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For a brief heartbeat, she felt sympathy for him. Understanding. And then she looked down to his hand, to the tanned skin of his wrist and the golden hair that glinted against it. She’d waited so long already. She was strong and brave. She was resolved.
“I have a beau.”
“Liar.”
“You’d better not dawdle. He could propose at any moment.”
“Too bad you’re in love with me. Poor fellow will be heartbroken.”
Well, what was she to say to that? She wouldn’t deny loving him, not even to hurry him up. But she knew his weakness. She knew how to get him alone.
Cynthia edged her chin up, inching her mouth nearer his ear. “I declined to wear drawers this evening, Lord Lancaster.”
His shoe seemed to catch on the smooth wood of the hallway, and Nick nearly tumbled to the floor. He caught himself and jerked upright, face flaming. “You never wear them. It’s hardly a surprise.”
“I do wear drawers now. Pink ones. Finished in lace and embroidered with naked harem girls.”
“That’s not true!”
“Come to my room tonight and I’ll show you.”
She was smiling when he held her chair at the dinner table. And Nick couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
Damn her. Damn her all to hell.
Lancaster paced across the bedroom of his rented suite.
She’d done her best to torment him all evening. Flashing him naughty smiles. Leaning toward him each time she spoke to the lady on his opposite side. She’d even trailed her fingers up his thigh once, and it had felt…good. Exquisitely good.
Flirting with him. Mocking him with her eyes. And speaking about her drawers. In public.
When Lancaster had arrived in London, when he’d finally had some distance from Cynthia, he’d been horrified by his own behavior. To have so recklessly given into his lust with a sheltered young woman. To have even considered it when he was engaged to another. To have endangered her reputation and future…He’d behaved reprehensibly.
After coming to that clarity, Lancaster had resolved to behave with the utmost honor to prove to her that he could. To prove that she could trust him in every way.
It had seemed an easy vow out on the ocean. But now he was near her again and he’d missed her so much and she was so damned lovely. His body felt a husk. Dried out and wanting to be filled with her.
When she’d cried for him in the theater it had taken everything he had not to pick her up and whisk her to his carriage and…and what? Ravish her? In a carriage on a city street?
This was not going the way he’d planned.
Lancaster resumed his pacing, faced with an ugly truth. He couldn’t resist her. She’d run her fingers up his leg for a count of four seconds, and he’d suffered in too tight trousers for a full thirty minutes.
Just the memory of it and he was suffering again.
He glanced at the clock. It was nearly eleven-thirty. Her last words to him hung like an ax over his head.
If you do not find a way to my room by midnight, I will find a way to yours.
She wouldn’t really go traipsing about the city in the middle of the night, would she? Except that he had mentioned his hotel in passing over dinner. And Cynthia was damned stubborn.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, looking to the clock again.
He had to go, if only for her safety. And when he was near her, he couldn’t resist.
Oh, this was not going to go honorably at all.
Cynthia glared at the clock. Eleven fifty-five and no Nick.
