Those breasts had been magnificent. He ought to have given in to his instinctive urge and pulled down her bodice so they sprang free. However, now was not the moment to be thinking such base and crude thoughts.
What a despicable beast he was, thinking of Flora’s breasts when in the company of Miss Pennypacker.
“Pity,” said the lady at his side. “I did have hopes to find an investor before this house party is at an end, and the likelihood of securing one wanes with each passing day. I suppose you were speaking of something else entirely, then, my lord, and I misunderstood. My requirements, you said. What was it you meant?”
Marriage.
But he could hardly say so now.
“Your requirements for a good book,” he invented.
“Lady Charity loves to read,” Miss Pennypacker said. “You ought to speak with her about it.”
Lady Charity Mannerless?No, thank you.He would sooner lick the scum from the bottom of the pond than suffer her presence for a minute.
He was about to say so in less insulting terms when Miss Pennypacker disappeared, hastening across the grass to Lady Charity whose arm she clutched before hauling her back to where Neville stood at the pond’s edge.
“Here you are!” Miss Pennypacker announced, grinning. “Lord Wilton was just telling me he wishes to speak about what constitutes a good book. Oh dear, it looks as if Lady Raina requires my aid with her hat. If you will excuse me?”
Miss Pennypacker did not wait for either Neville or Lady Charity to respond before fleeing and leaving the two of them standing awkwardly together. Lady Charity did not appear any more pleased to be in his presence than he was in hers.
“Lady Charity,” he acknowledged stiffly.
“Wilty.”
His jaw clenched. “Wilton.”
“You wished to discuss books?” she asked, ignoring his correction of her insulting sobriquet.
“What never asks questions but requires many answers?” he asked her instead.
Her lips pursed. “I hardly know the answer, my lord.”
“A door-knocker,” he elaborated, but he was not thinking about his joke now.
A strange moment of recognition hit him. That voice, husky and mellifluous. That mouth, so full, the Cupid’s bow pronounced in a unique fashion. A slight breeze blew, and a scent reached him. A familiar scent. Orange and rose.
By God, it could not be. Lady Charity Mannerless was not his Flora.
Was she?
His gaze dipped to her bosom, hidden beneath her demure promenade gown, and he had to admit that the swell was familiar as well.
“Flora.” The name fled him, the answer to a prayer and a curse all in one. “It wasyou.”
Her lips—lips he had felt soft and satiny and warm beneath his, lips he had thought about nearly ceaselessly since the night before—tightened into a thin line. “I have no notion what you are speaking of, sir. What is that redness on your chin?”
His hand went to the rash left by Anderson’s cursed theater concoction. How indelicate of her to note it. “My skin is irritated thanks to the method my valet employed to attach my false beard and mustache for the masque.”
“Does it itch?”
He frowned at her. “It is none of your concern.”
“I have a cream which might aid you,” she said with an indelicate shrug.
“You are attempting to distract me,” he countered, not believing her offer of a potential medicinal aid in the slightest. “Admit it, Lady Charity.”
Her eyes went wide. Brilliant blue fringed with thick, golden lashes. He had not been able to discern their color in the moonlight, but they dazzled him now as they had on previous occasions.
