“So you wouldn’t mind if I knew which room was yours?” he asked hopefully.
She sent him a look. “If you want to know, earn it.”
“I’m trying to. Tell me how,” he begged.
She snorted. “I thought rakes could read minds.”
Yes, that was the conceit of a practiced rake, was it not? Fulfilling every desire before the maiden in question could even properly formulate the thought. Seducing with ease, as though following choreographed steps to an inevitable conclusion.
He hadn’t the least idea what was going on inside Gladys’s maddening head. But he knew what he wished she was thinking. And had no problem giving it to her. Giving it to them both.
He tossed his book down onto the polished wooden floor and pinned her against the papered wall of the empty corridor. Now that his hands were free, he used them to cup her face and to angle his own mouth over hers.
She ducked out of his embrace before their lips could make contact.
“Noon,” she said, and blew him a kiss. “At the entrance to the labyrinth. Make it worth my while.”
And she sauntered off without a backwards glance.
Reuben stared after her until her footsteps no longer echoed in the corridor, then he adjusted his trousers and scooped up his fallen book.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’d seduce her and forget her.
And he’d very much ensure the experience was worth her while.
Chapter 12
With a lacy parasol perched over one shoulder at a jaunty angle, Gladys strolled toward the botanical gardens with a practiced casualness she did not feel.
In the twenty-odd hours since she’d left Reuben gaping after her retreating form outside the lending library, her mind had replayed the moment he’d almost kissed her countless times.
Yes. That had been exactly what she’d wanted, damn him. She’d wanted him to try to kiss her specifically so she could deny him, just as she’d done. But she’d also wanted him to kiss her, because she wanted to kiss him, despite all logic.
He was a rogue and a rake and a scoundrel and a hedonist and any number of similar epithets. He’d ruined her without a second thought when she was too young to understand the dangerous waters she’d waded into, and he’d do it again with the same self-indulgent carelessness if she let him.
She wasn’t supposed to really fall for him. Even if it was nothing more than undiluted animal lust, and nothing so mortifying as actual feelings. In her storied career as a professional mistress, dredging up actual desire for her clients was part of the job. Just like seducing Reuben Medford and breaking his black heart was supposed to be.
But there he was, up ahead, looking nothing at all like a dangerous bogeyman, and everything like a wide-eyed lad, eager to lay eyes on the object of his affection.
As soon as he caught a glimpse of Gladys, he brightened visibly. Reuben waved as though he were a spectator at a royal parade, and she the revered princess on display atop an ornate carriage. Anyone would think him a smitten swain, delighted into raptures at the sight of his beloved.
Gladys had certainly believed that tripe once.
She pretended to block the sun from her eyes in order to allow her gaze to run over him. He appeared in intolerably raffish good looks today, with his wide shoulders encased in dove gray superfine and a stunningly folded white cravat above a robin’s-egg-blue waistcoat. The hand that wasn’t currently waving clutched the promised wicker picnic basket.
He rushed to meet her rather than allow her to finish her stroll to the mouth of the labyrinth alone.
“Good afternoon,” he said, although it was five minutes before noon, and he had clearly been standing there waiting in anticipation since God-only-knew-when. “You’re looking especially beautiful today.”
“You look… somewhat tolerable.”
He grinned at her. “I look nice and I know it, just like you look nice and you know it. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Humph,” was her only reply.
She expected him to waste no time in offering her his free arm, but he stood there smiling at her, as if he’d been waiting in this very spot since the night before, so eager was he to break bread with her in a hot, crowded garden.
Of course, now that he hadn’t proffered his arm, she was overcome with the desire to reach out and touch it. To run her fingers over the soft fabric of his well-tailored sleeve, and learn the contours of the hard muscle beneath. Gladys steadied her breath. She forced herself to look over his shoulder, as if bored already by their encounter.
