Tight. Too bloody tight. He shifted in his chair, but that did him no good, so he forced himself to stare at Simmonds, which would surely force his cock to return to its normal state of order. His secretary was all angles, all male, arms disproportionately long so that his fingers hung to his knees, and a scar on his upper lip rendered his mustache preposterously off-center. He didn’t have golden hair or pink nipples or smell like a sultry combination of dessert and sexual congress.
Christ, that last, rogue thought wasn’t helping. Not a goddamn whit.
Simmonds cleared his throat, his expression growing ill at ease. He was an easy read, and Sebastian liked that about him. It wouldn’t do to have a man he couldn’t see straight through involved in his personal and estate matters. Simmons was trustworthy, dependable, and he never asked questions.
“Your Grace, I believe the letter in question is currently… in your hand,” Simmonds said then.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps he ought to sack him. Did he think he was daft? “Of course it isn’t, or I wouldn’t be asking you for its whereabouts, now would I?”
“Forgive me, Your Grace. It is merely that I know the order of the correspondence. They’re arranged by level of import, and your concern over the cost of suggested improvements at Thornsby Hall led me to place it atop the stack.”
He stared at his secretary, who stared back at him, unrelenting. This was Simmonds’ only fault, his inability to kowtow. And truly, it wasn’t a fault in Sebastian’s book. Not ordinarily. In this moment, however, it was, because he was beginning to fear Simmonds was correct and that he’d been so distracted by thoughts of his glorious American minx that he couldn’t even bloody well read.
His gaze lowered to the crumpled sheet in his hand, and he recognized the familiar slanted scrawl of Carnes, his Thornsby land agent, peering from between his fingers. “Simmonds,” he said without looking up.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“That will be all,” he dismissed.
Far better to wallow in his humiliation and shame on his own, he reasoned, than with his secretary watching over him. With his broad shoulders on his otherwise narrow frame, the man looked like a bloody upside-down triangle.
He waited for Simmonds to take his leave before releasing the letter and spreading it over his desk in a futile attempt to smooth out the many wrinkles. Thornsby Hall was his family seat and his chief concern these days when he wasn’t otherwise engaged in duty. His father had allowed it to fall into disrepair, and Sebastian had begun to undertake the tremendous investment of restoring it to its proper glory. A great, sprawling estate of seven thousand acres, it contained some of his fondest boyhood memories. Thornsby Hall was to be his reward when he retired from service to the League.
Or when he was removed from service, which seemed far more likely given his recent carelessness. He forced himself to read the correspondence from Carnes in full, but his mind remained diverted.
Fifty thousand pounds for this year’s needed improvements. The leaking roof had been repaired, thank fuck, but the crumbling southern wall needed to be addressed. Something about an increase in the turkey flock. Fodder cabbage, turnips, and sheep.
There it was again, damn it all.
Bergamot.
And her laughter the first morning after he’d made love to her. Her laughter had been like a gift: unexpected and treasured, a joy to his soul. That beautiful, mellifluous sound had wound its way inside him, imprinted itself upon his very memory, so that he would never again hear another woman’s levity without thinking of her. Of Daisy with her spun-gold hair and her sad eyes and insuppressible daring. Of how he had once laughed with her and it had been the best fucking morning of his life.
The only morning in as long as he could recall where he’d allowed himself the luxury of being. He had been Sebastian, and she had been Daisy, and none of the mire surrounding them had intruded.
Realization struck him then, with the force of a fist straight to the jaw. He didn’t just lust after her. Bedding her had not been based upon basic sexual need alone in the same way it had with his past lovers. It had been necessary, yes, but in the way that filling his lungs with breath was necessary. Why else would he have been caught up in her for an entire week and still more lost than he’d ever been?
Bergamot hit him again.
He lowered his nose to his shoulder and took a discreet sniff. Jesus, his neck smelled like her. It was as if she’d planted her scent on him as another method of feminine torture. He must have been remiss in his morning ablutions, but he couldn’t say he minded now, for he liked the way she smelled.
He liked Daisy.
A knock sounded at his study door, and unless he was mistaken, it wasn’t the knock of any of his servants. Which could only mean one thing.
Her.
She wasn’t satisfied with invading his mind and imprinting her scent upon him, but now she intended to infiltrate his inner sanctum as well. He would ignore her, he decided, flipping past the Thornsby Hall letter to the next. She was his temporary wife, he reminded himself. Their union wasn’t meant to last. It was a falsehood. A ruse. They needn’t play at being husband and wife. He wasn’t required to invite her into his study. And he bloody well ought to stop spending every night in her chamber. He would, just as soon as he could bring himself to look at her without needing to tear aside her fripperies and fill her with his cock.
That didn’t seem likely any time soon.
The knock came again, followed by her voice. “I’ve been wondering all week and have yet to reach an answer. What follows a one-sixteenth, Your Grace?”
The woman was mad.
He should continue ignoring her. Turn her away. Begin to erect a sensible distance between them. But he was grinning, and that meant he was just as mad as she.
Fit for the lunatic asylum, the both of them.
