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“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath, raking his fingers through his dark hair and mussing it.
In all the weeks she had discreetly observed him at balls, he had seemed so insouciant and unruffled. She gathered this woman was important to him. “If I might be so bold to ask, who is this Jane?”
“My fiancée,” he said with a measure of humor.
Felicity gasped and took an instinctive step back. “You areengaged?”
“She does not exist; that is why I am looking for her.”
She blinked. “Are you foxed, my lord?”
There was a pulse of brittle silence, and then he chuckled, the sound low and far too charming. “No, that was the sound of bemused desperation talking.”
“And this desperation is about finding Jane, who does not exist?”
“Yes.”
“This is the second oddest conversation I’ve had in my entire life.”And the first was also with you.
His eyes gleamed. “Are you married or engaged?”
Her heart jolted. “No.”
“Do you have any serious attachment?”
“No.”
“How old are you?”
Felicity stared at him for several beats before she answered, beyond curious as to his reasons. “I am five and twenty.”
He nodded, and in the depths of his eyes, she spied the shrewdness and calculation. “I have a proposition for you.”
“It is most certainly a no,” she gasped, taking a few more steps back.
“You have not heard it as yet.”
“Well, I have heard enough whispering and rumors. That tends to happen when you fade into the background of balls. Those around you speak as if you do not exist, and I have heard my lord that you are in the market for…for your next mistress!”
A small frown touched his face. “You think I am going to proposition you to be my mistress?”
He asked with such slow bemusement Felicity flushed. Apparently, it had not occurred to him. “I…yes,” she said, mortified.
His mouth curved slightly in a sensual smile that set off a series of flutters low in her belly. “Sadly, it is not anything so delightful.”
Oh!Somewhere in the distance, a door must have opened for the din of laughter and music spilled into the night.
He bowed to her with all the courtesies of his rank and said, “Phineas at your service.”
“You expect me to refer to you as…as Phineas?” she asked in a choked voice.
“Yes. If you allow me a few minutes of your time, I shall explain.”
“I am not certain how listening will prove beneficial to me, my lord.”
“I will offer you one hundred pounds for a listening ear and far more if you find my proposal worthwhile.”
Felicity gaped. One hundred pounds to simply listen? Her heart pounded; she nodded slowly.
