Decision made, he glanced about once more, looking for clues as to where she might have endeavored to disappear. He noted a hill cresting perpendicular to the hedgerow. If she had crested the hill, he wouldn’t have seen her digress in her path, nor would he see her now.
It was a possibility.
He followed the deer path up to the hill and, as he crested it, paused to absorb the sight.
Nestled amid a copse of birch trees sat a forest nymph. She reclined lazily upon a rock, her stockings removed as she kicked a toe in the small pond just beyond. Her hair was pinned up properly, which was the only detail out of place. Didn’t nymphs, fairies, and the like have unbound hair? All the pictures he’d ever seen in the more salacious books he’d read had used the unbound hair to cover the more . . . delicate areas of the beauty, only to keep the reader fully engaged in imagining what was hidden.
It was a pity the fairy was utterly and properly clothed.
He’d like to remedy that.
She moved her foot about playfully in the water, and her chest rose and fell with a contented sigh. The movement highlighted the delicate curves and valleys of her feminine form, a heated and feverish fantasy in daylight.
The rational part of him knew it was simply the governess he’d hired for his ward—he was uncertain if he was bloody brilliant, stupidly lucky, or headed for destruction because of that decision—but the less rational and more amorous part of him was finding great satisfaction in the fantasy.
It was ironic.
He owned and worked at the most exclusive gambling hell in London. Courtesans and the like were in constant company—yet none of them had utterly stolen his attention, for however long.
She reached up and swiped a stray hair from her face. The motion so smooth, so graceful, it was art simply to watch.
He had to put an end to this madness, preferably before he did something stupid.
“Good afternoon.” He released the words into the silence, and watched as her body froze, then her head turned just enough to see who had spoken.
Her eyes widened, and she slowly rose from her reclining position and moved to stand.
His gaze flickered to her foot in the water, watching as she placed her other foot down on a nearby rock.
It wobbled.
She shifted, gasped—then, as if time had slowed down, she fell backward into the pond.
