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“That’s precisely what I’m saying. How insufferable do you intend to be?”
“I shall be exactly the right amount of insufferable.”
Laughing, he lifted her hand and pressed his mouth into her palm. She responded by feathering her fingertips over his eyebrow and down his cheek. He released her, rested his hands on her waist.
“You truly don’t mind?” she whispered. “About having to marry me?”
“I mind that our wedding is not for several days, and I shan’t be allowed to touch you before then.”
Her fingertips continued their feather-light dance over his cheek, to his lips. He still didn’t know everything going on in that mind of hers, but finding out would be the most splendid, enduring adventure of his life.
Then she slipped away from him, escaping his hands to cross to the door. She reached out, as if she meant to open it and walk away from him forever.
Guy started to call her name, to stop her from opening that door.
But she didn’t open it.
She turned the key.
Locked.
And her expression when she faced him again: deliciously brazen and bold.
“Arabella, what are you doing?” he asked, though he and his happy body already knew.
She lifted one eyebrow, favored him with her most imperious stare. “Why, I’m seducing you, of course.”
* * *
The wooden doorat Arabella’s back seemed to thud with the pounding of her heart.
Across the room, Guy didn’t move. A wickedly welcome smile teased his lips, and that familiar intensity smoldered in his gaze.
She launched herself toward him, her skirts swishing obstructively around her legs, the devious carpet threatening to trip her up.
“In the drawing room?” he said.
“I have a fondness for drawing rooms. I’ve done some of my best seducing in them.”
“As I recall from the last drawing room, your seduction technique is dreadful.”
“I’ve been taking lessons. I’m a very fast learner.”
She docked before him, basking in his warmth, his scent, his intoxicating vigor. He remained still, awaiting her next move. She faltered, and concealed her nervousness by studying him. A smear of soot marked his cravat. His shirt was spotless, the linen cruelly concealing his arms. Also unmarked was his waistcoat: an olive green, with regiments of tiny taupe tulips marching in exquisitely straight rows. Each tulip was a marvel of needlework: a hundred tiny tight stitches that would take longer to unpick than they had taken to sew.
With one unsteady finger, Arabella traced a column of tulips from his collarbone to his waist. Her motives for this seduction were suspect. Oh, she wanted him; no deception there. But honesty—it was new, this honesty, a result of discovering those hidden parts of herself—this novel honesty compelled her to admit she was driven by more than pure lust. At her core was a deeper desire: to stitch him to her even more tightly than those tulips were stitched into the silk.
To know, without a doubt, that he, too, wished them to be so bound.
She flattened both palms over those tulips, soaking up the feel of his broad chest.
“Careful,” he warned. “There’s soot all over my breeches.”
“And you smell of smoke and sweat.”
“How charming of you to mention it.”
“I’m being romantic.”
