“What is it?” he demanded.
“If I told you, you wouldn’t do it anymore.”
His gaze narrowed. “You’re teasing me again.” She must have been. “There’s no way I’d give myself away, not even unconsciously.”
She rolled her eyes and dropped her nightgown, sadly, to cross the room and give his left ear a good tug. “Your ear wiggles. Here, at the bottom.”
Percy clapped a hand over the offending limb, horrified. “My ear does notwiggle.” Not a single body part on himwiggled, and if it did, it would be a full-fledged shudder of manly presence.
“Flinch? Twitch, maybe?” she offered. “I assure you, it moves.”
Ludicrous. Percy prodded at the lobe of his ear, determined magical fairies or haunting ghosts were to blame before his own body would betray him.
Seeing her amused smile, he dropped his hand and his voice. “And your curiosities are satisfied, just like that?”
“Heavens, no,” she said. At his silence, she explained, “When I thought you were a criminal intent on harm, I would stop at nothing to uncover your plot. But since you were skulking in the name of Queen and country, I retract my need for sleuthing, seeing as how it is none of my business.”
His mouth worked, but nothing intelligible made its way out except, “I do not skulk.”
She glanced at him, her face sincerely curious. “Do you creep? Prowl? Who knew a man could be so combative over descriptors that all mean relatively the same thing?”
“I’m not combative—” Percy clenched his teeth together, determined to wipe the smirk from her face. Damn, but the woman could needle him in far too fetching a way. Weren’t nagging women supposed to be bothersome and gap-toothed? Not amusing and entirely too easy to spill one’s secrets to. Lady Daniella. He’d rename her Lady Danger... specifically in regard to his apparently imperfect poker face. To be taken down by a woman who didn’t know how many points of pleasure were on a woman’s body... “I liked you better naked and moaning.”
That smirk curled into a sensual smile. “Me too.”
And now he was painfully aroused again. He reclined back on the rug. “You’ll be the death of me.”
“I was hoping we’d be friends instead.”
“Friends!” His gaze jumped to hers.
“Another impossibility?”
“Men and women cannot be friends.” He sneered. “There areemotionsthat get in the way of rational thought. Especially when they’ve...”
“Fucked?”
Percy bit his tongue and grunted. It was either that or push her on the bed and taste that dirty mouth again. He wouldn’t ask where the lady had learned the profanity. She was known as a friend to the Duchess of Camine, after all.
“What a cynic,” she said. “As if a woman couldn’t enjoy physical pleasure without turning into a puddle.” She straightened and rapped her knuckles on the mantel. “I’ll prove it to you.”
He didn’t like that gleam in her eye, or how his entire body came alert to make sure it never faded. “How?”
“By spending time with me, in public.”
“Everything but the public part was amiable,” he said. In truth, he seemed to be the fool who couldn’t keep his feelings from spilling over into something unacceptable in her presence. It would be better to part ways now and entrust the estate to a more qualified man. “If I so much as think of ‘public’ in any proper sense, I’ll cause a scandal to rival that of D.G. Rossetti.”
She laughed. “Then there’s no trouble. I have a talent for weathering scandals. And you have a duty to be present in society as the new Duke of Grandfellow.”
Mad! She was mad! And damn it, it was catching. “And you’ll be my faithful guide, Lady Daniella?”
“Call me ‘Danny.’ In private, of course.” She nodded. “We’ll start tomorrow night.”
Private.That sounded promising. “What’s tomorrow night?”
“A ball.”
“Oh, yes. A ball.” If he took a running start, he could leap from the window and break all the bones in his body.
“It will be fun,” she said.
He ran a hand through his hair at her bright expression. “I doubt that.” Dancing, introductions,dancing. Forget the bones. He’d dive headfirst out the window and end all future torture with a quick smearing of the brain on Lady Bromley’s bushes.
“Your definition of fun does not sound appealing,” he said, hoping to dissuade her.
But the clever minx knew her way around a disgruntled man and how to appeal to his darker side. “Come now, Your Grace. To think a hardened spy would cower from a step or two.”
One of her eyebrows arched in a silent challenge that Percy knew before she uttered her next words, he’d rise to meet no matter how many quadrilles were involved.
“Idareyou.”
