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Oh, he liked her pride and he liked her spirit. He liked, too, the fact that despite all the playacting she could not disguise the strong attraction she felt for him.
It was palpable.
And it was mutual.
Fenton let out a sigh of deep contentment. He’d never expected a courtship to go so smoothly. He was attracted to her and she to him. The fact she didn’t have much in the way of a dowry was not sufficient to put him off. He’d declared to his mama from the outset that he would marry to please his heart and to provide heirs—not because his pocketbook depended upon it.
Just as well Bramley had fumed off in the other direction and he was alone, Fenton thought wryly as he adjusted his bulging breeches and prepared to return to the ballroom. Miss Brightwell may well have been taken for the next set and he wanted very urgently to commandeer her for the rest of the evening.
He knew he had behaved badly towards her, both two nights ago and with his teasing this evening. The time had come to offer Miss Brightwell the formal apology she deserved. The truth was, he’d not known how to treat her in view of what had transpired between them, while Bramley’s assertions…
He shook his head. Bramley was not a man he’d trust above his own instincts and he’d been a fool to concede even a jot of what he’d suggested about Miss Brightwell, as if she were no better than a tuppenny whore! It was sour grapes on Bramley’s side, he was sure of it.
No, there was something curiously affecting about Miss Brightwell’s combination of boldness and hauteur. If Fenton were to go on instinct alone, he’d venture that Miss Brightwell was only too well aware of her fragile foothold on the society ladder and that every reason she’d given regarding her conduct with Alverley was true.
Yet what else had she said? That she was betrothed to a man she found abhorrent? He needed to discover more. He needed to discover what steps to take to secure her for himself. After the experienced women whose pleasures he’d enjoyed during his two years abroad he was very responsive to Miss Brightwell’s charms. The European whores had flattered him, pandered to his every desire and exhibited the utmost artistry in their ability to raise him to ever greater heights of sexual gratification. He’d taken the Grand Tour to become the cultured man his mother required to take the reins and run the estate when he returned. Any culture he might have acquired had been incidental to the surfeit of lust that had consumed him after discovering how fascinating he was to women. Now it was time to settle down. He realised he was in danger of losing himself to vanity. He’d been given a long leash and he’d taken advantage of his opportunities until he’d felt tethered to nothing.
Now he wanted to return home to Grantham, the family seat for more than three hundred years, and start behaving responsibly. To do that, he needed a wife. Preferably one who would keep him interested and keep him in check.
Miss Brightwell showed every potential of fulfilling both criteria once he’d satisfied himself that Bramley spoke nothing but evil lies and that his mother had no reasonable grounds for her objections.
Shaking his head as he passed a depiction of bedroom sport that was, even to one of his jaded experience, extreme, Fenton was about to return to the entertainment when he was arrested by a short, sharp squeal and the sound of tearing fabric. He turned, his eyes quickly becoming accustomed to the gloom until he caught sight of movement.
After a pregnant silence came a deep sigh followed by Miss Brightwell’s dry, unmistakable tones. “Of all the inconvenient times to be disrobed.”
A little shocked, Fenton moved closer, following the direction of her voice. He melted into the shadows and watched her in a shaft of light cast by a candle set high on the wall.
She was at the bottom of the pit, sitting amongst a collection of brightly coloured silk cushions, staring with dismay at her gold-flecked skirts. The diaphanous fabric hung limply, torn almost entirely free of her bodice, exposing her chemise. The sight of the crisp linen undergarment thus revealed—so pristine, yet so shocking—was strangely erotic.
Fenton was torn, too—torn between what a real gentleman ought to do and what, in truth, he felt like doing.
The ladies’ sewing room was just down the corridor. A real gentleman would hasten there and return with needle and thread to render assistance.
By contrast, he wanted to hurl himself upon her and roll around in that pit of cushions, tearing the rest of her gown from her and running his hands over all her soft, fragrant body with all the passion of a first-time smitten green boy.
Such unadulterated lust was combined, however, with a healthy desire to atone. Therefore, a trip to the ladies’ sewing room and the prospect of two minutes’ conversation with hatchet-faced Miss Mortimer whose domain it was would hopefully have the required dampening effect.
He turned his footsteps in that direction. He wanted Miss Brightwell but he had no intention of repeating his rash overtures—albeit delicious—of the other night if it should in any way compromise her. She featured in his more long-term plans and he wanted her to know it. Delivering to Miss Brightwell the means to return to the ballroom with her dignity intact might be one way to reassure her that his intentions towards her were honourable.
He was unprepared, upon his return to the pit of cushions, for his crushing disappointment at discovering the object of his desire gone.
Raising his candle, he peered through the gloom, expectant hope returning at a very unladylike exclamation from the darkness beyond what he had at first taken to be a screen.
Drawing nearer, he discovered it was a tent festooned with swathes of red silk woven with elaborate designs in green and royal purple. About to announce his presence as he searched for the entrance, he was taken aback to discover what could only be a series of peepholes cut into the fabric.
Fenton’s mission to the ladies’ mending room in the face of almost insurmountable temptation had surely established his credentials as a gentleman. But what gentleman could resist putting his eye to the peephole?
It
was spontaneous curiosity, not the conscious intention to spy, that had him gazing upon the incredibly arousing sight of Miss Brightwell, with her hair in disarray, hitching her skirts thigh-high to adjust her garter.
Such a sight would, he felt sure, have robbed far more gentlemanly gentlemen than he of their good manners. Yet good manners demanded that he step away and announce his presence, giving her time to make herself presentable.
Indeed, he was on the point of doing just that—had moved his head away from the peephole and was stepping back—when his practiced eye was caught by a flash of creamy, womanly curves that surely not even the most disciplined of gentleman could resist. Had a marauding tiger been bearing down upon him, Fenton would not have had the power to move.
He returned his eye to the peephole, all concentration focused on the scene before him, all his energy gathering in his loins, like a cannon about to explode. The surface of his skin tingled. With breath fast and shallow he watched the strip of naked flesh lengthen between knee and thigh as she raised her arms to pull off her gown, taking with it the chemise beneath.
He saw slender hips, a triangle of dark hair, creamy, gently rounded belly and a pair of breasts so pert they almost seemed to beckon to him. His own sigh echoed hers as she sank onto an Egyptian sofa with armrests carved in the shape of sphinxes, almost instantly covering her briefly revealed nakedness as she studied the damage done to her gown.
