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“Since I have no husband at present,” A
“Who was this grandfather,” the earl asked, “the one who taught you how to do Tolliver’s job while smelling a great deal better than Tolliver?”
“My paternal grandfather raised me, more or less from childhood on,” A
“Hence the flowers throughout my humble abode. Don’t take off too much,” he directed. “I prefer not to look newly shorn.”
“You have no time for this,” A
When she leaned in again, she caught the scent of his woodsy, spicy cologne. The fragrance and putting her mouth just a few inches from his exposed nape left her insides with an odd, fluttery disconcerted feeling. She lingered behind him, hoping her blush was subsiding as she finished her task. “There.” This time she brushed her fingers over his neck several more times. “I believe you are presentable, or your hair is.”
“The rest of me is yet underdressed.” He held out his hand for the scissors. “Now where is my damned shirt?”
She handed him his damned shirt and would have turned to go, except his cravat had also sprouted wings and flown off to an obscure location on the door of his wardrobe, followed by his cuff links, and stickpin, and so forth. When he started muttering that neck-cloths were altogether inane in the blistering heat, she gently pushed his fingers aside and put both hands on his shoulders.
“Steady on.” She looked him right in the eye. “It’s only a silly committee, and you need only leave a bank draft then be about your day. How elegant do you want to look?”
“I want to look as plain as I can without being a Quaker,” the earl said. “My father loves this sort of thing, back-slapping, trading stories, and haggling politics.”
A
“No. I do put a pair of spectacles on a fob.”
“How many fobs, and do you carry a watch?” A
“I do not carry a time piece to Carlton House,” he explained, “for it serves only to reinforce how many hours I am wasting on the Regent’s business.” A
“Will I do?” the earl asked, smiling at her proprietary gesture.
“Not without a coat, you won’t, though in this heat, no one would censor you for simply carrying it until you arrived at your destination.”
“Coat.” The earl scowled, looking perplexed.
“On the clothespress,” A
“So it is.” The earl nodded, but his eyes were on A
He bent and kissed her cheek, a gesture so startling in its spontaneity and simple affection, she could only stand speechless as the earl whisked his coat across his arm and strode from his room. The door slammed shut behind him as he yelled for Lord Valentine to meet him in the mews immediately or suffer a walk in the afternoon’s heat.
Dumbstruck, A
She should have chided him—might have, if he’d held still long enough—but he’d caught her unawares, just as when he’d frowned at her hand and seen she had no wedding ring.
Her pleasure at the earl’s kiss evaporating, A
She hung up some discarded ensembles of court-worthy attire, straightened up both the escritoire and the earl’s bureau, which looked as if a strong wind had blown all into disarray. When she opened his wardrobe, she unashamedly leaned in and took a big whiff of the expensive, masculine scent of him while ru
He was a handsome man, but he was also a very astute man, one who would continue to spot details and put together facts, until he began to see through her to the lies and deceptions. Before then, of course, she would be gone.
When he finally returned to his townhouse that evening, the earl handed his hat, gloves, and cane to a footman then made his way through the dark house to the kitchens, wanting nothing so much as a tall, cold glass of sweetened lemonade. He could summon a servant to fetch it but was too restless and keyed up to wait.
“My lord?” Mrs. Seaton sat at the long wooden table in the kitchen, shelling peas into a wooden bowl, but stood as he entered the room.
“Don’t get up. I’m only here to filch myself some cold lemonade.”
“Lord Valentine sent word you’d both be missing di
Westhaven watched her as she stirred sugar into his glass, his eyebrows rising in consternation.
“I take that much sugar?”
A
“You don’t put any in yours?” he asked, taking a satisfying swallow of his own. God above, he’d been craving this exact cold, sweet, bracing libation.
“I’ve learned not to use much,” A
“Here.” He held up his glass. “If you enjoy it, then you should have it.”
A
He blinked and cocked his head. “It’s too late in the day for philosophical digressions.”
“Have you even eaten, my lord?”
“It appears I have not.”
“Well, that much of the world’s injustices I can remedy,” she said as she rinsed their glasses. “If you’d like to go change out of those clothes, I can bring you up a tray in a few minutes.”
“If you would just get me out of this damned cravat?” He went to stand near her at the sink, waiting while she dried her hands on a towel then nudged his chin up.
“The cravat is still spotless,” she informed him, wiggling at the clasp on the stickpin, “though your beautiful shirt is a trifle dusty and wilted. Hold still.” She wiggled a little more but still couldn’t undo the tiny mechanism. “Let’s sit you back down at the table, my lord.”
He obligingly sat on the long bench at the table, chin up.
“That’s it,” she said, freeing the stickpin and peering at it. “You should have a jeweler look at this.” She set it on the table as her fingers went to the knot of his neckcloth. “There.” She loosened the knot until the ends were trailing around his neck, and a load of weariness abruptly intensified low down, in his gut, where sheer exhaustion could weight a man into immobility. He leaned in, his temple against her waist in a gesture reminiscent of when she tended his scalp wound.