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“Of course.”

Simon leaned into the coach, reaching across the space. Miss Brown shuffled toward him. When her hand made contact with his, he realized with a start that she wasn’t wearing gloves.

“I’m not wearing gloves,” she said, and if he had been less overcome by the sensation of her bare skin against his, he would have laughed at how perfectly, and how promptly, she echoed his exact thought.

This was what he had wanted, that night, when he’d placed his hand on her forearm. He had wanted to touch skin, not fabric. And here it was, that skin, and it was an utter shock.

He revisited her statement in his mind. I’m not wearing gloves. Had there been a note of apology, of sheepishness, there?

“Think nothing of it, Miss Brown. We do not stand on ceremony on Earls Trip.”

She graced him with a smile such as he had never seen from her before, not even when he last took his leave from her. He’d thought that smile wide, genuine, had felt lucky to be in receipt of it. But this smile. It transformed her very being. She looked a decade younger than her years. Had she been a happy girl once, before the family fall from grace she had referenced?

She was wearing a fichu of white linen tucked into the bodice of her dress, a seafoam green one he recognized. Bending awkwardly to shuffle across the coach had dislodged it. He didn’t think she realized. As she hovered at the door, she was hunched forward to avoid hitting her head. The posture, and the fichu failing at its job, put the deep V made by her breasts pressing against each other on display.

Dear Heavens. Simon began to sweat.

He ought to look away.

He couldn’t look away.

His vision was becoming blurry. Was he … about to swoon?

Look at her smile, he told himself. That was a more valuable, because rarer, sight.

It took some effort, but he wrenched his gaze from her bosom to her face. Thankfully, she seemed not to have noticed his impolite ogling, for she was surveying the scene behind him, the couples and friends reuniting, the house, the graceful trees.

“Oh!” she said quietly, “I am so happy to be here.” She was speaking generally, he knew, but given her low tone, he could almost fancy she was speaking just to him. She did meet his gaze then, and her smile changed. Though it remained wide and bright, it shifted to allow in a hint of self-deprecation, of guile. “Of course, I am so happy to be anywhere!”

She laughed, so he laughed, too, and took the liberty of reaching for her waist and swinging her down from the coach. And if he let his hands linger slightly longer than was strictly necessary once she was on her feet, it was not remarked upon.

They worked together to help Lady Harcourt down, and once they were all assembled, Archie threw wide his arms, grinned, and said, “Welcome to Gurglewood, ladies.”

9

Ambidexterity Is an Underrated Quality in a Gentleman

September 15, 1823

Earls Trip, day 8

Diantha’s head was spinning. It had been so long since she’d been anywhere, and this place, Gurglewood—the name was not growing on her whatsoever—was such a dramatic departure from her daily life.

A tour of the grounds had been followed by a tour of the house. She and Lady Harcourt were shown to adjoining rooms. They had traveled with many of the dowager’s household items, including a counterpane she was inordinately fond of, and Diantha noted that Lord Harcourt had papered the walls in a floral pattern similar to that in his mother’s rooms at Mollybrook. The suite was as familiar as they could make it.

After getting them both unpacked and settled, it was time for the evening meal. Diantha dined with the family at home, and that often included a visiting Miss Olive Morgan. But somehow, the addition of the others made the evening much livelier. It was Lord Stonely, she supposed. He was so theatrical. And his wife was so intelligent, so witty. Diantha found herself slightly awed by the assemblage.

No, she was lying to herself. It was not “the assemblage,” but the presence of Lord Marsden that had her discombobulated. She wasn’t sure why. She had met him many times before, including alone at his home when he’d been in his shirtsleeves.

But at dinner, she was exquisitely aware of him, seated at her right. He was left-handed, it turned out, so their arms bumped a few times.

“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Brown,” he said on the second such occasion. “I’m usually better about compensating.”

“You needn’t adjust your stance on my account,” she protested. She didn’t want him to; that was the horrible truth. Something had happened since their last meeting, or perhaps because of it. Something had shifted between them. Part of it had to do with the fact that he was clearly going to keep her secret. She had to assume that if he’d been going to tell Lord Harcourt about her immodest proposal, he would have done so already. That he was keeping her counsel put them in a kind of secret alliance.

But it was more than that. She was newly aware of him as a person. Well, that was a daft thing to think. Of course he was a person and had always been. She was newly aware of him as a corporeal person. As a man. She almost fancied she could feel the heat radiating off his hand, which given his left-handedness, and the relatively small size of the dining table, was mere inches from her own.

“A left-handed person in a right-handed world learns to adjust,” he said. “It is no trouble.” He shifted away, and she experienced a momentary stab of regret that Lord Marsden wasn’t going to be the agent of her ruination.