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Ford shook his head and continued on his way to Mayfair. He wished Tiny the best. He could be happy for his friend, even if Ford would never marry.
He walked along Piccadilly and headed into Mayfair. Here the houses stood in rows of imposing stone facades and orderly windows. Massive iron gates set close to the buildings stood at attention to keep the riffraff away.
Lady Beatrice had grown up in this exclusive neighborhood, protected by guards and governesses, blinkered to the harsh realities of London’s poorer areas.
He couldn’t seem to shake Lady Beatrice and her slender waist and oversize vocabulary from his mind. He kept thinking about that near kiss in the library. If they’d actually kissed, he probably would have forgotten about it by now, but an almost-kiss was a memory that could be expanded and elaborated upon in endless variations.
She’d wanted him to kiss her.
There’d been no denying her intentions when she stared, unmoving, at his lips for such a prolonged length of time. He’d almost convinced himself thatshe was about to kiss him, and he’d been so close to making the first move.
But reason had prevailed. It hadn’t mattered if the lady wanted kissing. What mattered was that her brother was a duke, and his father’s employer, and she was an innocent lady.
They were from two different worlds. Kissing was forbidden.
In reality. Fantasies were another matter.
There was nothing stopping his mind from reliving the moment, and making a very different choice. Gently removing her spectacles from her aristocratic nose and setting them aside.
Cupping her face with his palms.
And giving her one unforgettably passionate kiss.
In his fantasies it lasted a long time, that kiss.
He teased her lips open with his tongue, swallowing her soft, startled cry. He deepened the kiss and moved his hands to her softly rounded breasts, brushing her nipples through the buttery fabric of her gown until she moaned...
He stopped walking and muttered an apology as a man swerved to avoid running into him.
He had to stop thinking about the kiss not taken. Especially because he might very well be granted an audience with her mother today, who would be horrified, outraged, and quite possibly litigious if she knew the things he’d done to her daughter in his mind.
Bad, bad things involving sturdy desks.
He had the book she’d given him in his coat pocket, and he planned to leave it with the butler. Hewas certain that Lady Beatrice hadn’t meant to give him this particular book. It was a Gothic romance,The Mad Marquess’s Secretby Daphne Villeneuve.
It was about a blonde with the silly name of Sophronia who kept getting chased around the grounds of the castle while wearing a diaphanous nightgown by the mad marquess who may, or may not, have murdered his previous wife.
He’d read it in secret, of course. Hadn’t wanted the boys to rib him about it.
He’d read it at night by the light of a candle. He’d never admit it to a soul, but he’d enjoyed the book. It had been a page-turner.
He’d been halfway through the story when he’d found the note tucked between the pages. Written in Lady Beatrice’s precise lettering, it appeared to be an entry torn from a diary in frustration.
What she’d written had tugged at his heart, and made him want to relive their encounter in the library again, but in a different way.
He’d tell her that not all men were repelled by intelligence in a woman.
That she was uniquely attractive, and if the mean-spirited ladies and empty-headed fops of London couldn’t see that, then they were idiots.
Which was also a conversation that would never happen.
No doubt the lady was out on the town being courted by barons and earls. Who knew, perhaps she’d even become a princess in truth. There were plenty of impoverished European royalty hunting for fortunes.
Ford shouldn’t care where she was, or by whom she was being courted. He was only visiting her house for news of her brother.
Warn the duke, ensure his father was above suspicion, and ship out. That was the plan.
The duke’s bookish sister was one buttoned-up bundle of simmering passions that Ford would never, ever unwrap.
