“Have you decided what you want to buy?” Lady Lutton’s color was starting to return to normal.
Caroline restricted herself to three purchases. A copy ofMuch Ado About Nothingsince she had been surprised to find no Shakespeare in the library of the Sudbury town house. She might return tomorrow and order the complete folio. Why not? Her brother had told her to fill any gaps the library might have. She also chose Mr. Scott’sThe Lady of the Lake; Lady Lutton had told her she would enjoy the story. And, of course, her own favorite, the Wordsworth’sPoemswhich she intended to gift to Lady Lutton. Caroline would say it was from herandEdmund.
There was no sign of the Earl of Burchester as Caroline selected her books. Thank goodness. She hoped he was keeping his word and cleaning up their mess. Because it wastheirmess, not just his. It was both of their doing, wasn’t it? And it was to the benefit of both them that he had not spilled inside her. But she thought he had been perilously close.
That could never happen again.
She had to end this.
But she had found no way to resist his touch, his words. If Phineas crept up behind her right now and whisperedlovely girlin her ear, she wouldn’t put it past herself to lift her skirts and offer herself to him like a harlot.
And, in fact, wasn’t that what she had just done?
She looked around her at the shelves filled with books. Cervantes might have had a lisp. Perhaps Chaucer had a stammer. But no one knew because these men hadwrittentheir words.
She would write Phineas a letter in a cool, calm, collected state, away from his full lips and his scent and hisdarlings. She would write him a letter that would keep him away from her.
As she was paying for her books on the ground floor, the shop door opened several times. She nodded at the clerk in thanks, and as she turned to leave with Lady Lutton, Caroline caught a glimpse of the back of a short but voluptuous woman, making her way up the stairs to the next floor of the bookshop. She wore a hat that must be the latest fashion, complete with sprays of tall feathers.
With my height, I could never wear a hat like that. But still, I would love to go to a milliner’s. Perhaps Amanda and I can go tomorrow.
Phineas had finished cleaning the floorboards but was lingering, leaning against the wall where he had taken Lady Caroline Haskett. His arms were folded in front of his chest, his face was sore from grinning, and the now-filthy handkerchief was back in his pocket.
Surely, he could have a bit of a respite before he began worrying about Dashwood’s reaction to the soiled handkerchief. Maybe he had better dispose of the handkerchief before going back to his rooms. He would tell Dashwood he had lost it.
Dashwood be damned!
Phineas deserved a moment to gloat over his incredible conquest. However, was it reallyhisconquest?
His grin faded.
Caro was the one who had taken what might have been a surreptitious kiss and turned it into an absolutely astonishing bout of copulation. It was reallyherconquest.
Even better.
His grin reappeared.
Phineas Edge led the most charmed life. First, to have his friend’s father loan the money for his commission in the navy. He had been a terrible sailor but a rather good officer and with a little more time, he might have been a captain of his own ship just like Jack MacNaughton. Then, to have two distant cousins he had never met die just after his own father’s death and suddenly to become the Earl of Burchester, a title he had never expected to inherit. And, now, to have met Caro. To have had Caro. Twice. Both times at her demand.
He was just too lucky.
Now he needed to lay a plan to get her to marry him, not just couple with him. And he had to do it by being bad. Hmmmm. Tricky. He had always thought husbands were supposed to be good. But, damn it, if any man was up for the challenge, it was Phineas Edge.
He started down the staircase, his head full of naughty carriage rides, copulation on cold marble in moonlit follies at house parties, desperate kisses stolen on a veranda outside a ballroom. He was two treads away from where the stairs ended on the next floor down when he heard his name.
“Phineas Edge.” The voice was high and breathy. He knew that voice. It belonged to Lady Starling.
She was posed in front of the atlases, some absurd feathered thing on her head, holding her lorgnette in front of her eyes in a most affected manner. She was rigged out in a gown that had to be inappropriate for the afternoon. Very low cut. Lots of cunning little bows and frills to draw the eye to her lush curves.
After Caro, Lady Starling appeared to be all artifice. Seeing her was like drinking a sickly sweet ratafia after having a cold draught of water from a deep well fed by the purest of springs.
But Phineas was always polite to those of the female sex, even those that had hurled breakables at his skull. He stepped off the staircase and made a bow.
“Lady Starling.”
She laughed as she curtsied to him. “Lord Burchester in a bookshop. And in Hatchards, no less, and descending from the top floor. The last time I checked, that floor was all philosophy and theology of the most dreadfully boring kind. The naughty books are all on the ground floor where everyone can see you picking up a badly disguised copy ofMemoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. What were you doing up there, Phin? Having an assignation with a bluestocking?” She laughed again.
Something in his face must have given him away because she stopped laughing abruptly and drew closer to him.
