Oh, Isa, what have you done now,she thought, pressing her gloved palm to her breastbone. Her pulse vibrated beneath her fingertips.
She’d never gone toe-to-toe with anyone before. Not like this, without words as the weapon.
And,my, it was exhilarating.
Chapter Two
Where a rake miscalculates.
You won’t be long then, will you, Merevale?
“I’ll show you long, Madam Mischief,” Ever muttered as he strode along the garden path, considering the various explosive ways he would react if he did not find Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook sitting in his Clarence, her lush bottom fastened to the velvet squab, hands folded in her lap. Exquisite lips closed.
Like she was seated for a bloody church service. That’s what he wanted, aside from the troubling suspicion he might want, well,her.
No lady of quality had ever assessed him thus—silent, thorough, like a piece of horseflesh up for purchase at Tattersalls. Sadly, it had been more arousing than a lightskirt’s skilled perusal, which he’d experienced only once, at sixteen. This evening’s review, however, had been an astoundingly cool evaluation from a chit of…what, exactly?
Ever haltedand, with a spent breath, scrubbed his hand across his jaw.
Twenty-one, at least. He hoped. Still too great a distance from his thirty-seven, but nothing that bordered on depravity. Groaning, he brushed his hand over his half-hard cock, nudging it deeper into the folds of his trousers.Down, boy.Now isnotthe time.
And she isn’t the girl.
A grateful burst of moonlight illuminated the alley as he stepped into it, relief loosening his shoulders when Brick gave him a terse nod from atop the carriage.Got her.
Using something he’d learned in intelligence training (the composed person controlled the parlor), Ever paused before he reached the conveyance. Smoothed a hand down his waistcoat and pulled a deep waft of London’s stench into his lungs. Counted to twenty and back. Recited a few lines ofParadise Lostin Latin. Reminded himself that this incorrigible miss was sister by marriage to not one but two business associates—Weston Whitaker and, somewhat regrettably, the Duke of Mercer—and that he needed friendships like these to prop up the ailing earldom he’d inherited. Earning money in trade was how he would finally leave a profession that made a habit of sacrificing men like him, a career he’d chosen as a lowly second son expected to do nothing more, certainly nothing better. But death changed circumstances in ways one did not anticipate, and as of twenty months ago, there he was, an unexpected earl.
Concerning this evening’s muddle, Ever wasn’t about to let a momentary lusty vibration work its way beneath his skin or his resolve. He hadn’t three years ago, when a French agent slipped into his hotel room in Montparnasse and proceeded to divest herself of her gown before he could determine how best to end the intrusion.
And his determination thenhadn’t been to fuck her.
Perhaps giving up his mistress in an effort to prepare for a new life—wife, children, Derbyshire,peace—wasn’t the smartest move, he decided as he swung the carriage door wide. He’d wanted to enter the future without the dregs of the past clinging to him and had been the proverbial “good boy” for months now. And what had it earned him? That damnedRake Review, listing accusations that would never be challenged because he’d played the drunken peacock so well for years.
The exposure aided his persona but did nothing for the man.
Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook had the nerve, Ever noted as a slice of moonlight shot through the door and struck her, to sigh softly as if he’d kept her waiting.
The glow only reinforced how very, very lovely she was, even in her ridiculous shepherdess costume. Hair the color of wheat stalks in the fields surrounding his rundown country manor. Eyes caught somewhere between amber and brown, changeable, he’d wager, depending upon her mood. Her body petite but curvaceous, almost to the point of plump. His preference. And her scent, light, compelling, and like the woman, not easily dismissed.
He wasn’t sure why—did anyone understand these things?—but something about her set off continued chemical charges in his gut.
“Your scowl is positively frightful, Merevale,” she murmured, telling him she found him anything but. “And it’s been in place since the instant I met you.”
At that moment, a brief rush of panic swept through him. He was acting like Everard, agent of the Crown, not the deliberately unimpressive man he’d worn like a second skin for years. That Tipsy fellow.
“Do you know what a dire situation this could become, should you be seen attending what is largely a gathering of fastsociety, with a few dregs from the upper tier thrown in?” he asked, adding a slight slur as he staggered into the seat across from her and her chaperone, a slumbering maid he’d employed two months ago at the behest of her cousin Brick. A debt that, with her silence, had just changed hands.
Isabella traced a grimy streak on the window as the carriage rolled down the alley. Predictably, she hadn’t drawn the shades as requested. “Of course, I know,” she whispered, sounding forsaken and reminding him of his sister, Alice—a sympathy trap he was not falling into. “What do you think is hammered into every young woman’s head from the time she’s out of leading strings? Propriety, marriage, babies. Watercolors. Proper tea service. Pianoforte. Since thepredicament, as my family calls it, I’ve been strictly minded. Andreminded of my obligations.”
Ever arranged his long legs as best he could without touching her or his drowsy domestic, grateful he lived close to Weston Whitaker and that the ride would be brief. “What predicament?” he asked, though he could well imagine.
“I used to have a purpose.” At his answering silence, she pinned him with a bold look, her tawny eyes glistening. He did rather admire her cheek. “I’ll tell you a little secret, my lord, though I realize I shouldn’t. I provided the Brazen Belle with information from time to time. My embroidery projects gained me access to homes, you see.”
He caught the laugh too late, his hand lifting to his mouth after it had already broken free.
“Don’t you dare, you scalawag,” she whispered, darting a glance at his now-snoring maid. “It was invigorating to be something aside from nothing, which is what society has us be. A man couldn’t possibly understand. Certainly not one who’s a wastrel, destroying every opportunity granted his gender.” She slumped back, her slender shoulder knocking the carriage wall as they sped throughanother dank London night. Flashes of light skimmed the sleek planes of her face, fascinating despite his resolve to overlook them. “That’s why I wished to attend the celebration you held after being selected April’s rake. When I marry, my being part of theReviewwill be snuffed out like a candle’s flame. Even to the select few who know of it.”
He leaned into the narrow gap separating them, sending her back into the squabs with a hushed breath. “Did you set me up? Secure my inclusion in the most infamous gossip column ever written?”
