As he had hoped, Dashwood was still in Phineas’ bedchamber. The valet was shooing a little chambermaid out the door, her arms full of bedsheets.
“My lord?” Dashwood quirked an eyebrow. “Why are you not out with the shooting party?”
Phineas waited until the chambermaid was down the hall and out of earshot. “Change of plans, Dashwood. I need you to go downstairs and find out from the staff which bedchamber is Lady Caroline Haskett’s. Subtly. You know.”
“Lady Caroline Haskett?”
“Yes. The hostess.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Phineas could tell Dashwood was itching with curiosity, but he was damned if he was going to tell the man anything until he had spoken to Lady Caroline himself.
And perhaps proposed to her? At the very least, propositioned her.
Four
Lady Caroline Haskett looked out the window at the park. It was a perfect day for fowling. Clear. Crisp. A good hostess should be able to ensure good conditions for a shoot, and she had done just that. Her father would have no complaints about the weather.
She herself had eaten a large breakfast. She usually ate a good breakfast, but she had been especially hungry this morning and had attacked her tray of ham and eggs and cakes with a lusty appetite.
Lusty appetite. How appropriate for her first day as a woman of experience.
A knock on the bedchamber door, indicating Jones had come back with Lavinia. It had been so good of her lady’s maid to take the hound out even though the gentle giant made Jones nervous. Of course, Caroline was usually the one who took Lavinia out for a scamper just after dawn. But not today, not this morning. Not while the Earl of Burchester was about.
Caroline said nothing in response to the knock, kept her gaze directed out the window, and waited for the door to open and for Jones to come in with the dog.
After a curiously long pause, she heard the knob turn and a male voice.
“Lady Caroline?”
Phineas. He had not gone out for the shooting with the other men.
She heard the door close, the cushioned tread of his boots on the carpet.
She should be frightened. A man was in her bedchamber, a man she had deceived and who had reason to be angry. But she wasn’t frightened. Because it washim, of course, and she could never imagine him doing her any harm.
“Lady Caroline, you must forgive my intrusion. I’m sure you think me a cad and unbelievably stupid. I did wonder at the silk nightdress you left in my room, but only when I saw your portrait in the gallery—”
Her portrait. She was so used to ignoring that travesty of a painting she had forgotten it hung right where anyone could see it. Right where Phineas would almost certainly see it.
“Then I realized, of course, I had had the pleasure of meeting you before.”
She did not move. She wanted to stay still and just listen to his voice.
“And certainly, meeting you again last night was also an undeniable pleasure. Your brother did not see fit to run me through with a butter knife in the breakfast parlor this morning, so am I correct in concluding no one else knows about our nocturnal rendezvous?”
She could answer that.
She turned slowly. Damnation, the man oozed raw masculine sensuality. Those full lips. That broad chest. Those tight leather breeches encasing his muscular thighs, hugging his bulge.
His bulge. His cock. She had seen it, touched it, had it in her, stained it with her own blood.
Still, she should be able to manage these words. As long as she was calm and careful.
“N-no one,” she said.
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. She had run her fingers through it, too, last night. That thick, wavy, silvery mane.
