Blast the woman.
“I haven’t had time to do much reconnoitering, as it happens,” he defended himself. “If you’ll recall, I’ve been chasing after a spirited child, a stray dog with a penchant for eating things she ought not, wayward friends, and attending weddings.”
“Do you have any preferences?” she asked.
What the devil was she talking about now?
“Preferences?” he sputtered.
“Hair color, eye color, figure?” she enumerated in a methodical tone. “Do you prefer ladies who are clever or dull,quiet or outspoken? Must she be a virgin, or can she be a widow?”
Good, sweet Lord, she was going to drive him to madness.
“Has anyone ever told you that you are infuriating, madam?”
“Never.” She grinned unrepentantly, her eyes sparkling. “And I wouldn’t recommend that you do so either, because this is my carriage we are in, and you would hate to walk the rest of the way to your town house in this deluge, wouldn’t you?”
The minx. She had him there.
He couldn’t say why, nor did he know what devil prompted him to do it, but he leaned forward across the carriage, forearms resting on his thighs. “Cinnamon-gold, blue, and lush. Clever and maddening. I prefer a woman of experience. One who knows what to do with my cock.”
He was talking about her, of course. Because when she had listed off her questions concerning his requirements in a woman, all that had come to mind was the sultry woman whose kisses had been haunting him since their ill-advised assignation in the emerald salon.
Her eyes widened, her pink lips parting in surprise, and for once, he had rendered her speechless. Victory was his, and just in time too. The carriage had finally lumbered onto his street.
“Nothing to say, my dear?” he asked with feigned innocence.
Her chin went up, the fight returning to her. There was nothing more glorious than the Countess of Grenfell when she’d been challenged.
“I’ll send a list of prospective brides around to you.”
The carriage rocked to a halt. “I’ll await it with bated breath. Good day, Lady Grenfell. I thank you for the ride.”
He slid from the squabs and threw open the carriage door, leaping into the rain in the hopes that it might cool some of the fiery lust burning through him.
Damn her, he should have known she wouldn’t allow him to win.
CHAPTER 8
“Is there any correspondence for me?” Lottie asked her lady’s maid nonchalantly that afternoon as she drank her tea before a crackling fire, a novel in her lap.
Rising late on cool days, luxuriating before a fire in her dressing gown well past luncheon, reading as long as she liked—these were private pleasures she afforded herself now that she was no longer at the mercy of Grenfell’s daily demands of her. Pleasures which, unfortunately, were not proving sufficient distraction at the moment.
“Nothing so far,” Jenkinson announced cheerily. “Are you expecting something, my lady?”
Yes, she was.
She was expecting a response from the Duke of Brandon. After hours of careful deliberation the day before, she had produced a list of several ladies and sent them to him. Naturally, she hadn’t been able to satisfy all his requirements—those had been made to discomfit her, she knew. And it had worked, the rotten man.
But after all the effort she had gone to on his behalf—taking him home from the wedding breakfast, composing a thoughtfullist of potential brides—the arrogant wretch hadn’t even deigned to respond.
Presciently, Lottie didn’t confide any of that in her lady’s maid. She did trust Jenkinson implicitly, of course. But there were some things one necessarily kept to one’s self.
She forced an unconcerned smile. “Not anything in particular, Jenkinson.”
“I’ve selected the pink silk for you this morning, Lady Grenfell,” her lady’s maid told her. “It complements your lovely hair so well.”
Lottie could privately concede that her hair was one of her vanities. Grenfell had once told her it was brazen; he’d preferred icy blondes. When he’d confided that to her in one of his crueler moments, she had vowed to make her hair her crowning attribute. Jenkinson was a dab-hand with all manner of hairdressing. No braid had been too elaborate, loose tendrils artfully curled to frame her face, accented with twinkling diamonds or fresh flowers. Her admirers often remarked upon her hair, which she refused to cut—it curled long past her waist, down over her bottom when fully unbound.
