Page 5 of The Spinster's Secret Scoundrel
Whereas she owed Thierry le Fantôme nothing but another slap across the face for his impertinence. He wasn’t a resident of Cavalier Cove. No one would care if she turned him over to her uncle. The townsfolk might not know it was her.
“Are you all right?” asked Betsey, her brow pleated with concern.
“Fine!” Ada chuckled and snapped to attention. A surge of anxiety closed her throat and tied a knot in her tongue. “I was wondering…if you would…may I interest you in a…an egg custard this afternoon?”
If she had to consume one more bite of goose egg, she might just stop eating altogether.
“I’d be delighted, Miss Naughton.”
“I shall bring it b-by later,” Ada promised, angling her body away from the prize in the periphery of her vision. More often than not, shyness and fear of rejection left her stammering semi-coherent sentences. Betsey was used to her strange ways, but many of the villagers weren’t so understanding.
“You are such a dear.”
Ada waited until Betsey had made it into her house before darting over to the clutch of eggs and gathering them into her apron.Success!
Triumphantly, Ada carried the contents past the unsuspecting geese and into her front parlor. Thierry still sat in his chair, looking handsome and bored.
“More eggs?” he asked. “What do you need them all for?”
“What business is it of yours?” she replied tartly, piling the contents of her apron gently into a basket.
Interestingly, her ire toward the man who had trespassed upon her (rented) property seemed to have loosened her tongue.
Heat flared through her as she recalled in vivid detail the press of his mouth on hers.
Why did he do that?
How apt that the best kiss of her entire life had come from a scoundrel.
Impossible to imagine his gilded tongue silenced forever at the end of a hangman’s noose. She hadn’t decided what to do about him yet. Le Fantôme’s fate depended upon how much he annoyed her.
Ada moved to place the last egg in the basket on her sideboard when her entire body electrified with sudden awareness.
“What do you do with all these eggs, Miss Naughty?”
Startled, Ada dropped it. An audible crack and the disgusting sensation of gelatinous liquid inside her shoe sent a shudder down her spine. Whirling, she poked her index finger straight at his sternum.
“How. Did. You. Get.Free,” she demanded, prodding his chest as punctuation. Thierry retreated, backing away in synchronicity with each syllable, eyes widening. Egg yolk dripped from her shoe with every step.
“With this.” He produced a small silver blade. “Next time, don’t tie my hands within reach of my boot.”
“You aren’t going anywhere.”
Infuriatingly, the man smirked.
“Keeping me around for another kiss, Miss Naughty?”
Flames scorched her cheeks. So what if he was only the second man she’d kissed in the whole of her twenty-four years? So what if, of the two she had to compare, it was by far the best? It still didn’t give him theright.
“Hardly,” she snapped. “I’ve been kissed before.” Ada aimed for lofty outrage, but she was fairly certain she’d missed the mark. “In fact, yours doesn’t measure up.”
The horrible, handsome man’s gorgeous lips curled into a mocking grin.
“Have you kissed a lot of men, Miss Knotty?”
That did it. The man had no sense of self-preservation.
“I was debating whether or not to turn you over to the authorities. You just made up my mind for me,” she seethed.
