“Like me,” she said evenly, refusing to look away. If he wouldn’t bring up what had happened, she would.
He sipped calmly, his eyes glinting in the guttering light. “Hell’s teeth, you’re terrifying. I feel for your brothers.”
Isabella would not take the bait or let him goad her into forgetting her purpose. They had scarcely ten minutes before his carriage delivered her home. “I imagine when you marry, Lady Merevale will be the serenest belle in the parlor,” she said, giving the loose thread on her sleeve a sharp yank. “Pouring tea without a single dribble. A countess possessed of the finest manners in England. A proficient watercolorist, a gifted conversationalist. No doubt exquisitely beautiful as well—calm, flawless, admired. The sort of woman no one ever dares accuse of being inconvenient.”
“My countess sounds dull as shite,” he whispered. “And who called you inconvenient, sprite?”
She flicked the question aside with the scrap of thread, letting it drift to the floor. “Who hasn’t, you mean?”
He stretched his long legs out, his boot intentionally bumping her slipper. “I’m a lowly second son who entered service after my family’s finances collapsed, the grander burdenfalling to me when my elder brother—conceivably the cruelest bloke I’ve ever known—succumbed to the French pox, leaving me a title and not only my father’s debts, but his as well. That’s why I’ve gone into trade with Weston and the Duke of Mercer. I inherited a country home in Derbyshire, which I admittedlyadore, but the responsibilities, the tenants, the village?—”
He sighed and let his head fall back against the velvet squab. The woeful shrug that followed ended in a grimace, a reminder of his injury. She hadn’t thought of it once since he dropped to his knees before her.
“You could marry someone with a sizable dowry,” she whispered, the vision of his forearm tensing as he slid his finger inside her flaring hot behind her eyes. Isabella stopped herself from covering her stinging cheeks by force of will. He would know—he simply would—that she was thinking something improper.
And,heavens, what these memories were doing to her. She felt softened and overheated, like wax held too near a flame.
She’d not imagined desire like this until him.
She tried again while he brooded. “You would have your choice of women in theton.” With his title and ruinous good looks, even with scarce funds and a questionable reputation, he would have his pick. Men truly had all the luck.
“I can’t continue these charades. I’m exhausted,” he said at last, twisting his signet ring on his finger. “If I marry, it must be the one honest thing, lest I be lost to the lies.”
Isabella turned to the window, her heart sinking. Despite the considerable settlement—an open secret—the Earl of Merevale had not once considered turning their deception into something real. Which vexed her.
And the only thing worse than anger was boredom.
Isabella was dangerous in either state.
“Lord Fitzhugh is in a similar situation.” She chased a raindrop down the windowpane with her fingertip, not daring to look at Ever while she spun one of the webs he’d mentioned earlier. “He remarked on it to Penny at a musicale last week, discreetly, of course. He questioned her about my association with you, imagining like the rest, that it’s a candle soon to be snuffed out. The funds attached to me interest him, no doubt.”
Isabella almost smiled—almost—when his bootheel struck the floorboard. “Why should you care what Fitzhugh thinks? I thought you didn’t wish to marry.”
She traced another raindrop down the glass. “I don’t. But relationships, as you’ve shown me this eve, can be…more.” She laughed softly; not all the pretense was false.
She was beginning to understand the appeal of pleasure without promises.
The Earl of Merevale bridged the distance in a heartbeat, and Isabella gasped. He braced his fist against the wall above her and leaned in, his mouth inches from hers. “I’ll be damned before you throw yourself away on Fitzhugh. You won’t find what we have with just anyone, sprite. Trust me on this. Must I add him to the list? I’m visiting Ireton tomorrow morning to close the deal there. Shall I pay Fitzhugh a call as well?”
His forcefulness drew her, igniting something she ought to resist. Catching him by the nape, she pulled him into a kiss.
He cradled her cheek, thumb firm at her jaw, angling his mouth over hers. Their short, sharp moans filled the carriage, breath turning heated and close. The kiss strengthened until it felt dangerously easy to forget everything else.
Then the carriage hit a rut, jolting them apart.
His gaze was tight with passion, his irises a potent green when they met hers. “You’re an envoy of enviable skill, Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook.”
She didn’t bother to argue. “What if the things troublingyou were not a hindrance, but a path to something deeper, if we dared it?”
Cursing, he sank back into the seat across from her. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Your age, for one.”
“Hell,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
As they rounded the corner two streets from her home, Isabella pressed her advantage, buoyed by the promise of success. “There’s no power dynamic here. We’re equals, and I can manage you well enough. Your ‘maturity,’ as you style it, doesn’t concern me in the least.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, then, after a moment, laughed under his breath—a booming, genuine, toe-curling sound. She had never seen him like this, and from his astonished expression, neither had he.
