snort that said everything Minerva wished she could manage, and would muster once she got out of Langley’s enticing grasp.
Away from the spell he’d cast over her.
“She is right, cara,” Nanny Lucia agreed. “It is impossible to believe.”
The Russian moved again, in that deliberate, cat-like way of hers. “Yes, none of us are fools, darling. We know all your tricks.”
Minerva suspected the lady didn’t mean just his legendary diplomatic prowess.
Knuddles growled from his post in Nanny Brigid’s arms. The lady ran her fingers over the mane of black hair that surrounded the little dog’s monkey-like face. “If you think we will leave because you claim to love her, you are quite mistaken.”
“Then stay for our wedding and see for yourself,” he told them. “I insist.”
In one of the small, private parlors of White’s, Lord Chudley had been spending a quiet evening reading his paper. Far more enjoyable than escorting Bedelia and her niece to some soiree or musical or whatever it was she’d been nattering on about over their tea this afternoon.
Bless her heart, he did love his wife, but Bedelia was a busybody by nature, the sort who could cannonade a fleet of American privateers with her forthrightness.
So he’d learned quickly that occasionally he was “utterly needed at his club.”
And good wife that she was, she understood and took no offense.
Even so, his respite was interrupted when two fellows came into the room, sharing a whispered exchange that spoke of deceit, and so Chudley watched them through softly shuttered lashes feigning a nap. His high-backed chair was turned slightly toward the fireplace, so the pair didn’t see him immediately, that is until they came deep enough into the room.
“Sir Basil—” one of them said, nodding toward where Chudley lounged, looking for all intents like a slumbering old gallant.
“Never mind him,” Sir Basil declared. “I daresay even if he were awake, at his age he’s as deaf as a post.”
Now if Chudley had been a more arrogant sort he would have taken this young pup to task for such cheek.
Deaf as a post, indeed! He wasn’t that old, and considering he’d just married his fourth wife, and had no trouble keeping her blissfully happy, he’d like to announce that he was as spry as a goat—they could only wish for such good fortune at his age.
But Chudley hadn’t spent his early years working for the Foreign Office not to know that arrogance and a lofty regard for one’s manhood had no place in this world.
That, and he still kept abreast of things in the old office, and he’d never once heard a good word said about this upstart Sir Basil. And from the shady looks of the company he was keeping, Chudley had no doubts the pair of them were into something they weren’t willing to discuss at Whitehall.
And if that was the case, his curiosity outweighed a slight about his hearing and age.
But demmit, who was that other fellow? He looked vaguely familiar.
“We have a problem,” Sir Basil was saying.
“What is it now, Brownie?” the man replied, glancing down at his fingernails. “You always have a problem. And they never amount to the drama that you insist on adding to them.”
“You’ll think differently when I tell you.”
“Then get on with it,” the other man said. “Tibballs is downstairs, utterly foxed and in the mood for a few hands of loo. And in a few hands I’ll have emptied his pockets.”
“You won’t have pockets to fill when you find out who is back in Town.”
The shake to Sir Basil’s voice almost prodded Chudley to open his eyes and give the man a level examination.
“Good God, man, get this over with,” the other fellow said, sounding all-too-bored and having taken no note of the fearful tremor to Sir Basil’s voice.
“Langley,” Sir Basil said in a deadly still whisper.
Chudley’s breath froze in his throat and he wondered if perhaps his hearing wasn’t up to snuff, for he would have sworn he heard the man say—
“Langley?” The man laughed. “Demmit, Basil, when did you start believing in ghosts? Langley is dead. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
There was the thud of boots as the man went to leave, but his departure came to a halt as Sir Basil continued, “Langley is not dead, you fool. He’s alive and in London. And you need to get out of Town. Now.”
Langley, alive? Impossible. Chudley had seen a copy of the report detailing Langley’s last day in Paris. No, the man couldn’t be alive.
A skepticism shared by his cohort. “Are you sure you didn’t have too much of the Prime Minister’s infamous claret? Because you’re talking nonsense. Langley is dead.”
“Not as dead as you would like,” Sir Basil said, reverting to that lofty sort of mushroom tone of his.
Upstarts! Lord Chudley would have snorted. Thought they had to act and sound superior to make up for being utterly common.
Yet, how could Langley live? As distasteful as it was to agree with the likes of this shady fellow, and having had more than his fair share of the Prime Minister’s claret a time or three, he was inclined to agree that Sir Basil was as foxed as the poor unwitting Tibballs downstairs.
“Bah, you’ve gone ’round the bend. He’s aloft, I tell you. Now if you will excuse me—”
“He’s alive, you fool,” Sir Basil insisted.
The strident note to his declaration had Chudley unshuttering his lashes enough not to give himself away, but enough to see the Foreign Office’s junior minister take hold of the other man’s lapels and drag him up close. “Langley got in my carriage tonight and demanded an accounting of how he was betrayed.”
Betrayed? Chudley didn’t like the sound of that. Any more than he liked the idea of Langley back in Town.
Devil of a fellow, Langley. Not always on the up and up. Just before he’d been killed in Paris there had been rumors, nasty ones, that he’d been working for the French. Rumors of thefts. And that eventually his French contacts had finished the man off once they were done with him.
Messy business, dealing with frogs.
“He is demanding a full hearing. Wants to see the reports. Wants his name cleared.”
Good luck with that, Chudley would have added. Once a traitor . . .
“You’re serious,” the other fellow whispered.
“Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?”
“No, this can’t be. I saw him—”
Chudley stilled. Saw him what, my mysterious friend?
“If Langley is back in Town—”
Sir Basil shuddered, letting out a breathy sigh.
“Yes, now you see how that could complicate matters.”
“Complicate matters? He could—”
Chudley strained to hear more.
“Yes, that’s it, exactly.” Sir Basil cleared his throat.
“If he delves into—”
“He cannot!” Sir Basil declared, and then realizing he’d raised his voice, glanced over at Chudley.
Both men stood there for a time, an eternity to Chudley, but he stayed stock-still, if only to sort out everything he’d just learned . . . and hadn’t.
Langley was alive? He was still of the opinion that Sir Basil needed to lay off the claret bottle, that is until the other man spoke again.
“Demmit, how did this happen?”
“That is what I would like to know. You told me he was dead, and now here he is popping up like some bloody marionette. The man has more lives than my wife’s Persian cat.”
The other man made a choking sort of sound. “He’ll ruin me, or worse.”
“He’ll ruin us both,” Sir Basil corrected. “You need to get out of Town. Stay hidden. You’ll be the next person he comes looking for.”
“You’ve got to stop him,” the other fellow hissed out.
“I thought I had,” Sir Basil. “Not that he’ll escape this time if it is done right and orderly.”
Chudley’s blood ran to ice. What they were talking about was treason. And for the life of him, he wasn’t about to see them murder an agent of England.
Not when he had every intention of being the one to put a bullet through that demmed rogue’s heart.
“You insist?” Lady Standon threw her hands up in the air and paced in front of Langley. “You insist with my house!”
“It seemed the practical solution at the time.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “They weren’t exactly falling for the notion that we are wildly in love.”
Minerva’s brows arched upward and she leaned forward to match him tone for tone. “That is because we are not!”
He waved her off. “A moot point, that.”
“A moot point?” she sputtered. “To whom? You? For it is certainly not moot to me.” She paced again, stomping back and forth, utterly furious with him.
Her houseguests had been sent toddling off to their beds, not without a few protests, and even more whispered offers that left Langley politely demurring and Lady Standon blushing with annoyance.
So now they were finally alone and Langley was doing his best to find his way through this mess. Like most of his escapades, he was making this up as he went along, but usually when there was a woman involved, she was far more willing than this one.
This stubborn, unyielding Boudicca in flannel.
“Lady Standon, please,” he said, looking around her bedchamber and settling for pointing toward the only chair in the room, the one at her dressing table. “Have a seat and calm yourself. Perhaps you would like something to drink to ease your nerves.”
“No, I shall not sit down. Nor will I be mollified or plied with drink. I would point out that my nerves wouldn’t be in this state if you hadn’t come tumbling into my bedchamber like a thief.”
“An oversight on my part.” One that might work to his advantage. What had Thomas-William warned?
You don’t want to be caught in the open.
And while most of Langley’s kind preferred to work in the shadows, such tactics had never set well with him.
And now he saw all too clearly how he could draw out his enemy.
By standing in the middle of Society.
And it wouldn’t hurt to be surrounded, as it were, by a bevy of deadly beauties.
Present company excluded.
“An oversight?” The lady threw up her hands. “Whatever were you doing on my drainpipe to begin with?”
“I would think that the answer to that is rather obvious—but it hardly matters now. Though in my defense, I will point out that I wouldn’t have been forced to climb the drainpipe if you hadn’t invited my former . . . former . . .”
“Doxies?”
“Acquaintances,” he corrected. “You can hardly call a Russian princess a doxy. It’s bad form. Diplomatically speaking and all.”
The lady’s hands went to her hips and those dark brows of hers arched.
So she didn’t like being taken to task. Then again this was why most English diplomats left their wives at home.
English women just didn’t understand Continental manners. Were all too judgmental about the mores. And looked askance at most of the customs that made each kingdom and principality unique.
And the lady proved his point by saying, “When one such as your princess arrives—uninvited and unwanted—and takes over one’s house as if by divine right, all in pursuit of . . .”
He grinned at her, for the possibilities for completing her sentence were endless.
In pursuit of passion . . . ecstasy . . . pleasure.
But before he could enlighten her, she finished her own tumbled sentence.
“ . . . in pursuit of low company, I will call her exactly what she is—a common doxy.”
Low? Common? The lady knew how to get to the crux of the matter.
Langley put his hand over his heart. “Madame, you wound me.”
The brows arched again, and this time she glanced at him and made a slight withering shake of her head. “I doubt it,” she said with every bit of cold rigidity that Thomas-William declared ran through her veins and Mrs. Hutchinson had seconded. But Lady Standon had not been without defenders in the ranks, for Tia believed that Minerva had once been greatly disappointed in love and that was why she was this way.
Leave it to an overly imaginative chit barely out of the schoolroom to see right through the lady’s bluff. Because Langley knew something the others didn’t about the mistress of the house.
Minerva Sterling, the last remaining dowager Marchioness of Standon, held a spark of fire inside her heart.
He knew that for certain. For he’d felt the heat of her passionate nature when he’d held her.
When he’d stolen that kiss from her lips. With his common, low lips.
Speaking of which . . . “Truly? You thought my kiss low? Common?”
Just as he suspected, her gaze flew up and met his.
Because this was the difference between Lady Standon and her houseguests—for when confronted with the truth about a moment of passion, she gaped at him wide-eyed with guilt and blushed like a May day lass.
“Come now, Lady Standon,” he said, closing the space between them. “Would it be as bad as all that to be engaged to me?”
“Be engaged to you?” Minerva sputtered. “Do I really need to answer that?”
“Apparently not,” he mused. “Though I found our kiss quite delightful.”
“I did not,” she lied. And worse yet, one glance at the insufferable man told her quite clearly that he didn’t believe her.
Not in the least.
Did he really have to grin like that? It reminded her of the moment he’d hauled her up in his arms, just before he’d put his lips to hers and—
Minerva scooted around the chair and put it between them. Small comfort it was, because she knew this flimsy piece of furniture would hardly stop such a rogue.
“It seems, my lady,” he said, flicking a glance at her choice of protection and giving it scant regard, “we have reached an impasse. For I need a betrothed and you refuse me, even though we’ve been discovered in flagrante delicto.”
“We were no such thing!” Minerva shot back. “You caught me unawares. I had no opportunity to protest.”
He grinned again. “No opportunity? Are you certain about that?”
Minerva paused and was about to make a quick retort, but instead found herself replaying those moments over in her head. Slowly. Step by step.
And wished she hadn’t. For in every second, from the time he’d taken her in his arms, in the slow descent of his lips onto hers, she could have stopped him.
And she hadn’t.
“You took me by surprise,” she brazened.
“I suppose I did,” he drawled slowly, pushing aside the chair and moving toward her.
She shook her finger at him. “Oh, no, you don’t!”
“Don’t what?”
“Come near me again!” she told him, dodging past him and opening up her door.
“So we are back to our impasse.”
“There is no impasse,” she told him. “You and your paramours can leave my house. Leave me out of this madness!”
“If you insist,” he said, crossing the room and making as if he was going to leave, but he stopped halfway to the stairs.
“Unless, that is,” he began, “you can think of a reason why you might want me to stay.” His gaze fell to her mouth, to her lips to be exact.
Minerva pressed them together. Tightly.
“I could be of service to you, Lady Standon, whether you realize it or not.” He eased closer to her, his boot conveniently planted at the base of the door so she couldn’t shut it.
Not that it would matter much now that the hinges were in ruins.
“Don’t you dare!” she managed.
He stared at her for a moment and then nodded. “If you insist.”
“I do.”
He pulled his foot free and went toward the stairs again. “Until the morning, my lady.” And after making a short, elegant bow, he began to ascend the stairs.
Up? What the devil? Minerva blinked and stepped out in the hallway. “Where do you think you are going?”
He glanced at her, then up the dark stairwell, and then back at her. “To my room,” he said as he continued to slowly climb.
“Your wha-a-a-t?” she managed as she followed after him, stopping at the landing.
“My room,” he repeated, having stopped a few steps shy of the next landing. “The one you’ve been graciously providing me for . . . oh, let me see . . . a sennight, is it? Yes, I do believe I’ve been here a little over a week.”
“A week?” she sputtered. “You’ve been living here, in my house, for a week?”
He pressed a finger to his lips. “Ssh, my lady. Unless you want all of Mayfair to know our secret.”
There it was again. The way he said that. Our secret. As if that was enough to convince her that they possessed one. Shared something illicit. She ignored the shiver that ran down her spine. The teasing whisper of desire that followed in its wake.
They did have something in common. His kiss had proved that.
“You cannot have been living here for a week,” Minerva insisted.
“While I try never to contradict a lady, I fear I must in this case. I have very much been living here. In your house.” He needn’t take so much delight in pointing out his deception and her unwitting involvement. Oh, but he wasn’t finished yet. Leaning down the stairs he whispered, “As it turns out, I am such an excellent houseguest, you hardly knew I was here.”
“That is the point, sir. I did not know!”
“Good luck convincing the rest of the ton.”
Minerva groaned and ground her teeth together. “You are utterly mad!”
The man shrugged. “No, not in the least. And if we are being fair about this, the real madness of my plan requires that I convince Society that I am willing to marry you, madam. But I am up to the challenge and daresay might find it a tolerable one, indeed.”
Minerva sucked in a deep breath, if only to avoid the retort that rose quickly from every indignant nerve in her body.
Why you insufferable bast—
“Good night, my lady.” With that, he continued on up the stairs, and when he turned at the landing, he had the nerve to wink at her as if daring her to follow him and make good her earlier threat to turn him out.
Oh, bother! What could she do? Follow him up into the darkness? Kick up a bigger ruckus? Hardly. And that devil of a man knew it. He had her in his crosshairs and there was nothing she could do.
At least not now.
Minerva closed her door and leaned against it—for it was the only way to get it to shut.
Come morning, she vowed, I’ll see the lot of you rousted and moved out.
And then unwittingly she thought of Lord Langley’s kiss and added one more thing to her resolution.
Before there is worse damage than my broken door and ruined drainpipe.