Page 62 of The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

“Except that our engagement is a lie, Sedgecroft,” she said, making a face. “We can’t fool everyone forever. Now please disengage yourself from that undignified position this instant.”

He rolled onto his elbow, reminding her again of a gorgeous lion as he stretched in the sun-dappled grass, his morning coat falling open at the waist. “What exactly did you and Nigel do when you were together?” he asked in a lazy voice as his gaze traveled over her. “Sketch still life?”

“We talked, if you must know. We had what is known in polite circles as conversation.”

He plucked a blade of grass, his face cynically amused. “What did you discuss?”

She sighed. “Life. Books. Love.” Specifically, in the last year or so, Nigel’s growing passion for the family’s governess.

“Nigel’s love for you?” he asked curiously.

She met his gaze, a shiver sliding down her back. “Umm, not exactly.”

A frown darkened his face as he rose, engulfing her in his shadow. “Sometimes I think he could not have been a Boscastle at all.”

“What do you mean?” she asked in hesitation.

“Well, to put it bluntly, a Boscastle would not have spent all those years in your company without progressing further than a conversation, if you take my meaning.”

“I’m afraid I do—” she said in despair, then exclaimed in a deliberately overloud voice to distract him, “Oh, look, isn’t that Cecily walking by the water?”

“Jane.” He tugged at the tail of her riding jacket, drawing her back into the broad support of his body. With an indulgent smile, he lowered his face to her neck to murmur, “Does it make you uncomfortable to talk about desire? No one can hear us this far away.”

Her body tingled alarmingly where it came in contact with his, her shoulder blades, the curve of her buttocks and calves. “You’re the only man who ever dared broach the subject,” she answered, turning abruptly at the sound of her name being called. “That’s Cecily asking us to join them. Shall we go? I think Simon’s with her.”

“You’re so obvious, sweetheart.”

“So are you, Sedgecroft.”

“Am I?”

“Absolutely transparent.”

“Then tell me what I’m thinking.”

“I’m sure my tongue could not form the words.”

“I was thinking about what happened last night,” he said softly, lifting a strand of hair from her neck.

He saw her pulse flutter at the base of her throat before she moved away. “Then try to think about something else for at least the next few moments,” she said, her breath catching. “We don’t want you walking into the water.”

Grayson sauntered behind her, his angular face reflective. For all her evasive tactics, he couldn’t stop thinking about her unguarded openness in the maze last night and how it had changed his feelings for her. He’d never met a woman quite as disarming before. Demure one moment, a temptress the next. Pliant, delicious. Dignified. A bit of a shrew.

A woman who made a man hunger for sex. And commitment.

He stopped, took a breath, shaking his head in denial. Where had that last thought come from?

But it was true. Someone would come to treasure her. There was in Jane, he had discovered, a wealth of qualities to be treasured. And the obvious itself was not uninviting. Why should Nigel’s stupidity label her undesirable for life?

His own desire for her rendered the ton’s standards ridiculous. His cunning mouse was leading him on quite a chase, and he didn’t mind anywhere as much as he should.

Some of her friends suspect she never really loved Nigel to begin with.

Oh, Jane, he thought, smiling to himself. You do need a lesson or two in love. Perhaps we both do.

Her friends stood together at the shoreline, lamenting the loss of Simon’s silk top hat, which a cheeky lord had tossed impulsively into the lake. There was a chorus of cheers as the hat made a false drift back toward the shore, then a collective groan when it began to sink, never to be seen by the haut ton again.

“This is so unlike you, Jane,” Cecily said from the corner of her mouth, pretending to ignore the devastatingly handsome marquess who stood a distance from the others. She was dressed in a chocolate-brown silk riding habit, her small face overshadowed by a matching cap jauntily adorned with swan feathers. “Have you seen the papers?”