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Before she could make one of her snippy replies, Alec turned away and pretended to look for his coat. “There are a few more things I need to do this evening. Get some rest. I’ll be fine.”
“But—”
“And I want to check on Lorenzo. Make sure he’s settled.”
There. She wouldn’t argue with that.
The rest of his plan involved staying the hell out of this room until she was fast asleep. Alec pulled on his coat and headed for the door. Her expression had softened into something resembling acceptance. “All right.” But just before she turned back to her book, disappointment flickered in her eyes. Alec’s fingers slipped against the doorknob before he resumed his iron grip. So be it. Let her be disappointed by him. She should be used to it by now.
“Don’t wait up for me,” he said as he flung open the door and stamped out of the room.
Chapter Nine
After Alec’s rather loud exit, Lottie made several valiant attempts to concentrate on her book, but it was useless. Even when he wasn’t in the room, the air still seemed to hum with tension. As if the very atoms themselves restlessly awaited his return. Lottie finally tossed her book aside and turned down the lamp. Perhaps it hadn’t been very sporting of her to tease Alec about sharing the bed, but when she caught his heavy-lidded stare, a wave of heat had seared her from the inside out; his steady gaze pinned her even from across the room, until he blinked and turned positivelymissish.
She hadn’t really meant anything untoward by the suggestion—the bedwasmassive, and he had been covertly rubbing his shoulder all day. His scandalized reaction was all the more surprising, given how easily he had brushed off her ogling of his naked person only minutes before. Then when she alluded to their childhood sleep-out, Alec had blushed so furiously she thought steam would shoot from his ears. His clipped response was little more than a growl, but it sounded as if he was fighting against something.
And losing.
Lottie thought she’d buried her ridiculous romantic streak years ago back in London, but for a glimmering moment it had taken hold of her heart and whispered its seductive delusions once again:
Hedoeswant you. All this must have happened so you could finally be together.
Until Alec had practically catapulted from the room, leaving her alone with only her pitiful desires for company.
Lottie closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, but instead her mind summoned the image of Alec’s bare chest dusted with dark hair still damp from the bathwater. She had never given much thought to something as ordinary as collarbones before, but now she longed to have another look at his.
No, that wasn’t right.
She didn’t want anything as innocent as a simplelook. Lottie craved something deeper. Something darker. To drag her tongue along the length of each one with studied care, so she could savor the taste, the smell, the texture of his skin. She hadn’t ever wanted to do something so purely carnal before. Now she positively ached for it.
Lottie opened her eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. This lingering uneasiness between them, as if something had been left unsolved, would drive her mad. That was why she loved puzzles. There was always an answer. But her and Alec…their jagged edges no longer seemed to match. And no matter how hard she mashed them together, they would never fit. At least, not in the way she had once wanted.
That is not the kind of life for a man with a family.
Uncle Alfred had been quite right at the time, but Lottie wasn’t a naive nineteen-year-old anymore. Perhaps it wasn’t that the problem was unsolvable, but that she needed to change her answer. Alec might not want a family, or a wife, but he must wantsomething. And she hadn’t imagined the heat in his eyes, just like she hadn’t imagined the evidence of his desire the previous day.
Lottie twisted the warm sheets in her hands. She had spent the last five years waiting for someone else to spark even a hint of what she had once felt for Alec—and it had all come to nothing.Worsethan nothing. For no matter what Alec or Uncle Alfred tried to say, her reputation had already been irrevocably damaged the night she publicly rejected Ceril Belvedere.
Lottie had been blindsided by the priggish young man’s ardent kiss on Lady Arlington’s balcony, as well as the clumsy proposal that followed, but she had refused him in the gentlest terms she could think of: “I’m afraid we don’t suit.”
At first Ceril appeared to be equally blindsided by her answer, but then his rather pallid complexion turned bright crimson and his slender frame began to quake.
“You—you’re rejecting me?” he sputtered, staring down at his freshly polished shoes. She had never seen him speak with such emotion before. About anything.
Lottie couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. She, too, was familiar with the pain of rejection and moved to pat his shoulder. “I apologize for any disappointment this may have caused you; it was never my intention.”
But before she could make contact, Ceril suddenly looked up; his dark eyes were filled with hatred and Lottie immediately drew back her hand. Her suggestion seemed only to anger him further. “Disappointment?” he snarled. “Your father was nobody.Iwill be an earl. You should be grateful I ever paid an old maid like you any mind.”
Lottie knew she should walk away then. Knew she should keep her mouth shut, and not cause a scene. Let him throw his little tantrum and be done with it. After all, he was hardly the first man to spout such drivel, but the trouble was Lottie hadn’t ever felt thistiredbefore.
She was angry. Affronted. And she refused to listen to this horrid little man cast aspersions on her beloved father, whose life had been worth ten of his.
“Yes,” she seethed. “How could I not be grateful for the attention given to my fortune.” She stepped forward until it was Ceril’s back against the wall. “And my father may not have been born into a title, but he certainly possessed enough sense to balance his accounts.”
Ceril looked positively shocked to have his less-than-honorable intentions, as well as his family’s reckless spending, called out so plainly. Then the frown returned, darker than ever. “The rumors about you are true. You’re nothing but a jilt.Anda tease.”
If she had been a man, Lottie would have called him out. She had only ever been polite, as etiquette dictated she be to every man who asked her to dance or made conversation. There was no point wasting anything more on him. Without another word, she spun on her heels and returned to the ballroom, but instead of letting her go quietly, Ceril had been right behind her and took no pains to hide his extreme displeasure. It was clear to everyone what had happened between them. But all sympathies fell to the desirable young bachelor, not the lady on her fifth season.
