Her beauty?She felt a surge of warmth toward him for paying her the compliment, and found herself not the least put out by his low opinion of her as a fortune hunter.
She shrugged, which caused him to release her. Strangely, the smallest pinprick of disappointment lanced her when he did.
“You ought to take care, Miss...?”
Should she tell him her name?She might as well. After all, she’d come as the guest of another man, so the earl could easily discover her identity.
“Miss Sudbury,” she disclosed. “Lately of London, formerly of Chislehurst.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, his gaze now firmly locked on hers, notwithstanding how her feminine curves still tingled where he’d scrutinized them.
“And yet?” she prompted, looking at his mouth. She thought it an attractive one. Lips neither too large, nor too thin. And the way he said the wordpleasureactually made her toes curl.
“And yet what, Miss Sudbury?”
Now his gaze was upon her lips, causing her insides to flutter. He smelled good, looked better, and seemed interested in her. These London nobs could make a girl’s head spin.
“You said I ought to take care. Thus, despite any pleasure you may proclaim at meeting me, I fear you are about to issue a caveat or dire warning of some kind. Is that not correct, sir?”
“Yes, I suppose it is. You ought to take care which man’s bedroom you sneak into and certainly at which man you set your cap.”
He stepped closer, lowered his mouth to hers, and claimed a kiss.
She gasped at the unexpected contact and the resulting flush of heat that instantly coursed through her. By opening her mouth, she’d given him access to deepen the kiss, and for a shocking moment, his tongue swept between her lips.
Julia couldn’t deny she enjoyed the brazen, clandestine nature of what they were doing. A tremor of desire wracked her body, even though no other part of him touched her.
When he abandoned her mouth, she opened her eyes and stared into his, feeling out of kilter. The searing kiss had been remarkable for its intensity.
“Yes, as I said, a pleasure,” he quipped, “but also as I warned, you never know when you’ll meet a rake.”
There wasn’t much she could say to that, so she didn’t. He stepped aside, and Julia made her way downstairs on slightly wobbly legs. Her escort for the evening, a viscount’s stodgy son, Mr. Furley, was sipping wine in the drawing room oblivious to her disappearance. Next to him washischoice of chaperone, his dear mummy, Lady Pomony. Obviously, the viscountess was there solely for the benefit of protecting her precious heir, should Julia be the fortune hunter the Earl of Marshfield had supposed her to be.
Regardless, her unappealing escort mattered not a whit. Mr. Furley, with an invitation in hand, had been purely a means to an end — the end being easy entrance to the earl’s house and bedroom. She might have been rudely interrupted, but she hadn’t come away empty-handed.
Giving her wrist a little shake, Julia’s delicate silk beaded bag of the palest dove gray swung to and fro. Inside was the earl’s stunning gold and sapphire cravat pin.
Accepting a glass of wine offered by a passing servant, Julia took her place beside Mr. Furley and his mother, ready to partake of an evening filled with good food and a musical concert before she would be dropped home with her new dazzler.
***
JASPER GEORGE ASHTON, the Earl of Marshfield, couldn’t keep his eyes off the young blonde woman with the bewitching blue eyes. He’d been ready to give her the handkerchief she sought, as well as a quick tupping if she’d been willing. However, Miss Sudbury had vacated his room so swiftly he’d almost imagined she’d never been there. Except he could still make out the delicate floral fragrance he’d inhaled when kissing her, which lingered like a whisper in his chamber.
When he’d descended to his drawing room a few minutes later, he’d discovered with a modicum of surprise she was partnered with the impossibly bland Furley, a good chap if a bit of a mutton-head. Indeed, the viscount’s son was only on the earl’s guest list because their mothers were friends and his own had requested the kindness.
Miss Sudbury seemed far too spirited for the man. Moreover, Jasper had only to look at the man’s overbearing mother to know there would be no feather bed jig for Furley and the intriguing young woman, nor even a hurried flyer against the wall.
That thought pleased him, and he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if he, himself, was going to pursue her.Was he?
Perhaps he would. To better make up his mind, Jasper went as the crow flies directly across the room to where she stood. Her aplomb as she looked up at him gave him pause.
Was she an interesting tidbit or was she something more dangerous?
“Good evening, Lady Pomony,” Jasper greeted the viscountess first. “Furley,” he added, nodding to the man who was only a couple years younger than he was, but seemed like a university boy. Then he turned his attention to the female who’d called him amorsel. “And who is this delightful creature?”
Furley coughed, maybe at Jasper’s flowery language. “You met her when we arrived, my lord.”
Jasper tilted his head and looked at her. He’d met her even better in his bedroom, but he didn’t want Furley to think he recalled the chit at all.
