Chapter Five
Miss Prudence Winterwas a thief.
Ash was still thinking about the revelation she had made the next afternoon whilst he was taking a brisk walk in the Abingdon Hall maze with Gill. They had eschewed the afternoon’s frivolity in favor of time away from the rest of the company, where they could speak freely. Even if it was bloody cold out this afternoon.
Her secret had not been the first indication Pru did not always do what was proper.
She had kissed him, after all. Damnation, how she had kissed him. It had been the kiss which had ruined him. But perhaps the predicament in which he now found himself was not the fault of the kiss, but rather of the lady herself.
Pru.
Tall, glorious, lush-lipped Pru of the twin dimples, whose long legs he could not stop imagining wrapped around his waist as he sank his cock deep inside her tight, wet heat.
Fucking hell.He had to banish all such thoughts immediately. Forever.
“Have you had occasion to speak with her?” he prodded his brother at last, goaded into action by his inner guilt and inner frustration both.
“Miss Winter?” Gill asked.
“Of course,” he gritted. “Who else?”
Gill nodded. “I have spoken with her.”
When? Some possessive urge inside him made him clench his fists at his sides. He had not seen Gill anywhere near Pru this morning. Not at breakfast. Nor later…
But then he forced himself to recall that this was the natural progression of things. Just like a babe was born, grew older, and eventually withered away, he would have to accept these devilish yearnings for Miss Prudence Winter would necessarily dissipate. When she was the Duchess of Coventry, in his brother’s arms and his brother’s bed, he would have no choice but to forget her.
Why did the notion make him feel as if he needed to cast up his accounts into the nearest hedge?
“And what is your opinion of her?” he forced himself to ask next.
“She is…” his brother’s words trailed off.
“She is?” he prodded, vexed. He had no wish to wait to hear his brother wax on about all Pru’s lovely attributes. For he saw them all himself, and he coveted them.
He covetedher.
“She is loquacious,” Gill pronounced grimly. “Thinks she can aid me. I have told her I do not require her assistance, yet she will not accept my refusal.”
This was news.
“What does she think she can help you with?” he asked, as curious as he was irritated by the thought of Pru assisting his brother with anything.
“Courting,” Gill said, ever terse.
“What the devil?” Ash stopped, facing his brother as if they were two fighters in Grey’s boxing salon. He certainly felt pugnacious in that moment. “That sounds precisely like the aid she offered me. What did you tell her?”
“No,” his brother said, but it was either the frigid air or embarrassment that had painted Gill’s slashing cheekbones bright red. And it sounded like a falsehood.
It occurred to him that his brother had just admitted to engaging in a conversation with a female. With Pru, specifically.
“You have been speaking with her,” he added.
It was deuced unlike Gill to speak to ladies at all.
Gill’s gaze flicked away, inspecting something over Ash’s shoulder as if it held him in its thrall. “A bit.”
Curse it, Ash was equally torn between being thrilled his brother had actually deigned to speak to the fairer sex and mind-numbingly jealous over the fact that it was Pru who had inspired him to break free of the anxiety that gripped him in social situations. Why did it have to be Pru? Why could it not have been someone else? There were ladies aplenty at this damned house party.
