Cosgrove flicked his gloved fingers in pithy reply. “Of course. We’ll have the groom ride alongside on your horse so he is returned with you. One moment, please, sir.” Then he was gone, the front door closing behind him, presumably to gather her groom and carriage. She hated to tell the seething man beside her that her butler didn’t move quickly.
Alexandra pleated the frilled edge of her sleeve between her fingers. “Your clothing. Your rucksack. Your drawings.”
He grunted, fiddling with the crutch, his gaze shifting to the ceiling, the floor, anywhere but her. “Send them to me. I’m the next manor down the lane, in case you’ve forgotten. I won’t have time to work on the designs until tomorrow.”
“Steam engines.”
His gaze sharpened, a charming furrow settling between his brows. His eyes were glowing as brightly as freshly cut grass, but he wasn’t up to sharing their beauty with her.
She shrugged, her cheeks going hot. When had a man last unsettled her? Vauxhall Gardens, 1812? “You mentioned them when you were brought in. I was digging through your personal effects.” An incident she might have been better off letting him forget. Alexandra realized she was interested if she was using talk of steam engines to keep him from leaving. It wasn’t her best delay tactic, but it was better than nothing.
“Did I say anything else?”
“Something about our conversation being a dance. When I stated it wasn’t one, you said, ‘just wait’.”
Anchoring himself on the crutch, he scrubbed his hand over his chin. Laughing, he muttered, “I bet I did. Out of my head foolishness.”
“You had feelings for me.” For some reason, she needed to know. Wanted to know. “And, somehow, due to ignorance on my part, I’ve hurt yours.”
Finally, his gaze clashed with hers, his jaw flexing. His fingers closed about the scuffed grip of his crutch until she feared the wood would shatter into twigs. “Waterloo wasn’t as painful as this inquiry, my lady. And war isn’t pleasant.”
“Alex,” she murmured, staring at his lips in the hopes he’d press them to hers again. The top one rolled over the bottom in some sort of masculine non-reply. A simple gesture that ignited her blood again. “You called me Alex before. No one outside Hampstead calls me such, but here, it’s who I am. How I think of myself.”
The clatter of a carriage rolling up the drive echoed through the open door. “My clock,” Alexandra gestured to the scullery. “You’re going to leave me with it in pieces spread over my butcher’s block?” Leave me with this quivering sensation in my belly? Between my thighs? All because you had a boyish crush I didn’t know about?
He glanced to the door, sensing freedom, then back at her. “I’ll send the part it requires. A casing for the spring. Anyone with a mind for mechanics can repair it for you.”
“Fine,” she ground out, getting angry herself. “I’ll send your possessions at dawn. Race into the twilight, will you.”
He exhaled through his teeth. Then he was before her, her chin tipped high by the finger he slipped beneath it. Leaning over her, he seized her lips without explanation, without hesitation. With fury in his touch, confusion, desire. In seconds, they were tangled up, tongues and lips, teeth and hands. Her fingers clutching his shoulders, holding him steady, holding herself steady.
She was amazed how quickly she was learning what he liked, what she needed.
Finally, someone understood her in this way when she was only coming to understand herself.
And he was leaving.
Backing away, tipping an imaginary hat, and striding unevenly through her door.
CHAPTER 5
WHERE REGRET ENTERS THE CONVERSATION
He was a fool.
A temperamental arse. An idiot.
He’d rejected a woman he desperately desired because of hurt feelings? Had he really done that? Cort DeWitt, profligate Lothario, experienced champion of the one-night adventure? What in the ever-loving hell was wrong with him? Alex had invited him to her bedchamber after he’d kissed her like his life depended upon it, and he’d stormed out without another word?
Her eyes had been filled with longing, and he’d left her there, alone with it? A chit he imagined had been alone for a very long time.
With a curse, Cort tossed his correspondence to the desk in what had once been his father’s study and was now Knox’s. And his, he supposed. The three minutes between the brothers weren’t a familial division as they shared everything but the title. The room still smelled faintly of the select brand of cheroots his father had imported from Spain. Citrusy, with a touch of lemon riding the dull aroma of tobacco.
His heart thumped hard to recall that it had been almost a year since his father’s passing, four months after his return from Waterloo. Cort would never have forgiven himself if he’d returned with both his parents gone. His mother had been taken from them when he was just shy of twenty—he, Knox and Damien, thankfully, at her bedside—and those last seconds of her life were his most painful to date. His father had mercifully died in his sleep.
In a vile mood, Cort rifled through his missives, bypassing everything from formal invitations he’d no intention of accepting to Countess Rashford’s benevolent offer to visit Hampstead to assist him in his ‘time of need.’ Through the domestic’s communication wire, the speediest channel in England, his ridiculous accident was now known to everyone in society. Another escapade to add to his list.
Despite his wish for the previous night to be scrubbed away, a flash of memory fired his senses. Alex’s plump breasts pressed to his chest, her throaty little moans piercing his resistance. Desire curled low and hot in his belly. The vision of lifting that soft flesh to his waiting mouth, his lips wrapping around her peaked nipple and sucking until she cried out, washed over him like a wave.
