That was plausible. After all, she didn’t have a line of suitors at her door. Both James and, she assumed, Lord Payton knew of her impoverished status, and thus understood her undesirability on the marriage market. They might even believe her fiancé had changed his mind because of it.
James frowned, fixing her with a discerning look. But Lord Payton appeared pleased with that idea.
“Truly, any man who can’t find his way from southern Wales to Brighton in a few days doesn’t deserve to be your husband.”
That made her smile despite the serious step she’d taken. Finally, it was done! Her future was secure. She was to be the wife of an earl’s younger son. She should be thrilled with the honey-fall. And yet, the relief was bittersweet.
***
JAMES WALKED HOME WITHhis emotions swinging wildly from anger to regret to sadness. He had behaved out of character. If he’d handled his Brighton encounter with Glynnis in his usual raffish way, he would have compromised her a dozen times over, and he would have been the one about to slip the parson’s noose over his head.
And gladly, too.
Didn’t it gall Payton to be merely another man whom she’d kissed and happened to get caught with?For all they knew, that was how she’d captured Aberavon in the first place. Perhaps at a dinner at her family home, she’d followed him down a passageway and got him to kiss her precisely as her parents were coming around the corner.
Ifshe had actually caught herself a fiancé. To James’s way of thinking, it seemed likely because she was a beautiful, lively woman, but Aberavon’s long absence made him less and less convinced.
In any case, now she had a real fiancé.His own friend!A part of him was curious to see how this played out on the night of the masquerade ball, while another part of him wanted to defy Prinny and head home at once.
In London, everything made perfect sense. There, he was certain of his desires and his wants, and he went after them as he pleased. Mistresses didn’t trick him. They knew their role. But they also didn’t warm his heart or move his soul or lift his spirits the way Glynnis Talbot did.
The devil take her!He wouldn’t deign to greet her when she returned in the wee hours. He would be harbored in his room, probably foxed on his best brandy or dead asleep if he was lucky.
But he wasn’t that fortunate. Much later, he heard Glynnis come in. Despite the hour, he could hear the maid — Polly, if he recalled her name correctly — chatting to her as they ascended the stairs. The girl who’d become Glynnis’s willing shadow must have stayed up to help her undress.
Rising from the chair in which he’d been sitting by his window with his head back, eyes closed but unable to nod off, he began pacing. He would give his right arm to be the one undressing her.
Instead, he waited. When he heard the maid take her leave, James counted to twenty, then slipped from his room. Approaching Glynnis’s door, he tried to make himself halt and turn around. A moment later, he gave a light tap on white-painted oak panel.
“Come in, Polly,” Glynnis said, then gave a soft laugh. “What did you forget?”
Pushing the door open, James stood in the opening and drank his fill of her, a vision in nothing but a white chemise. Her glorious dark brown hair was loose over one shoulder, hanging down the front, drawing his gaze to where it draped across one of her full breasts. As for the other, covered only by the sheer, fine lawn, he could see a shadow of its curve and her outlined nipple.
For a moment, he forgot all his words. Then she coughed, bringing his gaze to hers.
“All your plans went well tonight,” he said.
She pursed her lips and said nothing in return, only crossing her arms to shield herself.
“Payton is a good man.” James hadn’t meant to say anything like that, but it was true. The way she’d caught his friend in her scheming trap both disappointed him and made him angry.
“I believe so,” she agreed, looking wary.
“And you have no remorse over trapping him?”
She shook her head. “I did not trap him.”
“I was there. I saw you.” James couldn’t believe, after everything, she would still lie to him.
Sighing, Glynnis lowered her arms and lifted her chin. “What do you want?”
What did he want?That was easy. Unlike her, he would be completely honest.
“I want you. I think my actions have made that obvious.”
Her expression softened. “Wantme? What do you mean?”
He took a step into the room. “Will you now play coy? Yes, I want you — in my bed or on the sofa like Dodd and his so-called aunt. I want you up against the wall or in the bathtub if we had one big enough. I want you on the seat of my coach. Hell, I wanted you on the grass at the racetrack and in the middle of the Old Ship’s dance floor.”
