“Miss Winter?”
She spun about, her brows raised. “Your Grace?”
“You have the time confused,” he growled. “Initially, you said two o’clock. Now you have just said three o’clock. Which is it to be?”
Miss Winter laughed. “You noticed. I hoped you would.”
Miss Christabella Winter was trouble. No question.
“Two or three?” he demanded.
“Two,” she said, before dipping into a proper curtsy. “Until then, Your Grace.”
And then, she vanished over the threshold, the door closing quietly behind her. He stood there, blinking, frozen—like a bloody icicle, it was true—thinking that but for the scent of summer blossoms lingering in the air, she might have been the product of his imagination. He would have been better off had she been, he was sure.
Just as sure as he was that he would be meeting her in the west wing tomorrow at two o’clock. Yes indeed, Miss Christabella was trouble. Capital-T trouble.
And he was capital-I intrigued.
Chapter Four
Christabella was themost reckless of all her siblings. This, she knew.
She was also the most romantic at heart. The most idealistic. The dreamer.
This, she also knew.
She relished risks. Rejoiced in rule breaking. Delighted in danger.
Unlike her brother and her sisters, Christabella did not mind being considered a wicked Winter by polite society. She did not long for respectability. Not even a title. All she wanted was a man who kissed her and made her feel as if the earth had shifted beneath her slippers.
Which was why it made complete sense and also no sense at all that she was currently in a minor salon deep within the west wing of Abingdon House, pacing the floor and awaiting the Duke of Coventry. First, the man was not a rake. He had never even kissed another.
Scowling at the mantel clock, she turned on her heel to perform another circumnavigation of the chamber. It was a quarter past two, and the duke was nowhere to be found. Nary even the drop of a footfall in the hall, not a creak. Not a note slipped to her surreptitiously. Nothing.
No word.
No duke.
It was just as well, she told herself with a sigh. There was no reason why she should be aggrieved that Coventry had chosen not to meet with her. If he did not want to kiss a lady, that was his problem, not hers. She could very easily find a replacement, she was certain. For now that she had settled upon the plan of learning how to kiss before she met her husband, she could not let it go.
True, the only man she could conceive herself wishing to kiss at the moment was the maddening duke. And true, her heart still beat faster when she thought of him. Also true, thoughts of his mouth had kept her up all night, into the wee hours of dawn. She had contemplated how she should kiss him first. Or if she should allow him. If she should kiss him slowly or quickly, if she should engage her tongue as the characters inThe Tale of Lovedid.
And she had touched herself.
Yes, she had.
Her fingers had found her most sensitive place. But this time, she had imagined it was Coventry’s long, elegant fingers stroking her. Stroking her as he kissed her…
“Oh my,” she muttered to herself as she paced the chamber once more. Her body was heated. All too aware. The ache between her thighs could not be answered. Not here.
And all for a man who had not summoned the courage to seek her out.
Why, the next time she was alone with him, she would box his handsome ears for—
The door to the chamber opened.
She spun around.
