His heart beat a hard thud. “You’re a virgin,” dropped from his mouth, each syllable slow and stunned and absolutely certain.
Wide eyes met his. “How can you know that?”
“Are you telling me differently?”
She swallowed. Silence prevailed.
There.
As he suspected: she was a virgin.
Isabel gasped in horror.
He followed her gaze and found, one hundred feet below, Lucy, Hugh, and Miss Radclyffe staring up at them from Mercy Island. It was clear they’d witnessed the kiss, which must have been on a par with the astronomical event given the gapes of their mouths. Lucy was the first to gather her wits as she broke from the group and stomped toward the bridge. Miss Radclyffe gave a little wave, which Isabel returned.
Percy snatched up Isabel’s fallen glove as he stood. “I believe you’ll be needing this.”
Her head tipped back, and his gaze fell to her swollen lips. How he wanted to suck that full bottom lip into his mouth and give it a testing nibble, one that would make her gasp and smile and beg for another.
Avirgin, came the very next thought.
She swallowed. “Thank you, Lord—Percy.”
He gestured that she take the lead. “After you.”
At the head of the trail that splintered off toward the bridge below, he and Isabel waited with a silence that was the loudest, tetchiest silence he’d ever endured. He couldn’t press her now for here was Lucy sweeping past him. She hooked a sharp right and marched ahead without a single glance his way.
Next came Miss Radclyffe. Isabel inquired about the ruins as she fell into step with the girl. Miss Radclyffe launched into a detailed explanation about tonight’s unique confluence of astronomy and archeology, to which Isabel listened with an attentive ear and asked questions where appropriate. Percy was likely the only one who could see the tension radiating off her. The woman was damned accomplished at pulling her wits together.
Percy waited for Hugh, who arrived last. The boy maintained a persistent silence as they brought up the rear together. Brow furrowed with the variety of deep contemplation uniquely available to those of teen years, Hugh’s eye never wavered once from the tall, elegant form of Miss Radclyffe. The lad’s uncompanionable silence suited Percy fine.
Here were the facts as Percy knew them.
Isabel was a dressmaker.
She was the daughter of minor Spanish nobility.
She was a Jewess.
She was a virgin.
Which changed nothing, not truly, not when one considered her connection to Montfort. Yet . . . avirgininvolved in the Number 9 scheme with the Earl of Pembroke as the target?
Coercion was clear. Montfort was just such a man to compel a virgin into seducing a future Member of Parliament for political gain.
Percy needed to keep Isabel close. So, too, he needed to stay away from her.
For another man, the mad kiss of minutes ago would have already begun to fade into memory, suppressible and distant. Not so for Percy. The madness pulsed through his veins with every beat of his heart. Now that it had been awakened, it would lie in wait for its next opportunity. His wickedness was patient in that regard.
Really, what he wanted at his deepest, darkest core was to sink into the feeling and become addicted to that woman. It would be the easiest thing he’d ever done in his life.
And the worst.
Chapter 12
“Should it be this hot in England?” Miss Bretagne asked, dramatically fanning herself as if on the verge of a swoon.
Even Lady Bertrand had foregone a fichu. “After all, it’s only us ladies.”
