Evan caught up to her and draped his arms about her. “Why do you prefer him?”
“He looks like you. Or rather, you look like him, is, I suppose, the proper way to put it.”
“He was a scoundrel.”
“A womanizer?”
“Hmm. Yes.”
“Like you, he loved many women.”
“Correction. Iknewmany women. I was biding my time until you came into my life.”
“But you loved none of them.” She said it as a fact.
“I did not love until you.”
“And he? Earl the third?”
“Loved none, either, so say his memoirs—and the news sheets of the day. Bawdy reading, my darling. Until one day…he met a certain lady who stole his heart.” Evan kissed the tip of her nose.
“Surely this statement of ‘thief’ means he stole more than ladies’ hearts?”
“He played a wicked game of cards. Like my wife.”
“Ah. So he was a smart man.”
“Of course. Very wise. You see, he loved only one woman. His wife.”
“Really?” Inès looked about. “But she is not here.”
“No. She stands in the country house in Devon.”
“Oh.” She was disappointed. Her curiosity was up and she needed closure on this third earl and his beloved wife.
“We will go when spring weather is finer and the roads are clear. I should go. I have not been since last summer. We will stay. I will tend the estate books. You can read her diaries and his memoirs.”
“Wonderful. Let’s do that.” She was keen to please him, after so many months when he had devoted himself to pleasing her.
“You will like her story.”
“Risqué, is it?”
“She attracted Reggie with her abilities at the fortepiano.”
“Ah.” She was happy at that. “Like someone we know. Interesting. Why is she in Devon?”
“It is where Reggie found her. Where he first heard her play. Where he fell in love with her.” Evan drew Inès closer andput his lips to her own. “She was French. A lady who had come over as lady’s maid to one of Charles II’s mistresses. Charles thought her a devil, but Reggie declared in his diary that she was his angel. He said she had saved him bedding a thousand other women who brought him less and less pleasure each time he removed his clothes. He feared that, had he never met her, he would have gone—dare we think it—permanently limp.”
She threw back her head and laughed. Now she was intrigued by more than the former earl’s looks and monikers. “Tell me about this woman.”
“Mirabelle was her name, and she was blonde and blue-eyed—well endowed, too.”
“Of course she was! How else to attract a scoundrel, eh?”
“She had another intriguing aspect to her nature.” He threaded his fingers through her hair and down her throat and over her shoulders. She had given up the bandages that the surgeon had applied in the town of Orleans, south of Paris. He could touch her, Inès had told him when she was healed, anywhere, everywhere, forever, as he had touched her heart from the first moments they met.
“What was that which attracted so rakish a man?”
