Page 60 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

He smoothed one palm down her body, his fingertips skating along the cleft in her bottom, not quite dipping into the hollow between her thighs. “I like you like this,” he murmured, and she realized that though their bodies were no longer joined in this position, they could be.

She squirmed against him in anticipatory pleasure. “Oh. I never imagined.” And to think, they had a lifetime together in which to discover even more.

His deep laugh stirred her hair and vibrated beneath her. “You should go back to reading Robin Ratliff novels. They’ll give you ideas.”

Somehow, she managed to lift herself up enough that she could kiss him. “You give me ideas,” she whispered against his lips. Which was perfectly true…his naughty fingers were doing so, right at this very moment. But then she remembered a question she had been waiting years to ask him, made newly urgent by his revelations about his work for General Scott. “Speaking of that night, in Lord Earnshaw’s library… Did you ever find what you were looking for?”

“I’m not sure what it was I expected to find,” he admitted with a rueful shake of his head. “But I found what I needed.” She gasped as he cinched her more tightly against his body. “I found you.”

Chapter 19

Fitz had thought himself inured to frustration. But never had he known frustrations to accumulate in quite such a spectacular fashion.

The problem had started yesterday, when he’d risen from Fanny’s side—hard enough to hammer nails, while she lay beneath him, sweet and soft and eager for more—and gone as promised to deliver her message of apology and concern to the Duchess of Hartwell.

When he’d returned to German Place, intending to keep quite another sort of promise, he had found waiting for him not sweet, soft, eager Fanny, but cool, reserved, proper Mrs. Drummond. If she’d brought one of those high-necked black gowns with her to Brighton, she would surely have been wearing it. She’d nodded at news of the duke’s expected recovery and refused to discuss anything with Fitz but the Hartwell case.

One might have imagined that the ensuing lengthy discussion of who was trying to kill the Duke of Hartwell would have been enough to cool his ardor too, but no.

Because his cock—and not only his cock—had leaped at this morning’s summons from her…only to discover that the matter of urgency once more involved a message from the duchess.

“She is my assignment,” Fanny had reminded him, a little testily.

And you’re mine, he’d wanted to growl.

Not just his assignment. His.

He’d left without saying anything.

He really wasn’t a selfish sort. He’d meant what he’d said about pleasing her a dozen more times at least before even thinking of his own satisfaction. The fact of the matter was, he’d found pleasing her wildly satisfying in its own right.

Perhaps he hadn’t done quite as grand a job of it as he’d imagined, though, if after all those years with a lout of a husband who cared not at all for her pleasure, she could sit in one of those straight-backed wooden chairs with her hands folded in her lap, not a hair out of place, not a hint of a blush on her cheeks, and address him as Lieutenant Hopkins.

Fanny had spent the afternoon discreetly following the duchess and her unexpected guests—evidently her family—through Brighton. And so Fitz had spent his afternoon even more discreetly trailing Fanny.

Now, the end of the day found him lurking in the shadows behind Royal Crescent, while she stood farther off, watching—for what, he couldn’t be sure. He wanted to be closer to her. Much closer.

And she didn’t want him at all.

If he’d been a drinking man, he might have taken recourse to his flask to drown his sorrow. But his father had been a drinking man, whose behavior had left Fitz determined never to become one. Absent the traditional consolations of whisky or woman, he contemplated alternative methods for warming his blood. The October evening had grown chilly.

But in the end, he simply thrust his balled fists into the pockets of his greatcoat, hunched his shoulders, and waited for one of the servants belonging to Number 2, Royal Crescent to appear. As long as the person who opened the back door was not the housekeeper, he might at least have an opportunity to ask a few probing questions. Mrs. Horn was nearly as impervious to his charms as Mrs. Drummond.

The first person he saw was Tilly, the younger of the two housemaids, carrying a bucket of something that she splashed into the alleyway. She paused to turn her face toward the stars and might have stayed in that posture for some time if Nan, the other housemaid, hadn’t stepped out a moment later.

“Oh, there you be, Tilly. Mrs. Horn was looking for you. The duchess’s sister wants hot water, and Mrs. Horn says the two old dames are like to run her ragged.”

Tilly sighed. “But who’s to do the dishes once Geoffrey clears the table? If the kitchen’s not set to rights, I’ll catch it.”

“I’ll do them,” Nan offered. “Her Grace dismissed me for the night.”

With a shrug of her shoulders, Tilly handed off the bucket and went inside. Another moment later, Geoffrey the footman appeared, a glass of wine in either hand. “There’s more where this came from,” he told Nan, holding one out to her. “As distracted as folks are, I don’t think they’ll miss it.”

“From downstairs, it sounded like a row.” Nan set down the empty bucket to take the goblet from him. “Was it as bad as all that, then?”

“Worse. The duke meant to kill the duchess’s father, I’m certain of it. Tossed him out the front door like a pail o’ slops and then charged upstairs after everyone else. Left all these half-full glasses behind. And while the cat’s away…” he finished with a suggestive grin and clinked his goblet against hers.

“Mrs. Horn will have our heads if she catches us stealing from the upper table,” she cautioned. But Geoffrey merely grinned and began to drink, and after a moment’s hesitation, Nan followed suit.