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Kristen shook her head. “Honey, I assure you, that man won’tthinka thing. His mind will be on other matters. You could chop off his head and he wouldn’t notice.”
Serenity laughed. “We shouldn’t be talking about this. It isn’t proper.”
“Well,” Kristen said saucily as she wiped the apple against her sash. “You know what I have to say, proper has its place, but it sure doesn’t warm your bed.”
Ignoring Serenity’s gasp, Kristen tossed the apple into the air and caught it. “Now back to our lesson. After he gives back the apple, or whatever you drop, make sure you keep his attention on your body by taking the object and trailing it across your décolleté.” Kristen demonstrated by rubbing the apple across the tops of her breasts.
“But I don’t have a dé—”
“You will tonight.”
Later that afternoon they were in Kristen’s bedroom, where they had picked out a gown for that evening. Now Serenity sat at the vanity while Kristen experimented with her hair.
Dutifully Serenity listened to Kristen’s instructions for her dinner behavior, wondering how she could ever remember all of them.
However, the worst idea was yet to come.
As soon as Kristen’s eyes darkened and she put on an impish smile, Serenity knew she was in for it.
Kristen drew Serenity’s hair up into a topknot. “You know, what we need to cinch this tight is competition.”
Serenity just looked at Kristen in the mirror. “Competition?”
“Yes,” she said as she added a few hairpins. “We need to get you a man.”
“I thought that’s what we were trying to do.”
“Well, yes,” Kristen said, fluffing hair around Serenity’s face. “But we need a man other than Morgan. Nothing makes a man want a woman more than when he thinks another man is interested.”
Was that true?
Serenity didn’t know for sure, but by the light in Kristen’s eyes, she could tell her friend definitely believed it.
Not that it mattered. There was no other man interested in Serenity. No man other than Hopping Hands Charlie had ever been interested in her.
“Well, we’ll have to forgo that, since—”
“Actually,” Kristen said, picking up the brush and looking at Serenity in the mirror. “I know someone who will have Morgan stewing in his jealousy. Someone absolutely perfect for the role. Someone who owes me a favor and would…” She screwed up her face in thought for several seconds.
Finally Kristen shook her head and looked at Serenity determinedly. “I’m sure I could convince him to do it.”
Serenity was skeptical, but she agreed to follow Kristen into what turned out to be a wonderful excursion.
They rode into town in an open carriage so that Serenity could see just how beautiful the island was.
It wasn’t far to the small village, which was a model of efficiency. It held all the shops needed for a thriving community—butcher, baker, smithy, and more.
Serenity was amazed at how charming the place was. Shops had been built up, much akin to the style of Savannah or Charleston. Women dressed in modest fashions like hers and Kristen’s, of elbow-length sleeves and light cotton, blended in with the shameless daring clothes of the island women who wore short skirts and bared their arms.
But all that faded from her thoughts as Kristen led her into the smithy.
Serenity stopped in the doorway, momentarily stunned.
The smith stood before his forge with his bare back to them as he pounded a piece of iron with a huge hammer.
Never in her life had she seen the like.
Long blond hair was pulled back into a queue that hung between tanned muscles, which bulged and flexed while he struck a piece of red-hot metal with his hammer. His entire body glistened with sweat.
