Page 307 of From Rakes to Riches

He’d come to claim her.

Mercy cast about for something erudite and worldly to say, some greeting that a temptress, a lover, would tantalize him with.

“Erm—hullo.”

Well...Shelley she was not.

“I was going to let you sleep.” His voice rumbled into the air of her room with a foreign vibration, splashing against her nerves with all the threat of thunder in the great distance.

A man had never entered this room, certainly not at night.

“I wasn’t sleeping.” She yawned against the back of her knuckles.

“Oh?” He drifted inside, shutting the window behind him.

Locking them in together.

“Do you often snore whilst awake?”

“I don’t snore,” she protested.

A smile toyed with the corner of his mouth, though he didn’t argue the point. “Forgive me for being tardy. I had urgent business with my brother to attend, and it took longer than I hoped. An eternity, in fact. When I knew you were here. Waiting.”

“You weren’t tardy, as I didn’t know when to expect you.” She would have shrugged if she were not curled on her side, swaddled in a pile of blankets. “If I’m honest, I expected a messenger at first. I thought it would be tidier to meet somewhere other than Cresthaven, where we might be discovered.”

He conducted a quick study of her room, the rich blue accents contrasting with clean white walls gentled by gilded paintings and tapestries. “Here is as safe as any place. Your parents are not in residence and your sister is in the next room fast asleep.”

Should she be disconcerted or impressed that he knew that? “Might someone be roused if...if we make noise?”

His eyes flared as he approached her bed, but he made no move to join her upon it. Instead, he crossed his arms and propped his shoulder on her tall bedpost.

If he was dangerously handsome in the sunlight, at night he was utterly fatal.

The darkness embraced him as a creature of its own. Blessed him with satirical beauty and fiendish grace.

He was a demon in a bespoke suit.

“You are so open,” he noted. “So straightforward and bold. There isn’t a hint of coyness or artifice about you.”

A defensiveness welled in her chest. “I don’t know how to be coy and I don’t have time for artifice. Besides, why are women expected to be shy or tentative? Why must the fact that I am bold or inquisitive be revolutionary?”

“I was admiring, not admonishing. I find everything about you refreshing. Alluring.”

“Oh... well... thank you.” Mercy chewed on her lip, trying to figure out a way for them tonotsay anything further. The longer men spoke with her, the more likely she was to drive them away.

“Why don’t you undress and get in?” she ventured, tucking back a section of the covers.

He made a sound of disbelief deep in his throat. “You want me to undress here? In front of you?” He uncrossed his arms and lowered them to his sides, regarding her with a wicked scrutiny. “Are you a voyeur, Mercy Goode?”

“I don’t know what I am,” she answered honestly. “But you can’t get in bed with your shoes on. Nor can we—accomplish our aim—while you’re dressed, I expect.”

“Accomplish our aim?” His mouth flattened with chagrin. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

The tips of her ears began to burn again, she ducked her head under the covers. “Don’t make me say the word while I’m looking at you.”

His chuckle was like the purr of a tiger and washed her in prickles of awareness, pebbling the tips of her nipples. “How can you do the deed if you cannot speak the word?”

He made an excellent point, though she’d die before telling him so. “Fornicate,” she spat from beneath the coverlet. “Now could you take off your clothes and join me please?”

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