"Precisely." He handed her a small brass key. "Monday morning, nine o'clock sharp. I trust you won't be three minutes late."
"Heaven forbid," she replied and left.
Chapter 4
Adrian Everleigh, Seventh Duke of Everleigh, master of three estates and bearer of a title older than most European nations, sat in his library and contemplated the various ways he might murder whoever had invented society newspapers.
The offending publication sprawled across his desk like a venomous snake:
Lady Juliette Brewster, now a Countess, graces Rome with her radiant presence as she expects her first child with the Earl. Sources say she has never looked more beautiful, motherhood lending her an ethereal glow that has captivated Roman society...
Ethereal glow. Oh, Heavens. As though he required the additional seasoning of public humiliation with his morning coffee. Some years since she had fled, and still the papers delighted in reminding him of his spectacular failure to keep his own betrothed.
He had woken that morning already in no fit state to endure Juliette’s “ethereal glow.” He had woken with his manhood straining against the sheets, following the remnants of a dream vivid enough to leave him shaken. Not of Juliette — never Juliette. Eveline Whitcombe had haunted his sleep.
The dream had begun innocently, as dreams often did, with rain slashing against Hatchard’s windows just as it had the day he first met her. She stood before him in the narrow aisle, one hand adjusting her spectacles, the other clutching a tome too large for her frame.
“You’ve been blocking the Roman histories again, Your Grace,” she said primly, her voice sharp as glass. “I require Tacitus, and I do not appreciate obstacles.”
“Obstacles?” he murmured, stepping closer. “I believe, Miss Whitcombe, that I am far more than an obstacle.”
Her chin tilted, defiant. “Then a nuisance.”
The words should have roused his temper. Instead, he kissed her, he seized her mouth with a hunger so violent it rattled the shelves behind her. She gasped against him, dropping the book with a heavy thud, and clutched at his shoulders as though even in dreams she could not decide whether to strike him or draw himcloser.
Books toppled around them as he pressed her back against the towering shelves, volumes raining down with every thrust of his hips. “You quote Tacitus wonderfully,” he growled against her lips. “But now say something useful. Say you want me.”
Her laugh was breathless, wicked. “Cupio te, Adrian,” she whispered in perfect Latin. I desire you.
The words struck through him like lightning. He groaned, burying his face against her throat as her legs locked around his waist. She clung to him, her body arching into his as though she had always been meant to yield to this rhythm.
“Translate more,” he demanded, every thrust punctuated by the slam of another book to the floor.
Her voice broke with a cry as he drove into her. “Ardeo in te. I burn for you.”
The way she said it, half-learned scholar, half-wanton, made him shudder, nearly undone. The storm outside thundered in time with their frantic movements, the scent of rain and paper filling his senses. Eveline’s head tipped back, her hair tumbling loose, her spectacles sliding down her nose as she gasped and begged for him in a scholar’s tongue that became filth on her lips.
He woke with her name on his tongue, his body convulsing, the sheets damp with his release. A schoolboy’s disgrace, yet his pulse still raced as though he had truly had her in his arms.
Now, hours later, the dream clung to him with vicious clarity. Every word she had gasped, every book that had fallen around them, every sharp cry as she shattered against him — all of it had been nothing but fantasy, and yet more real to him than any memory of Juliette’s insipid smile.
Adrian shoved the newspaper aside with a curse, dragging a hand down his face. Better to dream of Eveline Whitcombe, stubborn, brilliant, impossible Eveline, than waste another moment mourning what was lost.
He glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. Nine twenty-three.
Twenty-three minutes late. The woman lacks discipline. I ought to dismiss her before she crosses the threshold.
She was supposed to have arrived at nine o'clock sharp. He'd been quite specific about punctuality when he'd hired her, though admittedly he'd been somewhat distracted by the way she'd cradled that medieval manuscript like it was an injured child.
But for some reason I want to keep her around, see what she can do.
The thought irritated him. The dream irritated him too. He didn't keep people around to see what they could do; he kept them because they served a purpose, performed a function, maintained the smooth operation of his perfectly ordered existence. Or rather, his existence that would be perfectly ordered if his library weren't in such spectacular chaos and his former betrothed weren't breeding with Italian Earls.
He drummed his fingers on the desk, remembering their encounter at Hatchard's. The way she'd tilted her chin up when challenging him, radiatingindignation.
A tongue like a blade, wielded without apology. Amusing in a bookshop, intolerable in my employ.
Except it hadn't been intolerable during her interview. When she'd identified that manuscript, when she'd read the marginalia with the ease most people read newspaper headlines, when she'd looked at him with those brown eyes blazing with scholarly passion...
