“Leave it,” he murmured, his thumb smoothing the crease between her brows. “This moment is enough. As for me, I’ve never enjoyed anything this much in my life, sprite.”
And yet Isabella felt the shift, the first tremor of consequence beneath the pleasure, already rising to follow them into the night.
Chapter Eight
Where a sated woman presses her luck.
Percival Everard Trentham, Earl of Merevale—called tipsy by some and pickled by others, though neither was remotely true—seemed to be in a foul mood. His frown had been firmly in place since Upper Street, deepening as they rattled along City Road, and showing no sign of lifting by the time his opulent carriage turned west onto Oxford Street.
“Female trickery,” he muttered, rapping his knuckle against the rain-streaked windowpane. “I realize this now that my head has finally stopped spinning.”
Isabella questioned how dishonesty had been laid at her feet. Could he truly faultherfor seduction when she was only just beginning to understand its power? Undeniably, the kiss (and everything that followed) lingered like nothing before it, shifting the axis of her world much as it had his.
She smoothed a fingertip across her lips, the ache drifting into that newly awakened place, and wondered how she might persuade Ever to give her the “more” he’d promised before his head settled decisively between her thighs.
“Stop,” he ground out. “I’m barely holding my ground as it is, and your quivering little sighs are not helping.”
“I can see that,” she murmured, her gaze dropping to the straining length beneath his rumpled trouser placket.
Much to her dismay, when she’d wanted to touch, he’d only let herlook.
With an oath, Ever grabbed his beaver hat from the seat and set it atop his lap.
Isabella settled back to study him, aware their time together was drawing to a close. Lamplight struck him in intervals from the swinging lantern, flashes like stolen glimpses revealing him piece by piece before slipping away. His hair was tousled from her fingers, wisps of grey at his temple lending him an air of hard-won elegance.
He would have been displeased to know the evening had only deepened her attraction. His complexities, like hers, were many.
What an intriguing puzzle.
For one, he was honorable. Not during their encounter, when he’d seized the opportunity to give her the most astonishing pleasure she had ever known, but afterward, when remorse gentled him. He’d wrapped her in her spencer with deliberate care, kissed her hand, her cheek, her lips, then drawn himself away. His awkward restraint, even as he thrummed like a tuning fork with bottled arousal, endeared him to her as nothing else could.
Second, he was fascinating. The men in her experience had been single shades of color, easily drawn and quickly exhausted, while Everard Trentham was a spectrum.Impatient, yet capable of great kindness. Sharp-tongued, yet exacting in his tenderness. World-weary in manner, yet stirred to intensity by the smallest provocation, proof his calm demeanor concealed far more than it revealed.
Third, he was the most splendid man in England.
Tall and dark, with unnervingly intense green eyes that fixed on her as though she were the only thing in the room, he invited an unwise question: what might it feel like to wake beneath that gaze?
She’d been decidedly taken with him since barging into his office. Sleeves rolled high on his forearms, shirt unbuttoned low enough to invite trouble, this was more the man he was in private than the one he presented to society, and her thoughts slipped back to that earlier, dangerous question of how he might look when undone.
She knew he believed himself too old for her, a conviction she found wholly unconvincing.
How could she make this false courtship real?
“I wish I had more junior agents like you,” he grumbled, flicking aside the curtain to stare into the night. “I feel unnervingly seen.”
Ah,I’m getting somewhere.
“Is that what you do?” She traced the seam of her glove, giving him reason to think she wasn’t overly interested in his answer. “This game you play.”
His gaze tracked back to her, smile grim. “For another thirty-seven days, yes.”
“How long?—”
His labored exhalation cut her question short. He reached inside his coat and drew out a flask. The signet ring—clearly an item that unsettled him—winked in the lamplight. He’d removed it from his pocket when they first entered the carriage, stared at it, then finally jammed it onto his pinkie. “Ican’t tell you. I’m obviously mad to tell you anything at all. Proof my retirement is a wise choice.”
Isabella let the charged moment level, a decided skill. He was right; she would have made a formidable spy. “We can talk about it. They’re up top,” she said, meaning her maid and the ever-watchful Brick. “Lottie is quite taken with your manservant. A little rain won’t keep her away.”
He laughed and slouched lower in the seat, sending his hat tumbling to the floor. “Though you may not guess it to look at him, my manservant has a way with women,” he murmured, gazing at her over the beaded rim of the flask. “She was shivering when she arrived, but not when she left.”
