“Just about?”
“Within reason.”
“Well, that’s notanything, is it?”
She swallowed against a surely dry throat. “Anything.”
And here it was—opportunity splayed open before him.
His for the plucking.
He wasn’t finished with Lady Beatrix St. Vincent.
Really, he’d only gotten started.
“What should I ask for?”
If she’d been a cat, the hair along her spine would’ve bristled to a stand. “A gentleman would let me leave with a mild admonishment.”
“Would he, now?” Dev nodded, slowly, consideringly. “’Tis a truth universally acknowledged that gentlemen have no imaginations.” He shrugged. “And I’m no gentleman. Nice effort on your part, though. You do have spirit—for a lady.”
He could see her mind racing behind her eyes. Any moment now, she was going to flee this room and never look back.
And he wasn’t finished with her yet.
“Here’s what will happen.” His became the voice of reason. “You will leave now, and I will call on you tomorrow once I’ve decided what to do with you.”
Arresting gray eyes narrowed with wariness. “Where?”
“At your humble abode, of course.”
“At my…house?”
Her mortification at the idea of having him in her home was more than clear—which only made him more determined. “At your townhouse on Little Stanhope Street.”
Lady Beatrix wasn’t about to give up that easily. “Why not a coffee house? Or the park?”
“Your house,” he repeated. “I’ll be there at ten o’clock.”
“In the morning?” she squeaked. “I thought you had a meeting tomorrow morning.”
He suppressed a laugh. “My meeting will be finished by then,” he said. “Ten o’clocksharp. I’m always on time. Now,” he continued, “you may go.”
She didn’t need to be told twice as she all but flew from the room, the door a loud, decisive slam behind her.
Dev finished off the remainder of his whiskey before making his way to his draftsman’s table. He hadn’t been lying tonight. He did have an early meeting, which, of course, in typical circumstances wouldn’t have precluded what he and LadyStandish had been about to get up to—before Lady Beatrix St. Vincent had put a stop to it.
As he thumbed through the plans he would put to Shaw in the morning, a feeling strummed through him. An excitability when on the verge of an advancement. While Shaw wasn’t involved in the invention process, he was a keenly intelligent man who would ask the right questions and test the soundness of the idea. Further, with Shaw’s experience of manufacturing, he would be able to create a timetable for when the product could be feasibly produced.
As with all technology, it was a race, for his competitors were having the same or similar ideas. So, it was all down to not only whose ideas were best, but whose ideas could be implemented and brought to market fastest—and, really, it was the latter that mattered most.
It wasn’t until Dev was lying in bed an hour later that his thoughts returned to Lady Beatrix—and the rather interesting question mark she presented in his life.
Why had she trespassed in his rooms?
What was he going to do with her?
What opportunity did she present?
