“Rhiannon,” he protested sharply, his voice hoarse. “Your curiosity will be your downfall.”
She had never felt more powerful than she did in that moment. Never more in control. And what a heady, potent feeling it was. Rhiannon smiled.
“I think otherwise. Now go, if you please. I really do need to dress for breakfast. I find that I’m famished.” She reached for her nightgown, which proved all the prodding Richford needed.
“This isn’t over,” he warned grimly before he stalked from the chamber.
Rhiannon smiled to herself.
He had no idea.
Aubrey didn’t knowwhich bothered him more as he made his way back to his own bedchamber—his head, Rhiannon’s proclamation that she intended to give herself to some undeserving bastard at this house party, or her dismissal of him.
Yes, she had bloody welldismissed himas if he were an annoying little dog panting at her heels. And worse? He had allowed it.
Because he had been half asleep, scarcely alive, his head felt as if it had been trampled by a horse, and he had been convinced she was about to take off her nightgown and stand before him, completely naked.
Utterly tempting.
Even in his reduced state, he would have found it impossible not to take what she had been offering. A fierce possessiveness had swept over him at her pronouncement, one that went all the way to his marrow. One that was wrong.
She wasn’t his.
She couldneverbe his.
He had to keep his distance.
Which would be a bloody lot easier if he hadn’t spent the night in her bed.
He had wasted an indeterminate span of time pacing outside her bedroom, inwardly raging at himself for his weakness where she was concerned, torn between pounding at her door and demanding that she accompany him to see her brother so she could begin her preparations to return home and offering to play lady’s maid for her and lace her corset and fasten her bodice.
In the end, Aubrey had done nothing. He had simply surrendered to his aching head and queasy stomach and begun making the trip to the opposite end of Wingfield Hall. He was passing through the great hall, temples pounding unmercifully, when a feminine voice stopped him.
“Richford, darling.”
Bloody hell.
Turning, he found Perdita, Lady Heathcote, approaching wearing a coquettish grin and a morning gown that clung to her form, leaving little to the imagination. The décolletage would have been more appropriate for evening, but Perdita didn’t appear to care.
He bowed. “My lady.”
She stopped before him, raising her brow as she surveyed him, from head to toe. “Tell me, where are you going in such haste this morning, and wearing last night’s clothes?”
Caught.
Of all the people to have come across him returning to his chamber after he had slept in his trousers and shirtsleeves and drowned himself in King’s noxious elixir, the cunning viscountess was the last he would have chosen.
He forced a benign smile for her benefit. “You recall what I was wearing yesterday? I’m flattered.”
“You would be surprised how observant I am,” she purred, running a finger down his coat sleeve.
He had shrugged into it as he’d been rushing from Rhiannon’s bedroom, but it was hopelessly wrinkled from theway she had tossed it onto the floor along with an assortment of scattered underpinnings and gowns. The minx was excellent at making messes, that much he could say for her.
And oddly, he found her chaotic disarray somehow endearing.
He tamped down that feeling as firmly as possible.
“I’m delighted to hear that you are so vigilant,” he drawled. “But if you will excuse me, I must carry on.”
