“Here we are, my dear,” he said lightly, telling himself to wait. That there would be time aplenty for sentiment later.
She peered out the window, giving an excited wriggle despite her claims that she did nothing of the sort.
“A bookshop!” The delight was evident in her voice, in the radiance of her smile.
“I thought that perhaps you might like to fill the library with some books of your own choosing.”
The library of his town house had been lined with shelves of books from its previous inhabitants. A great deal of Latin treatises, from what he had seen.
“How thoughtful of you,” she said, smiling at him in a way that made his cock rise to prominence against the fall of his trousers.
An unfortunate state, because there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.
“As you know, I have ulterior motives for almost everything,” he teased.
The look she gave him turned sultry. “I suppose you will want me to thank you for your generosity.”
Ye gods.Eleanora was going to be the death of him. He was never going to be able to get out of this carriage.
“I accept gratitude in all forms,” he managed tightly, trying to think about anything other than her implied invitation.
He had been bedding her for days, and she was still a fire in his blood. He wanted to fuck her a thousand different ways. To empty himself inside her again and again until there was nothing left of him.
Damn it, this vein of thoughts was not helping his current predicament.
Eleanora licked her lips, her gaze dipping for just one sizzling second to his lap before rising again. “You appear as if you are presently in need of…gratitude.”
The minx.
He choked out a laugh. “How diabolical of you to notice.”
She smiled. “I’ve learned how to be diabolical from one of the best.”
She was using his own tricks against him. And he found it rousing as hell. She never ceased to surprise him, his Eleanora.
The door to the carriage opened, letting in a burst of cool air that did nothing to quell his raging cockstand. He forced himselfto look at the doll perched on her lap and think about young Eleanora in tears when she had been forced to sell her precious toy, and finally, the beast within him subsided.
He handed her down from the carriage and followed in her wake, before offering her his arm and escorting her into the shop. Within, the place smelled of books and leather and musty paper. Not entirely pleasant.
But Eleanora inhaled deeply, her expression rapt. “Books.”
He had chosen their destination well, it would seem. “Get as many as pleases you, my dear.”
She walked down one of the narrow aisles, Nando trailing her once more. “I can’t recall how long it has been since I’ve had books of my own.” She traced a finger over the spines with a worshipful air. “When Mama died, I was forced to sell nearly everything I had.”
The thought of her, alone in the world, selling her books and clothes, being forced to forge her own way, had him clenching his jaw. “Buy the whole damned shop.”
She chuckled. “I suspect we wouldn’t have room for that many books. But perhaps just a few…”
By the time she had finished selecting the books that appealed most to her, Nando and the footman who had accompanied them each bore a precarious stack of tomes.
“I do believe this is an excellent start,” she said, smiling with anticipation as she eyed Nando and the footman.
And Nando decided that he couldn’t agree more, but it wasn’t books or the library he was thinking about.
CHAPTER 18
“Have you finished arranging your spoils?”
