Why had heinsisted upon his sisters and the flame-haired governess joining him for dinner? It was the fifth consecutive evening of foregoing his club in favor of dining at home with the hellions that were his sisters and the woman charged with correcting their ways. The fifth day of excruciating torture wherein the minxes chattered, acted inappropriately, the governess hid her fiery locks beneath an ungodly mobcap, and he pretended not to recall the silky smoothness of Miss Governess’s creamy skin upon his tongue.
Crispin stabbed at the unfortunate slab of Westphalian ham on his plate.
“Lady Honora,” the governess’s soft, husky voice rose above the gentle din of cutlery on Sèvres porcelain, “would you care to inform His Grace about the lessons you received today?”
He issued an unnecessary, fierce cut to his already eviscerated ham. Damnation, why did even the sound of her voice make his cock twitch in his breeches? Somehow, he had imagined, lost in the depths of his own arrogance, that spending time in the woman’s presence, flanked by his sisters, would lessen the effect she had upon him. But having her at hand and treating her coolly did not force his inconvenient attraction to her to abate. But gentleman was not a role he played well, and he had been wrong. Thoroughly, stupidly, utterly wrong.
That night in his study when he had almost lost his bloody wits and lifted her skirts had left him enraged. Determined to prove he could inure himself to whatever hold it was she had upon him. But even the efforts she had undertaken to make herself as unnoticeable as possible were wasted upon him. Beneath her drab brown muslin, he knew the seductive flare of her hips, the softness of her thighs parting to welcome him. Hidden behind her matronly fichu and far too much lace, he knew her bosom swelled high and lush and full. He knew her nipples would harden, beg for more.
“The dancing master arrived,” Honora said sullenly. “He is an evil, beady-eyed little French weasel, and I do not like him.”
Miss Governess gasped in outrage, her rosebud-pink mouth opening in such fashion that Crispin could not help but envision his cock sliding home within it. He stuffed a bite of ham into his mouth, feeling every bit of the animal that he had become. It was wrong to lust after a female in his household he had hired as the governess for his innocent—though admittedly wild—sisters. But he could not summon even a pinch of outrage as he made Miss Governess his sole concentration. Those lips quivered. He longed to lick them.
“Lady Honora, your conduct is not becoming of a lady. Please apologize to His Grace and the table at once.”
Damn, but she took his breath.Miss Turnbow.He didn’t like the name and he refused to use it on principle. Her Christian name was what he wanted. That and so much more. He also wanted her beneath him again. Willingly this time, and not because he had stumbled upon her inadvertently in the darkness.
But he could not have her.
Honora huffed. He hated to tell Miss Governess, but ‘ladylike’ and his sisters did not belong in the same sentence. They were cut from the same, wicked cloth as he. No one could tame them.
“Lady Honora,” she pressed, her tone sharp, unrelenting. No one could deny Miss Governess possessed backbone. “We are all awaiting your apology.”
Another inelegant snort issued from his sister, this one smaller than the last. “Very well. I am sorry, Crispin, for my unfortunate choice of words. I apologize to you as well, Miss Tornblossom, and Con of course.”
Miss Governess pursed her lips, drawing his attention once more back to her lush mouth. Damnation, why had he not found some dog-faced chit to tend to these spawns of Satan instead of a vixen disguised as a spinster? Nothing had ever tantalized him more than the notion of peeling away her endless lace fichu to bare the creamy swells of her breasts.
“In my experience, Lady Honora, your memory is faultless,” said Miss Governess then, “which is perhaps why I find it so perplexing that you cannot recall my correct surname. Lady Constance, will you aid your sister in remembering it?”
Con grinned, because of course, she was as much of a minx as her sister, merely two years her junior. “Of course I shall aid her, Miss Towerbottom. It is Towerbottom, is it not?”
Bloody hell.Did the little miscreant not know she could not go about mentioningbottomand the governess in the same sentence? Now his palms ached to be filled with the supple curves of her arse. There was no chance of him withstanding a fifth evening of such torture.
He needed to visit The Duke’s Bastard, his favorite hell, forthwith. To find a willing whore to warm his bed and distract him. The inconvenient fascination he had for Miss Governess was becoming a distraction that could only be remedied in one fashion. But sinking his cock into the governess upon the dinner table as his impressionable sisters watched on seemed depraved, even by his nonexistent standards.
Miss Governess was saying something now in her most scolding tone, but he was too preoccupied to pay her much mind. This simply would not do.
“… But I would not presume to… disrespectful… apology at once…”
Curse it, the female was more long-winded than a parson being paid by the minute.
“Forgive me for the interruption,” he said, his sense of ducal and brotherly obligation weighing upon him in a manner it had not in as long as he could recall. “Lady Constance and Lady Honora, apologize to your governess at once.”
“But Crispin—”
“We have not said a word that—”
“Silence,” he bellowed, eliminating the twin dissension that was his sisters’ voices. “You are being disrespectful, just as you have been every moment since Miss Turnbow came into this household. If you cannot admit your wrongdoing and apologize, you may both spend the next sennight in your chambers, penning apologies since none will spill forth from your lips.”
His sisters stared at him in wide-eyed fascination.
He instantly regretted his interruption, for it revealed too much. Crispin was acutely aware he had not taken an interest in a domestic. Ever. Certainly, he had never championed a prior governess or invited one to sit at the table with him. Hell, he ordinarily did not even sup these days, unless it was upon cunny or whisky or both at once.
Supping upon Miss Governess certainly held its appeal.
Damn it to hell.
He glared at the feral young ladies it had fallen upon his black soul to look after, following the death of their brother. Why could not the Lord have blessed him with brothers? He would have known what to do with lads. Females were another matter altogether. “I do not hear apologies, my ladies.”
