After ignoring her for days, he showed up and ordered her to undress in front of him and London’s most fashionable modiste, vowing to give her an absurd, far too lavish gift.
He wasinfuriating.
And she would punish him.
For ignoring her.
And for only coming within ten yards of her when she couldn’t contradict him, when he had the upper hand.
Well, she would teach him not to toy with her.
“May I remove my chemise, Mrs. Warburton? I would like the measurements to be as precise as possible.”
The woman blanched.
Catherine locked eyes with John in the mirror again. His apparent shock only goaded her onward.
They had cavorted in a carriage, humped in a bed, kissed near a row of cottages, and nearly lost themselves to lust in one particularly infamous study. But he had never seen her wholly nude.
“Of—of course, miss,” said Mrs. Warburton, casting a mortified look at John. Still, she motioned for one of her assistants to helped Catherine step out of her chemise.
Now, when Catherine turned to the mirror, she was naked except for her stockings. Rather than shrink, however, she stood tall in the mirror, even though her own cheeks blazed in mortification.
She ran her hands, briefly, over her breasts and down her hips, as if she were imagining how a frock might fall.
She turned around so that she was facing away from the mirror and then twisted back to see herself from behind, making sure that he could see every inch of her.
Finally, she found the strength to meet his eye.
His mouth had fallen open. His eyes were glassy.
And he looked—there was no other word for it—ravaged.
So, to top it off, she smiled at him, preening before him as if she knew that she was the one thing he wanted more than anything.
At that, he fled the room.
Good,she thought, turning back to the mirror, her hands shaking.Let him remember that.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Infernal woman.
John was on his way back from the stables—he had suppedagainwith Marcel; that was the extent to which he wanted to avoid Catherine—and he still could not quiet the riot in his mind.
Since Catherine had bared herself to him, all he could think of was her naked body.
The sight would be forever seared into his mind. Her full breasts, with their pink rosebud nipples, and the soft swell of her hips. How her stockings stopped halfway up the loveliest, shapeliest legs he had ever seen. And, most of all, that thatch of blond hair between her thighs.
She had done it, of course, on purpose.
To punish him for avoiding her.
And, on some level, he knew he deserved it.
He had only stayed in the room in the first place to make sure that she would actually be measured by the modiste. He feared, if he left, she would somehow beg off of the measurements. She deserved this one gift, he thought, for everything she had done for Henrietta.
All right, obviously, that wasn’t theonlyreason he had stayed in the room. The sight of Catherine in her chemise had been a…heavy enticement to stay as well.
