“I’m glad I’m amusing you,” Isabella said, heat in her words. She couldn’t decide whether to feel gratified or mortified.
“You do, more than I should allow. Or want. You transfix me, in fact.” Ever stretched his long leg out again, tapping her slipper, and her gaze fell to the shifting muscles in his thigh. “I’m thirty-eight, not eighty, sprite. And as far asassociationsgo, I could satisfy you and then some, if I’m allowed a moment’s vanity. Make you scream, the walls tumbling with your pleasure. And I would gladly, joyfully, let you satisfy me until I collapsed. Truly, I would let you do anything if you asked me at the proper moment.”
She shook her head, stunned, pulse kicking hard in her throat as she searched for a response.
He held up his hand, cutting her off before she replied. “Age isn’t the issue. Experience is. And what follows this liaison you’re suggesting. Where would it leave you? What happened tonight was so far beyond a simple kiss that evenI’m astonished. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’ve done less with women over the course of a true affair.”
His mouth flattened when his words failed to move her. “These previous kisses of yours—what, you’ve had two?”
“Four, including you. And Ireton did manage to touch my breast, if you must know. Although I slapped him after.”
Ever exhaled through his nose and wrested his flask from his pocket. “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”
“If you call him off with your information, that’s enough. I don’t want his death on my conscience.”
He made no comment, only took a determined drink, the fingers of his free hand curling into a fist.
“I wish I didn’t like you—thisyou—so very much. The rather punishing version of the Earl of Merevale.”
He sighed. “I wish you didn’t, either. I’m finding it rather irresistible.”
“Then say yes.”
He laughed, the flask dropping to his thigh.Oh, his body was something to behold, displayed unabashedly across the velvet carriage seat. His gaze brimmed with unsparing intelligence, his regard the most sincere she’d faced in her life. Men never cared totalkwith her, to be her friend. His decency was evident, even if he didn’t know it. Any other society cur would have ruined her already.
She wanted Everard Trentham. And no one else would do.
For the first time, Isabella judged her need a woman’s—not a child’s, not a recalcitrant hellion’s. Quiet pride rose in her for choosing so well.
This man was worth every battle she would expertly wage for him.
When the carriage halted a discreet distance in the mews running behind her residence, Ever sat up and pocketed his flask nonchalantly, as if they’d been discussing the weatherseconds before. “What, exactly, would I be agreeing to? This revised agreement.”
Isabella adjusted the fall of her skirts, schooling her expression. “You told Brick you have to make a quick trip to Derbyshire, something about an issue with a tenant.”
The carriage rocked as Brick climbed down from the driver’s perch, his voice floating in as he snickered and flirted while assisting Lottie to the ground.
“You heard that, did you?” Ever said, placing his hand on the door handle and locking it in place should Brick give it a twist from the outside. “I’ll be there and back in less than a week. I won’t miss more than a tea, maybe that mindless musicale in Richmond. I’ll send flowers every day. The news will spread through the servants’ underground like an infection. I shall continue to play the besotted fool.”
She lifted her chin a fraction, unyielding. “I want to go with you.”
Ever thumped the side of the carriage, telling Brick to hold a moment. “Absolutely not.”
“Invite Weston and Penny. And the Duke of Mercer and his family. A series of meetings, with the chance to show them your country estate. Let our families become better acquainted, nothing unsuitable about it.”
“It’s more a manor,” Ever whispered, a tiny furrow settling between his brows. She found him the most attractive man in England, bar none. “And one in need of attention, at that.”
Isabella leaned forward, her fingers slipping beneath his cuff to rest against the steady beat of his pulse. “Surely you have business to discuss?”
He glanced to her hand, then her face. His eyes caught the lamplight, lit like cut peridot. “A steam-powered press I read about being designed in Bavaria, one we could replicate here. Just the project for your brother, Weston, to sink his engineering teeth into, usingmymoney.”
“That will occupy your days, then.”
He smiled, all teeth and quiet menace. “And you think to occupy my nights?”
The question lingered between them as the door opened and Brick’s ruddy face appeared in the rain-dampened space.
The silence felt deliberate.
