Complete rot, of course. But worth a try.
Miss Winter’s lips pursed once more, her smile fading.
It was as if the summer sun disappeared behind a cloud.
Which was ludicrous. He should not even notice her smile. Or her appearance at all. She was not meant to be his. His sort of woman would have already been in his arms, long since in his bed. She would have swooned over his flattery. If she were his sort of woman, she would have had her gown around her waist, and the two of them would have been putting the oversized settee across the room to good use…or perhaps even the rug before the crackling hearth…
Devil take it, now he was sporting a stiff cock.
“Do you think me hen-witted, Lord Ashley?” she asked him, her tone more frigid than the winter air raking over the countryside beyond the Abingdon House walls.
“Of course not,” he hastened to reassure her, whilst praying the fall of his coat covered the evidence of his sudden and most unwanted reaction to the fantasy of making love to her.
Not her, he reminded himself.
A fictional woman, he amended. One who was light on virtue and easy on the eyes. One who was not a chilly, disapproving long Meg with a heart as pure as an angel’s. The sort he could spend all day debauching, kissing and licking every creamy curve on her body until she was writhing beneath him and crying out for more.
“Then why would you say such a thing to me?” she demanded.
His cravat was too tight. As were his breeches.
Discomfited, he slid a finger between his throat and his neck cloth, attempting to garner himself a bit more breathing room. “What is the thing in question, Miss Winter? And why are you so outraged? I cannot think a word I have spoken to you has been untoward.”
He had to admit, hehadgotten lost in his own thoughts. But he still did not think he had said anything which garnered insult. She was distracting him. For some reason, he could not bring another lady’s face to mind for the fantasies he had intended to divert him from his inconvenient attraction to Miss Winter.
All he could see was her face. Her smile. Those dimples. Those soft brown eyes molten with desire. Those long legs.
Damnation.
This was not good.
Perhaps he should tell Gill he needed to find a different bride.
“You are lying to me about the Duke of Coventry’s interest in foundling hospitals,” she accused then. “You are an abysmal liar, my lord. Most unconvincing.”
He tugged on his cravat a bit more.
Nothing about his interview with Miss Prudence Winter had proceeded as he had expected. And that, coupled with his steadily increasing desire for her, was beginning to make him incredibly vexed.
Pru had aproblem.
Lord Ashley Rawdon was the handsomest devil she had ever seen. Tall and broad and strapping, golden-haired and godlike, he set her heart pounding whenever he appeared in a chamber. And since he had seemed to be wherever she went over the course of the last few days, she had been going about in a perpetually flustered state.
But as she watched him pulling at his elaborately knotted cravat, she began to suspect she was not the only one suffering from such an unwanted snag in the otherwise flawless fabric of her day.
He cleared his throat, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “I would never lie about such a serious matter.”
She had never imagined she would find a heartless scoundrel like him appealing. But there was no denying the heat unfurling within her, nor the longing. He made her feel achy and uncertain, needy and greedy, all at once. She was heartily disappointed in herself.
Fortunately, her reaction to him could be squelched. Even if she could not control the way he made her feel—all down to his handsomeness and rakish charm, no doubt—she could ignore it.
And shewould.
“If you are indeed trying to impress me on behalf of your brother,” she told him, careful to keep her voice even and wintry, “may I at least suggest you avoid resorting to prevarications? I find your halfhearted attempts at feigning similarities between His Grace and myself most insulting.”
He stopped fidgeting with his cravat then, his regard intensifying, his sky-blue eyes piercing hers. “And how would you recommend a gentleman impress you, Miss Prudence Winter?”
Heaven help her, but the way her given name rolled off his tongue made her shiver. It sent a liquid sensation straight through her, one that settled somewhere between her legs in a most improper ache.
