Today, however, he felt hot and itchy, as though his skin was too small for everything it contained, pressing too tightly until he wanted to free himself from it. He ran both hands through his hair and wondered what Miss Louisa Picard had done to him to turn him mad like this.
The door opened and without turning around, he knew it was her. Somehow, even when they had met in the Upper Rooms at the Bath Assemblies, he had memorised the light way she walked and the way she smelled, like soap and perfume that reminded him of the lavender bushes in his mother’s gardens.
When he turned, she was looking up at one of the paintings—a particularly ugly rendition of a surly man in a large ruff.
He had not intended to speak, but as he approached her, he found himself saying, “It is a great relief to me that we are no longer obliged to wear those things.”
For a moment longer, she didn’t turn, and he was plagued with all the details he wished he could purge from his mind: a freckle on the slip of bare shoulder that was visible, the soft curls at the back of her neck, the audacious way her chin tilted when he spoke.
“Lord Eynsham,” she said, and finally turned, looking up at him. “Anyone would think you were avoiding me.”
“If I am, it seems I’m doing a spectacularly bad job of it.”
“That is because I am not to be trifled with and has nothing to do with your noble intentions,” she assured him, the corner of her mouth curling. “In fact, I took the way you left as an invitation to follow.”
Her lips were spectacularly red. He was having a hard time looking away. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Was that an insult, Lord Eynsham?”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Is that so?” She pressed closer, and he stepped back to maintain what little space was between them. “There,” she said, gesturing at the way he moved. “Is that not an insult?”
“What if someone were to walk in?”
“Ah.” That infernal smile curved her lips again. “Now I understand. You’re afraid of me.”
A little, perhaps, but he was more afraid of himself and the way he ached to touch her, to know what her lips felt like against his. The need to know every part of her.
“Afraid?” he asked instead, raising his brows. “No, Louisa. I am not afraid.”
“But you dislike being alone with me,” she mused. “What if I agreed to marry you?”
The words shocked him so fully, he had nothing to say in response. Her face was utterly solemn, gazing up at him as though she had not just turned his world upside down.
“Marryme?” He shook his head, rolling his shoulders to dislodge the thought from where it clung to the inside of his head like a burr. “That would be a terrible idea.”
“You are very rude, Lord Eynsham.”
He smiled, unable to help himself. “You were the one who told me you had no wish to marry.”
“If I recall correctly, I told you I have no wish to marry a gentleman disinclined to allow me to paint,” she said, walking past him to the window. “And you did not recoil from me in horror when I confessed I painted with oils.”
“It strikes me your standards are appallingly low.”
She gave a bewitching giggle. “Or abominably high. Most gentlemen, you know, would be unaffected by my desire for a lover to kiss me andmostshocked by my painting with oils.”
The less he thought about her desire to be kissed, the better. “That hardly means I would make for a good husband. And how would your mother react to our being engaged?”
“Oh, it would be a secret engagement.” She glanced at him, eyes sparkling with delight and mischief and everything he had come to crave and fear in equal measure. “Think how delightful it would be.”
He rather wished he couldstopthinking about it. “Absolutely not.”
“Why, does it offend your delicate sensibilities?” She turned, the sunlight framing her as she looked him full in the face. Her smile was infectious, and he pinned his own mouth together so he wouldn’t be tempted to return it. “Or am I not the kind of wife you were hoping for?”
Even just a few months ago, he had dreamt of a dutiful, proper, sensible wife who would uphold his family’s honour and do everything expected of her. Louisa was wild, she was spontaneous, her thoughts and intentions and desired lifestyle bordered on scandalous. She was decidedly not the type of lady he had ever intended to marry.
Yet, when he envisaged matrimony, he could not imagine himself with anyone else, and he wasn’t entirely sure what had changed but the arrival ofher.
