If only Grey wasn’t so damnably handsome with his black hair, hard jaw, full mouth, and brooding brows.
Oh, for the goddess’s sake. Brooding brows. Ridiculous. Scowling brows, perhaps. Ominous, most certainly. One might even say menacing. No need to wax poetical about the imbecile’s eyebrows.
It mattered little that it was Clio behaving like an imbecile, not Grey. She still needed to work with the smouldering man without letting him unsettle her. But whatever he was trying to achieve with this slightly more charming version of himself had thrown her off balance. She should be thanking the goddess for her change in fates. But she didn’t trust him. That was the sticking point. Nor did she trust his new behaviour.
Maybe it was the way her belly flipped every time his name fell from her lips. Or perhaps it was that her magic became chaotic and unpredictable when they touched. Whatever the reason for her reaction to Grey, one thing was certain: her lack of control over the one thing she couldalwayscontrol boded ill.
Pity I don’t have a spell to banish unwanted lieutenant generals.
‘I suppose I shall have to be very careful with such a fearsome creature as you.’ Grey raised a sardonic brow, his low voice barely discernible against the lively conversation between Cynthia and Lady Langley.
First brooding, now sardonic.
Before she could invent a witty rejoinder, gravel crunched as one of the six footmen who accompanied Lady Langley jumped from the carriage and swiftly set the step. The other five men rushed to their places, the most handsome of them standing by thedoor and holding out his hand to help the duchess manage the step with her voluminous skirts.
Cynthia followed Lady Langley. As Grey was closest to the door, he descended and then turned, blocking the footman and holding out his hand to assist her instead.
He is trying to unnerve me.
Much to Clio’s disgust, it was working. Thankfully, her gloves were firmly in place, though she wished they were thicker. Even with the shield of her kid leather and his sturdier deerskin, there was no denying the thrill of power running through her fingers and into his, or perhaps it was the opposite. Maybe she was stealing his potent energy as it raced through her, leaving sparks in its wake from her fingertips to her toes. Her very hair felt charged.
His pupils blew wide, and she knew the same electric pulse raced through him.
Pulling her hand free, she looked to the darkening sky. ‘A storm must be coming. You can feel it in the air.’ If only she had Aunt Rowan’s gift to harness the weather. But the goddess must owe her a favour because no sooner had she glanced upward than deafening thunder cracked through the sky.
‘Hurry!’ Cynthia called at the same time Lady Langley let out a shrill cry and nearly leapt into the handsome footman’s startled arms.
‘Carry me to safety, you fool!’
The wide-eyed young man stumbled forward. Thankfully, the entrance was only a few feet away. Servants covered their heads as the heavens opened and rain came in a sudden, drenching torrent.
Sir Robin, seeing no need to brave the weather, flew from Clio’s shoulder and swept into the open door just as Grey grabbed her hand. His long strides ate up the ground, and she ran to keep apace as they caught up to Cynthia and Lady Langley at the entrance. The group tumbled through the door and onto the marble floor in asplatter of wet shoes, flapping feathers, and – on the part of the footman – gasping breaths.
She was ushered up the stairs and to her rather frilly guest room while Lady Langley took Cynthia for a private tête-à-tête in the greenhouse, and Grey reacquainted himself with the duke and several of his cronies smoking cigars and drinking port in the drawing room.
After her trunks were unpacked, a copper tub was brought up for her to wash off the dust from her travels. Clio sighed in relief as the hot water enveloped her body. She closed her eyes, leaning her head against a towel that had been folded and placed on the edge of the tub.
Without warning, she was swept once more into the past.
Steam from a tub that wasn’t Clio’s clouded a tiled bathroom. Thomas’ scent of soap and spice surrounded her. The moist air billowed in a draft and parted to reveal Thomas, naked and glorious, reclining in a tub much larger than the one Clio had been enjoying. His muscled arms spread wide on the edges of the bath. His legs were bent, the water doing little to hide his member, stiff and long and proud. Clio’s cheeks heated. Her nipples grew tight and aching. She should look away. This was an intimate moment, not meant for her, but she couldn’t. She watched in fascination as his erection, much larger than she would have imagined, pulsed and bobbed in the water. Her own channel clenched as a wave of need washed through her. She forced her gaze back to his face. Joy lit his green eyes. He smiled as a woman, the same from before, his wife, walked across the floor. She was just as nude as her husband, and Clio fought a wave of jealousy. The woman’s breasts were high and pert, her legs long, her waist narrow. Golden hair fell down her shoulders in curling ropes, and a darker thatch glinted between her thighs. She reminded Clio of Botticelli’s Venus. She felt Thomas’ desire for his wife swell in his chest. But it was more than just lust. Love filled him, bursting out of his pores like sunlight.
‘My darling wife. Have you come to wash me clean of all my sins?’
The woman’s smile only increased her beauty. She was radiant. ‘Hardly, Thomas. I’ve come to see how wicked we can be.’
Clio was pulled back from the vision in a violent rush. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She curled her legs up and hugged them to her chest as arousal and an unaccountable anger warred within her. But once again, the nausea always accompanying her foresight was absent. What had happened to that young couple? How did her first vision of Thomas align with this picture of two people desperately in love? What changed to so completely alter them? None of it made sense.
Clio emerged from the water, now gone cold, shivering and numb. She waved a hand at the hearth in her room, the fire blazing to life.
A young maid came to help her change into her dinner dress – a forest-green gown with a daring outer corset in black leather. While the gauzy underlayer buttoned to her throat, the corset left no doubt about Clio’s feminine curves, so different from the woman in her vision. Though not prone to insecurity, Clio wondered what Thomas would think of her much fuller breasts, wider hips, and rounder bottom. Would he look at her with the same desire he once felt for his wife, or would he turn away from her? Did pleasure change shape and form to fit the object of one’s affection, or was it always the same sensation?
The clever maid piled Clio’s shining black hair into an intricate arrangement held together by no less than three thousand pins. Sir Robin watched the entire affair with a certain amount of judgement. No doubt the bird thought all this fuss to be futile. He certainly felt no need to dress up his feathers.
Clio patted her shoulder for the raven and when he had settled, she descended the curving staircase to the second level, following a footman to the drawing room where at least twenty guests milledabout in groups clustered around the fire, near the settee, at tables set up for whist, or in the centre of the room where they could garner the most attention. Lady Langley positioned herself there, with Cynthia at her side.
Clio didn’t miss the wave of heat washing over her as Grey watched from across the room. She tried and failed to dismiss the image of him naked in a tub of steaming water. How fascinating to have glimpsed the hard and raw man hidden beneath a finely tailored suit and expertly tied cravat.
As soon as Cynthia saw Clio, she squeezed the duchess’s hand and extricated herself from the group of fawning debutantes and rakes to join Clio near a beautiful portrait of a much younger Lady Langley and her brother. Clio squinted at the painting, trying to superimpose the ghostly Viscount Beachley with the boy in the picture. It was far more challenging than imagining Grey naked. A scandalous thought and one that brought colour to her cheeks.
