Her stomach growled, answering rudely for her. Curse the devil, she was going to have to endure more of his teasing if she was to have any sustenance.
“Please,” she bit out.
He served her two eggs without asking how many she would like. “Bacon?”
“Yes.”
This, too, was placed upon her gleaming plate, followed by hothouse pineapple and strawberries. Miranda had been served many times before. By servants, by other gentlemen. But there was something decidedly intimate about being served by the Duke of Whitby. He somehow managed to make even the smallest of gestures sensual, as if every mundane move had its purpose, each gesture, look, and act a part of the seduction campaign he waged.
“Kippers?” he inquired mildly, as if he hadn’t just been discussing orgies.
“Thank you, but no,” she demurred.
“Do you care for coffee?”
“I prefer tea. Coffee is far too bitter for my liking.”
“As I am a host most considerate, you have both at your disposal,” he said, gesturing to the tea tray, which had been partially obscured by the massive epergne and its spray of fresh flowers. “Cream and sugar?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
He sounded smug, and she didn’t like it. Not the tone of his voice or the implication that he could somehow anticipate what she would want.
She accepted the dish of tea he prepared her, and he filled his demitasse with richly scented coffee.
“Now, then, I expect you are wondering about the nature of this house party,” he said without even a hint of concern.
“You know I am. If I had known for a moment that there was something sordid about this house party, I would have refused you.” Although she tried valiantly, Miranda could not keep the ire from her voice.
“Would you have, though?” His gaze, like his question, was direct. “As I recall, you needed the three thousand pounds.”
Curse him for pointing that out.
“I could have managed without it,” she said, clinging to her pride.
“And a man can also bail water from a leaking boat, but only for so long before the whole affair sinks with him in it,” Whitby pointed out.
He was not wrong. Her cookery school had been in dire need of pupils and funds. The expenditures had been outpacing the income she received by far. Too many more months of such a predicament would have spelled failure. Which was why accepting his money had been so alluring.
She frowned at him. “I surmise that in this little analogy of yours, my school is the leaking boat. But my pupils are growing with each day. The establishment will be profitable, particularly when I can begin the situation placement portion of the school and start selling my recipe book.”
“I can assure you that nothing of mine is little,” he purred.
And she knew what he was insinuating. Of course she did. He was speaking of his cock, the scoundrel.
“For heaven’s sake,” she burst out, tea sloshing from her cup and onto its saucer in her agitation. “Are you trying to make me go mad? Has that been your plot all along?”
“If I did want you to go mad, it would only be with longing.” He winked. “Is it working?”
That wasit.
The Duke of Whitby, that handsome cad goading her to her wit’s end from across the table, that beautiful, evil rake, that wicked sybarite, had lured her to Hertfordshire so that she could provide cream ices for anorgy.
And he was grinning and plying his charm and looking so unfairly glorious that he might have been a Greek god descended to toil amongst mortals for the sennight, having grown bored of all the beauteous goddesses attending him in Mount Olympus.
“You utter rogue,” she charged, forgetting about her breakfast entirely. “You know how important it is for me to avoid even the slightest hint of scandal. As a ruined woman, I have naught but my present reputation to commend me, along with the meager skills I can offer my pupils. And yet you have brought me here to this den of sin, knowing the grave peril it would place me in.”
