Fuck, she was delectable.
He rapped on the roof, and the carriage jolted into motion before she could attempt to fling open the door and throw herself to the pavements in flight. “If you had wished for a personal carriage, you had only to request it.”
“I assumed this was to be a personal carriage,” she said, her voice cross.
“Just as I assumed you would expect to find me within,” he lied smoothly. “I am heartily sorry for the confusion, but now that we are on our way, the journey shan’t last long.”
“I cannot travel to the countryside in this carriage with you,” she protested. “It would be nothing short of scandalous.”
“The carriage is unmarked,” he pointed out. “The hour is early. No one knows you entered any conveyance other than your own.”
“I don’t have a carriage.”
“A hired coach, then.”
“This is far too fine to be a hired coach.”
She was a bloody stubborn woman. “It is the most modest conveyance I possess.”
She gave him an arch look. “Of that, I have no doubt.”
His Miranda had a rapier tongue. And he loved it.
Rhys laughed. “You wound me. Do you mean to imply I am a vainglorious gentleman?”
“I mean to imply that you lied to me about the carriage that would take me to the house party,” she said pointedly, apparently not about to be distracted from her original source of displeasure with him.
“Liedis a strong and ugly word. As we already agreed, the travel arrangements were a mere misunderstanding,” he said magnanimously.
“One that is in your favor.”
He allowed his gaze to slip to her tempting, pouting lips for a moment before meeting her disapproving stare once more. “It could be in yours as well, if you but allow it, my dear Miranda.”
“Miss Lenox,” she corrected icily.
“No, I do think it shall be Miranda when we are alone,” Rhys decided.
Which will be as often as I can possibly manage, he kept to himself.
“This was a mistake,” she pronounced, sliding to the edge of her seat. “Please, take me back to the school. I have changed my mind.”
His sweet purveyor of decadent cream ices. She wasn’t so naïve that she believed he was going to turn the carriage around and deliver her back to the haven of her school, was she?
“You cannot change your mind,” he reminded her. “I have already furnished you with one thousand five hundred pounds.”
The color fled her cheeks. “You also said that you prefer women who are willing, Your Grace.”
Well, sweet God, what did she think he was going to do, tear her gown off and fuck her on the Moroccan leather?
“That hasn’t changed.”
And shewouldbe more than willing. If there was anything Rhys knew, it was how to seduce a woman. Judging from the palpable attraction crackling between them like roaring flames, said conquest would prove easy, despite her determination to cling to her prim façade. There was a passionate woman hiding in the depths of her eyes, and he would find her.
“Then you cannot insist upon seducing me in this carriage,” Miranda bit out, looking flustered.
“What an imagination you have. I’m planning nothing of the sort, I promise.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You aren’t?”
