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He held out his hand. She placed her hand in his. He brushed his lips across her knuckles. “Until tomorrow, Wilhelmina Penny.”
“Thank you for the lovely evening, Your Grace,” she blurted, and rushed away.
Thank you for the lovely evening? Good lord, what a ninny-ish thing to say. She kicked herself all the way through the back door and up the stairs to her room.
But what else could she have said?Thank you for the anatomy lesson. And the bone-melting kiss. Oh, and by the way, thank you for squeezing my nipple when you were semi-conscious?
When she reached her room she quickly removed her cloak, bonnet and boots, and hid her satchel in the back of the wardrobe.
He was still watching beneath her window. She lit a lamp and set it near the window.
Secret signals just before dawn—her life was already so much more exciting.
Had he seen the glow in her heart, her mind? She’d lit up like a lamp when he kissed her.
Thinking about it made her glow again. If she opened her window the moths would fly to her, instead of the lamp, and beat their fragile wings against her cheeks.
Why had she enjoyed kissing him so much?
Perhaps being opposed to someone, by nature and by goals, made the kissing more heated.
She knew what he looked like lying in a bed. How his long arms stretched the width of the bed and his tall body the length.
She knew what his hands felt like covering her bum, her breasts, tangled in her hair to draw her closer into a kiss.
She knew so many things. All of which she must promptly forget. Her mind should be occupied by formulating a new plan. The more she thought about it the more she realized that her dream of marrying Lord Rafe had been misguided.
But he could be a means of bringing Le Triton to justice. He’d said he was after the biggest prize of all, and he’d been extremely startled when she mentioned antiquities thieves.
If Thorndon hadn’t been injured she could have run after Lord Rafe, and she might be chasing after Le Triton with him even now.
As it was, she required more information before setting off on any quests for vengeance.
She should stop thinking about kissing Thorndon, and start finding ways to make him useful to her goals.
That’s what secret agents did.
She should study the Duke Dossier more closely. She found the notebook where she’d cast it, in the bottom of her traveling trunk, and opened it to the chapters devoted to Thorndon.
This is a road map, if you will, to the heart and mind of London’s most eligible duke. Study it closely, Wilhelmina, and you’ll be the Duchess of Thorndon within a month’s time.
Her uncle had spent most of the chapters enumerating the duke’s agricultural experimentations with the rotation of crops and new methods of irrigation. He’d highlighted his concern for the plight of poverty-stricken cottagers.
Thorndon has few discernible faults. He manages his vast holdings with a firm, yet just, hand, and has increased profits tenfold since the death of his father, while improving the lives of his tenants in every regard.
He attends church most Sundays, takes an interest in the welfare of his cottagers, and keeps a pack of superior foxhounds.
Sir Malcolm made Thorndon sound like the dullest man on the face of the planet, while Mina knew the opposite was true. Thorndon was storm clouds and the lightning zing of attraction.
She shivered, remembering the disconcertingly delicious feeling of being pressed against a wall by six-odd feet of solid muscle.
There was even a section devoted to the duke’s dietary preferences:
Thorndon prefers strong coffee, with no milk or sugar, to tea. One might see this as a metaphor for his life in general, as he daily subjects himself to a punishing regimen of physical and mental exercise and work that would exhaust a lesser man.
She could certainly believe that. She’d seen what all that physical exercise had done to his body in the prominent ridges of his muscles, the taut firmness of his abdomen.
Oh Lord. There she went again.
