Drat him, even in the shadows, she could see enough of him to make a heavy sensation settle low in her belly. She refused to call it desire, though that was howThe Tale of Lovewould refer to the restless urging, she was sure.
“It is against the rules when a gentleman and a lady are alone,” she observed, aware of how prudish she sounded.
But then, her namewasPrudence, was it not?
“Quite prudent of you,” he said, almost as if he had read her thoughts. “MissPrudenceWinter.”
Oh.Drat him twice over. That was a challenge if she had ever heard one, and there was no way the vexing man could have known it, but she had never met a challenge yet she could resist answering.
To that end, she stalked toward him, her defiance winning the battle. “I prefer to be called Pru,” she found herself saying before she could think better of it.
She stopped alongside him. Together, they stood before the product of his effort, a merrily burning fire. Warmth suffused her, twofold. Lord Ashley Rawdon stood at her side, near enough to touch. So very alluring.
“Pru.” He stretched out her name in that sweet, low baritone.
The effect of her name in his delicious voice settled between her thighs as a pulsing ache. In a wickedness she could not shake.
“Yes?” she asked, cautiously.
“It suits you.”
The simple statement should not have affected her as it did. But she could not help but to turn toward him, studying his carved, aristocratic profile in the warm glow of the fire. Even from the side, and even enshrouded in mostly darkness, he was unfairly beautiful. That chin was so proud, his nose a thin, strong blade. His forehead and cheeks were high, but it was his mouth—oh, that sinful, wicked mouth—that truly called to her from any viewing vantage point.
“How so?” Her voice was strangled with an attempt to stifle the incipient burst of longing afflicting her.
His head turned, and he glanced down at her, the movement making their elbows brush. “Prudence means exercising caution. Showing restraint. But Pru is rather something between cautious restraint and recklessness, is it not? It is the abbreviated form. The form that can still be wild here and there, as it wishes. I fancy you may be wild when you wish, Pru. Am I wrong?”
She had never been wild.
At least, she did not think she had.
She had merely been herself, determined to find her way in the world. So many times, she found herself being the voice of caution and restraint for her sisters, and she could not deny it nettled. The role had never felt entirely right.
“I have never been wild.” She paused, contemplating, before continuing. “I am the eldest of all my sisters, and in the absence of our mother, they look to me for maternal guidance.”
“That is rather a hard weight to bear, is it not?” he prodded.
His astute assessment surprised her, reminding her not for the first time that there was far more to Lord Ashley Rawdon than a handsome face, fair form, and a rake’s charm.
“It has been,” she conceded. “But we are all of us similarly without our mother. And as I am the eldest, I naturally found myself in the role.”
“Being the strongest of one’s siblings is not always the easiest, is it?” His tone, like his question, was shrewd.
“I am not the strongest.” She thought of Dev and the multitude of ways he had protected her and their sisters. “My brother is the one who has held us all together.”
For Dev had. She and her siblings had been motherless for more of their lives than not. And their father had been a worthless scoundrel. A violent cad who was gone more often than he was at home. He had certainly not cared for Pru and her siblings. Instead, he had cared only for the amassing of his own fortune. In the end, he had not been able to take a ha’penny of it with him when he had passed from this life to the next.
“Perhaps not the strongest,” Lord Ashley elaborated then, “but the one who is most capable of shouldering the burdens.”
She wondered if he spoke from his own experience. His brother was the duke, but from what she had witnessed thus far over the course of the house party, Lord Ashley had spoken on behalf of himself and Coventry. It was plain that Coventry suffered from some sort of affliction which rendered him impossibly shy and cool. However, to hear Lord Ashley’s wistful tone now confirmed her suspicions.
“Are you the brother most capable of bearing the weight of your familial burdens?” she asked him, although she knew she should not.
It was none of her affair whether or not Lord Ashley spent the remainder of his life acting as a proxy for his brother, the Duke of Coventry. She had no intention of binding herself to either one of them, as it happened. Why had she even posed such a question?
Lord Ashley swallowed, his attention still diverted toward the fire. The glow of the flames cast alternate flashes of brightness over his strong, handsome features. She studied him surreptitiously, unable to keep herself from watching.
He was that tempting.
