But he heard a few words exchanged and realized it was a housemaid.
“If there’s anything else you require, Miss Granger, ring the bell.”
The mob-capped maid withdrew from the room, pulled the door shut behind her, and proceeded away from Gray and toward the servants’ stairs.
Even after she’d gone, he stood frozen in place, his body yearned for sleep but his mind became consumed with the prospect of stealing a moment alone with Evangeline.
Improper. Her reputation.Warnings rang in his mind. The part of it that could still manage logic and cared about respectability. But the rest of him pitched forward, his legs carrying him to the spot outside her door.
He rasied his hand to knock and then dropped it to his side.
Then he leaned in closer, imagining he could smell her floral scent on the air. He heard movement beyond her door. Was she bathing? Undressing?
Even in his inebriated state, those possibilities made his body respond. His mouth watered, and his cock stiffened.
Mercy, he was a fool. Lusting after the one lady guest who scowled at him more than she smiled and who wouldn’t dance with him if he begged her.
He leaned his forehead against her door, but he misjudged the distance, and his skull knocked hard against the wood.
A moment later, Evangeline opened the door a crack.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“I was just…” Stupidly, Gray lifted the nearly empty decanter of whiskey and willed his brain and tongue to pair up and form some sort of coherent explanation, but none came. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed to mumble.
Faintly, the echo of a ringing bell sounded in the hallway. One of the other guests, tugging on their bell pull.
She shot him a wide-eyed glance. “One of the maids will be up in a moment. Go back to your room.”
Gray got lost in staring at her. She had taken all the pins from her hair, and it fell in ribbons of flame across her shoulders. She wore a dressing gown, but loosely, the silken belt slung low on her waist, revealing a gauzy nightgown underneath.
Never in his life had he yearned to touch a woman more. Just that. Just to run his fingers through her hair, lay his palm over the place on her neck where her pulsed thrummed.
“You’re drunk,” she whispered. Then she reached up, grasped the lapel of his suit coat, and yanked him into her room.
She let go of him, and Gray weaved a bit more than he intended. Somehow, he’d ended up gripping the corner post of her bed.
“My head is spinning,” he admitted because saying it aloud might explain why he was acting like a fool in front of her.
“Sit,” she commanded.
And so he did, and that was a terrible mistake. The bed was unbearably soft, and he was dangerously tired. If he blinked, he feared he’d lean back and drift off.
But there was an energy vibrating off of her that forced awareness through his veins.
“Why did you drink so much?” she demanded quietly, one hand braced on the swell of her hip. The other held the decanter he’d swiped.
Gray looked down at his hands and realized she’d taken the whisky from him at some point.
“It was foolish of me. I don’t usually partake so—”
“Excessively?”
“I was going to say thoroughly, but yes. It was an excessive amount of whisky.” No use denying his bad choices now.
She narrowed her eyes and approached slowly, almost warily, as if uncertain of what he might do.
“I may be soused, but I’d never harm you,” he said defensively.
