Page 17 of Undercover with the Heiress
Phineas dragged his gaze over the soft silk of her stocking to the errant hole. Little crescent moons had formed around it, threatening to stretch and run the length of her shin. Such a small thing. What might it say?
While you try to play the part of a proper rich girl, you are likely too busy at life to maintain the perfection you wish to project. Or maybe you put others before yourself, but in a way that you hope doesn’t show. You can handle discomfort and only complain to buttress yourself. On the whole, it says that there is more to you than dresses and the opinions of others. And even though you value them so much, if you can find the courage to trust your bravado, there is more in store for youin life than those insipid doves you are so intent on impressing could imagine.
Like a pawing letch, like a common lusting rake, Phineas took too long to draw his gaze from her toes to her eyes. He always saw too much without seeing, and his imagination filled in what her silhouette merely hinted at.
Delicious thighs.
A lovely round arse.
Eyes as bright as a fresh spring leaf.
‘It says I need to find you needle and thread so that you can mend it before it catches and tears.’ He’d wanted to sound flat and dismissive, but instead he spoke in a rasp of a whisper.
‘I once read a book where a man made another man pass out with just his fingertips.’ She touched him just below his ear. Phineas inhaled to suppress the delicious prickle that radiated out from the pressure, which was a mistake because her wrists smelt of lilies and hope. Now he had to contend with the urge to breathe her in fully instead, to kiss her just to see if she tasted as sweet. She pressed her fingers more firmly into his muscle. ‘Can you show me how to do that?’
‘I fear the male sex would revoke my membership if I equipped a woman like you with knowledge like that.’ With a shoulder shrug, he broke away from her touch.
‘Just one little weak point,’ she insisted. ‘An Achilles heel. Men have all the power. At least let me know I could if I wanted to.’
‘To begin with, there is no magic point in the neck that will incapacitate a man. But when you are smaller than your attacker…’ He contemplated her again. Blazes be, she was precisely his height. ‘The trick is to be agile and unpredictable, not so that you can defeat them, but so you can run away. If an attacker were to grab you, what would you do?’ He clasped her wrist and spun her so fast that she swayed a little, then fixed one arm firm around her middle, with her back pressed to his chest.
Rosanna squawked and struggled. ‘Let me go. You can’t just grab me like that with no warning.’
Phineas held firm. ‘No man intent on harm is going to warn you.Breathe. Your fear is their power.’ She remained tense. ‘I’m trying to teach you. If I were your attacker, you could do lots of things to distract me. You could bring your heel down on my toe, right on the edge. You could raise your arms and slip down, out of my hold, then pick yourself up so that you can run.’
He was about to release her when her heel cracked against his toe. As he tipped his chin to curse at the ceiling, she raised her arms, whacked his nose with the back of her hand, then dropped to the ground and sprung free from his hold. Phineas staggered back a few steps, steadying himself against the bookshelves.
‘I did it! I saved myself,’ she cried, her voice bright with elation. ‘Oh—did I hurt you?’
Phineas shook his handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his nose. The room glistened where he blinked through the sting, and for a moment through the haze of pain and whisky, Rosanna became the only light in his library. Her old white dress gleamed, her dark hair hung loose around her shoulders, but above anything else, her smile could have lit the candelabras. An unselfconscious mix of youthful innocence and mastery radiated from her, the same energy that had been lost to him so very, very long ago. With a stab of greed, he wanted to draw her to him and keep just a little for himself.
Then his gaze flicked to Imogen on the mantlepiece.
And all emotions, good and bad, died.
‘I’ll show you to your room,’ he said. ‘I’m tired.’
Phineas trudged up the stairs. Her skirts rustled as she followed, but he kept looking straight ahead. On the first floor he flicked a switch for the gas lamps, and their low light hummed into the corridor.
Rosanna peered up into the stairwell. ‘At home, I’m higher. My room is on the fourth floor.’
‘I thought you’d want a proper space with your own washroom.’ He strode into the room and gestured at the small sink in the little cupboard behind the door. ‘I sleep directly above. Felix set things up for you. You should have everything you need.’
She must have picked up her boots in the hallway because she dropped them to the floor. Bits of dust and dried mud scattered over the rug. He winced. Rosanna scanned the room from floor to ceiling before tapping the foot of the simple steel bed.
‘Wedding night or not, I hope you have no intention of staying.’ Her words rang bold, but she knocked her knuckles against each other in a nervous jitter.
He needed to reassure her that while she was here, he’d make no marital demands. Lawrence had not expressly said as much, but it was implied that Phineas would respect her independence. She would be mistress of herself. And this marriage was not real or meant to last. Genuine fear had coursed through her when he’d taught her how to evade a captor, and a little of it flittered across her face now. If they were going to get through this, he needed her secure and a little trusting. He should say something… affable. Even comforting. So he took her by the shoulders and looked her square in the eyes. ‘I am not interested in you. In your body. In that way.’
And with a breath that felt like regret, he turned away and left her alone.
As he trudged down the stairs, a lurid fantasy danced through his imagination. It teased at his foxed edges and squeaked through the gaps in his slightly soused defences. Of tumbling onto sheets together and frantic kisses, of lips and fistfuls of flesh and hair and stolen breaths, of her crisp green eyes and her warm skin and fallen garments. It taunted him all the way to theground floor. There he met a slightly downcast Felix who stared into the empty library with a tray balanced in his arms.
‘She’s in her room.’ Phineas brushed past him. ‘Take it to her.’
Phineas picked up the crystal decanter and swirled its contents. Liquor loosened everything in him—his thoughts, his memories, his control. It was why he normally only allowed himself one day a year to seek oblivion. He opened the window and tipped the bottle. Amber whisky glugged as it splashed against the hydrangea leaves.
He could not allow that to happen. He could not lose control.
