“I had to make do. Surely you can purchase something more suitable in Gretna Green.”
“Ah, the first mention of our mysterious destination!”
“Come now, where did you think we were going to elope, my lord?”
“Will you cease with the ‘my lord’? It makes me itch. I give you leave to use my Christian name.”
“No, thank you.” Harriet liked the distance the title provided. Best to remember exactly whom she was dealing with at all times. “My lord,” she added a moment later, just to watch the muscles of his jaw clench.
Just then, the door opened, and a servant girl entered with a bottle of gin and two glasses. She looked up at Alexander adoringly.He’s not so special as all that, Harriet wanted to tell her.
“We didn’t have any brandy, sir, only gin. I’ll return with your meal soon.” She curtsied then, her eyes lingering on him. Harriet rolled her own eyes; no wonder the man was so insufferable.
“Thank you kindly …”
“Miss Evans.”
“Thank you kindly, Miss Evans. Gin will do just fine.” He set the bottle and glasses down on the small table beside Harriet, then fished a coin from his pocket and pressed it into Miss Evans’s hand. As if buoyed by the female attention, his mood changed entirely. Harriet could feel the air shift; she wanted to hurl her book at his head.
He plucked a shirt out of his trunk and tossed it onto the bed.
“Right then,” Alexander began, as he started to undo his shirt buttons, “where are your things? Shall we call back Miss Evans to assist you with that delightful dress? Or would you rather yourhusbanddoit for you? Quite scandalous. I approve, of course.” He winked, which Harriet supposed was meant to do something to a lady. As it stood, she was too vexed by him to feel anything.
“I told the innkeeper we were husband and wife toavoidscandal,” she rejoined. “I’m not one of your many lovesick admirers; I won’t have you painting me as a wanton fool who loses her senses at the sight of your hands.”
“It’s my hands for you, then? I get eyes more often. Shoulders even. One woman went mad for my calves, but she was French.”
The man was at least half devil. The best thing to do with misbehaving little boys was to ignore them.
“Personally, I think my best feature is my—”
“I don’t have other clothes,” she cut him off. “This is the only dress I have.”
“And what alovelycarriage dress it is.” Alexander’s mouth tilted into an appreciative smile, which heated Harriet’s cheeks again. Calling what she was wearing a carriage dress was like calling a handkerchief a picnic blanket. “My abduction just became a fair bit more endurable.”
He kept his smile—hispracticed smile, Harriet reminded herself—pasted on his face as he finished unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it over his head. Unfortunately, as soon as he stopped talking, the attraction returned.
Those ladies were right. His deep brown eyes, yes. His broad shoulders, absolutely. His calves were hidden by the bed betweenthem at the moment, but likely those too. It was only a surprise they didn’t mention his thick, dark hair, his distinguished nose, his surprisingly perfect teeth, the lines near his eyes from all his flirtatious smiles, the way his …
His shirt was off. Gone. It might be floating in the Nile for all she knew.
Harriet had gotten used to breathing while looking at his exposed neck, but when Lord Alexander removed his shirt to reveal the entirety of his bare chest, that did her poor respiratory system in. She inhaled sharply, promptly choked on the air she’d inhaled, and spun around quickly to have a coughing fit facing the wall, which seemed approximately one percent less embarrassing than continuing to face him.
Behind her, Alexander laughed warmly, clearly enjoying himself. “Normally, I’d ask if you were all right, but it really wouldn’t do to save my captor.”
Harriet ignored this and tried to get her mortifying cough under control.
“I must say,” he continued, relishing every excruciating second of her ordeal, “I don’t believe I’ve ever had that precise reaction from a lady upon seeing my chest.”
In the future, Harriet decided, it would be best to remain in circumstances in which she didn’t have to hear him name any body parts. She cleared her throat, trying to behave as if everything was under control. She turned a quarter of the way back to him, unwilling to be confronted with the whole of him again.
“Apologies, my lord.” She tried to keep some bite in the honorific, some hint of the sting his title was supposed to deliver. But even to her own ears, it sounded meek and missish. “It was my first.”
“Your first?” She could tell—even from across the room, with her eyes trained on a small knot in the beam of the wall—that he was once again smirking.
“My first … chest.” Harriet winced at the word. She had never disliked a word before, ever. Every word had a point, a purpose. As it turned out, the wordchestwas designed to humiliate her as deeply as possible.
“I can only pray it lived up to your expectations.”
