Page 4 of Mr. Notorious and the Nefarious November

His gaze traveled slowly back up her body, and when it reached her face, she was scowling. “You’re still the worst rake in London. The papers were right about you.”

Though he’d consumed enough champagne to sail a schooner down the Thames, those words were a splash of cold sobriety. “Don’t tell me you believe that twaddle fromTheRake Review.”

“Everyone has read it, sir.”

Munro noted she said she had read it, not that she believed it. But then, wasn’t that a foregone conclusion? She’d always believed the worst about him. “And you still believe what everyone else says about me.”

“What else am I to believe? Look at you. You are the very illustration of a debauched degenerate.”

Munro looked down at himself, noting that his cravat was loose, his waistcoat half unbuttoned, his breeches wrinkled, and he was only wearing one glove. He ripped that glove off and tossed it at her feet, raking a hand through his hair and probably making the entire situation worse.

“And now you return to England and don’t even offer me an apology for leaving without even a goodbye. Solomon was devastated you did not attend the wedding.”

Munro’s jaw dropped open. “Is that what he told you? Ha! He was thrilled to have lured you away from me.”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say because her eyes went flinty, and she crossed her arms over that ample bosom. “I am not a fish to be lured with shiny bait. I married Solomon because I thought I loved him, and he said he loved me.”

“I said I loved you.” Munro didn’t know why he was telling her this, bringing up the past. He couldn’t seem to stop himself, though. That was the problem with drinking four hundredand sixty-seven glasses of champagne. One lost one’s ability to moderate one’s words.

She waved a hand. “You would have said anything to convince me not to marry Solomon. I was a competition between the two of you—nothing more.”

Munro shook his head. “That might have been true for Solomon, but it was never true for me.”

Shut up, Notley, he told himself.Close your potato hole and walk away.

“When I told you I loved you, that was the first and only time I’d ever said that to any woman,” he said, his mouth ignoring his brain’s dictates.

The crease between her brows smoothed over as her eyes widened.

“I would have done anything for you. When I came to you the night before your wedding, I’d been celibate for a year because you were the only woman I wanted. And you chose Solomon who had not been faithful to you for even a sennight.”

Silence descended, and the door creaked open slightly. A young woman with blond hair peeked inside. “Might I use—”

“Get out,” Beatrice said.

The door banged shut.

“You tried to tell me about him,” she said quietly. “I didn’t believe you.” She stepped forward. “You really became celibate? For me?”

“I wanted you,” he said. “I never stopped wanting you.”Whywas he still speaking? Why was he telling her this? She’d hurt him, rejected him outright. Why would he ever give her the opportunity to do it again?

“You wanted me so much that you frequented every known brothel and den of iniquity on the Continent and the Americas?”

She was quoting that blasted column, and Munro fisted his hands in anger. “I sure as hell didn’t stay celibate after you leg-shackled yourself to Solomon. I did anything and everything I could to keep the image of you in his bed out of my mind, but if you believe I visit prostitutes or the rest of that claptrap the Brazen Belle has written, you don’t know me at all.”

Her gaze slid down then. She hadn’t looked before, but she did so now. He’d drunk far too much to be able to react—or so he thought. His cock had other ideas and began to harden at the feel of her gaze on it.

“None of it is true then?” she asked.

“There’s only one way to find out,” he said.

“Are you suggesting I sleep with you?”

“I didn’t think we’d do much sleeping.”

She huffed out a breath and turned away, disgusted.

Quite suddenly, he didn’t want her to walk away. “I’d ask you to marry me,” he said. “But you’d say no. Again.”

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