The lady’s brass should utterly repel Hart. It didn’t. It enflamed him.
“Gentlemen, we are continuing the sale…”
“That wasn’t the book I wanted,” she informed him, as a new title was carried to the rostrum.
“Really?” he asked dryly. “I believe the only reason you’re still here is to discomfit me.”
The lady placed her stacked palms under her chin and bestowed him with one of those dangerous lash-fluttering of hers. “I discomfit you?”
Despite himself, Hart’s lips tugged at the corners. “Don’t sound so pleased about it, minx.”
“How could I not be?” She gave a toss of her high curls. “I rattle the all-powerful, imposing Duke of Hartwell.”
He ignored her latest attempt to needle.
“Imposing, am I, Fleur?”
“To most.”
“But not toyou?”
Damn himself to hell. He heard the childlike petulance.
The minx did too.
Fleur turned another smile up at him. “Hartwell, if I found you imposing, I would have left when you attempted your first glower.”
She was driving him bloody mad. “I didn’t attempt,” he said between gritted teeth. “Ididglower.”
“Yes, you did,” she said soothingly. “Which speaks to my point. Others find you imposing, I, however, do not.” The saucy minx patted his left knee with her lilac lace and satin-encased palm. The frill of her silly lace gloves against his tan trousers added a heightened sexuality.
Lady Fleur drew her fingers back like an afterthought and stared at the podium ahead.
“…We move now to the first edition works and manuscripts…”
While Winterly blathered on, Hart endured his body’s swift reaction to Lady Fleur’s innocent touch. He wasn’t a man whofelt guilty over his hungerings. The way he saw it, lust was the natural reaction to a spirited beauty. That the spirited beauty happened to be a lady was neither here nor there.
What was new to Hartwell? Being casually touched by a lady.
His thick thigh had made her long, graceful fingers look small.
“…Lot 425…”
A buzz rolled over the crowd.
Hart ignored it.
“Why did you buy Maturin’sWanderer?”
Fleur did not take her eyes from the center stage. “I didn’t want to speak with you anymore. The best five pence ever spent.”
Hart didn’t know whether to kiss her or throw her.
Winterly set his gavel down hard several times. “Gentlemen, pray silence. Permit me toremind you of decorum.”
Decorum be damned.
“The hell you purchased it for that reason,” he said, far more amused than he ought to be.
