“Bat?”
Placing the cup down on the bedside table, she smiled and pushed the thin sheet back.
His eyes skittered to the ceiling, walls and then floor.
Rugs lay in shadow but the lantern had revealed a halo of summer’s day blue above the bed, the hangings a darker hue of winter’s deep ocean. All the seasonal shades of Cornwall.
Almonds hung in the air, overlaid with honey.
And he hungered.
“I’d best leave,” he mumbled, although his feet paid no heed, glued to the floor as though he’d stepped in a moorland bog.
“You’ve only just got here.”
“This is highly improper.” And dangerous and reckless.
“Hah! You seduced a Saxony princess in an air balloon.That’simproper.”
“Hell. You’ve heard that one,” he muttered, legs now pacing to the open window, the air more heated outside than in.
“It made theRoyal Cornwall Gazette.Beat Mrs Potter from Truro to the front page and she’d been caught adding china clay to her bread flour for the past two years.”
Inventive lot, the Cornish.
“I’ve never set foot in an air balloon in my life.”
“There’s no need to gammon me, Jack. I know you have a reputa–”
“Yes, but I assure you that did not happen.” Exasperated, he thrust fingers through his hair. “I happened to be…meandering one of the dark walks at Vauxhall when a sudden commotion caused me to pause and before I knew it a balloon basket crashed into a blackcurrant bush with a somewhat perturbed princess inside. All the arriving crowd saw was me lifting her out. The rest of that story is entire invention.”
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Well, I thought it rather…agile. Those baskets are very small, and they must rock abou–”
He thumped a fist on the window frame, depraved images assaulting him and none of them were of the Saxony princess.
“Can we talk of someth–” He spun to find Tamsyn directly behind him, eyes twinkling, a huge grin curving her lips. “Miss Penrose,” he growled. “A lady should never, ever tease a rogue.”
“Why not?”
“Because they get ravished,” he drawled with the perfect amount of suave fervency.
Tamsyn’s hand lifted to suppress the giggle, as she suspected teasing and then giggling at a rogue wasn’t wholly normal.
But she could quite imagine him employing that line in some secluded alcove of a ballroom, seducing a society lady with his intense rumble and devilish black eyes.
Ignoring the tendril – well, more like an entire vine – of jealousy, she smiled. “I’m ever so weary, Jack. But…would you mind holding me till I fall asleep. I feel safe with you here.”
His brow scrunched. “You said you were well.”
“Yes, but I cannot seem to calm. Stay with me…till I sleep. Lowdy prepared me an Eggy-hot earlier which should soon take effect.” Indeed, she suspected a tot of rum had been added to the beverage.
His eyes shifted, hands clenched. “Lie down,” he said gruffly. “I’ll remain on top of the sheet…for propriety’s sake.”
“Do rogues adhere to propriety?” she asked, fluffing her pillow and getting settled. A thrum of pleasure fluttered within upon hearing the thud of boots on her floor.
