A miracle.
The sun was shining—a rare occasion, indeed, and one to be celebrated, so much more for the gingery glints it brought to life in Lottie’s hair. Her fiery tresses had been subdued into plaits,then confined in a knot at her nape. Curls framed her forehead and face beneath the brim of her jaunty hat. Light reflected in her eyes, rendering them somehow an even brighter hue of blue. She was nothing short of delicious.
He wanted to devour her. He didn’t want to bloody well take her on a drive like a proper swain. Hewasn’ta proper swain. He’d shagged her, and quite rudely, in a salon at a ball. And another time, equally salient, upon his study desk. It was undeniable that he had proceeded with his courtship out of the correct order.
However, he’d never been respectable. And it was too damned late to start now, anyway.
He had pressed his luck mightily today, and he had emerged the victor.
“My notes charmed you,” he said, unable to keep from grinning. “Confess.”
“I wouldn’t say charmed so much asobligated,” she countered in true Lottie form, her mouth unsmiling, her contralto measured and yet cutting in a way that was uniquely hers.
He transferred one of the reins to his left hand and clapped his right palm over his heart in dramatic fashion. “I am wounded, o beloved sorceress of wayward children and ragtag mongrels.”
His ebullient praise earned nary the hint of a smile from her berry-pink lips. “O tolerated driver of sleek barouches, I beg you to steer our conveyance with more than one hand and whilst directing your attention to the road ahead.”
“Ah, but the road ahead is so very uninteresting,” he pointed out, continuing to drive one-handedly, his gaze glued to her. “What is there to be seen other than the rear of boring carriages or the arse-end of a horse?”
She bit her lip, looking as if she waged an inner war against levity and her pride. “There is the road one must navigate.”
“Boring,” he declared. “I’d rather ogle you.”
She sputtered.
He grinned harder.
“Ogle,” she spat, as if it were a foreign word, unfamiliar on her tongue. “Me?”
Surely she didn’t doubt her allure. She carried herself like a woman who well understood her worth and who knew she could command it from the men permitted within her charmed circle.
“Why wouldn’t I ogle you?”
“Because gentlemen don’t ogle.”
“And?” He waved a hand at himself in dismissive fashion. “You are aware of my reputation, are you not?”
Color crept up her throat, chasing the smattering of golden freckles on her ivory throat. Clearly, the Countess of Grenfell’s spots were the most entrancing in the history of humankind. Brandon had never been similarly enthralled by another’s.
“Of course I am aware,” she muttered, pinning him with a grim look. “All of England is, I daresay. And perhaps farther. One never knows where you have traveled.”
“To a great many countries, of course,” he informed her. “Would you care to hear which ones?”
“You may keep your conquests to yourself,” she said primly.
“Never say you’re jealous, my dear.”
“Hardly.” She sniffed, as if the notion couldn’t be more ludicrous.
But he didn’t miss the way her spine stiffened.
“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally, transferring the reins to his other hand again as he navigated a turn.
“What does that mean?” she demanded.
He kept his gaze on the road ahead. “That you protest too much.”
“Tell yourself whatever you like.”
