Page 26 of My Deceitful Duchess
At length, he closed the book and set it aside, and shadows slipped over his head and shoulders as he braced his hands upon the arms of his chair and stood.Naked. The taut lines of his buttocks and flanks on clear display through the glass.
The ledger slipped from her hands, glancing off the toes of her right foot, and she hissed out a foul word as she bent to retrieve it. And she froze as she peered out the window once more. He had gone for a dressing down, which was draped carelessly over his shoulders in only the barest concession to modesty.
And he was looking straight at her, his face wreathed in shadows—and in satisfaction. It was there, in the curl of his lips, and for a brief moment she wondered ifshewere one of hisscholarly studies; an experiment in exhibitionism, in whether or not he could provoke some latent voyeuristic tendencies from her.
She was staring still.
With a decisive yank, she pulled the curtain closed. There were but a few hours before dawn, and she would not let him monopolize them with his—hishim.Allof him.
Even if he did have quite possibly the nicest arse she’d ever seen.
∞∞∞
Sebastian chuckled to himself as Jenny disappeared behind the curtain. He’d always thought it an odd embellishment, a senseless and baseless assertion for someone to claim they’d felt someone else’s eyes upon them. It was an impossibility, strictly speaking, for such a thing to happen. A gaze had no weight, no form—and still, he hadknown.
He had simplyknownthe moment her eyes had struck his skin, felt them like a caress of her hands, sliding over his shoulders, his arms, his legs. She had stared for long minutes, riveted to the window—when she was meant to be managing the club. Though there was no one to chastise her for her inattention to the business, he suspectedshewould be chastising herself for it.
Because now he knew—theybothknew—that she could be tempted. That she was not quite so unaffected as she would have wished herself to be. And that she would be thinking of what she had witnessed tomorrow morning when she arrived.
There were still a few hours left until dawn, time left in which to snatch at some much-needed sleep. A rare advantage which he had over her, in fact.
Tomorrow, when she arrived, he would be well-rested and alert—and she would be coming off a long night of managing her club. It was to his benefit, then, that her schedule was so opposite his own. She would be tired, hungry—he would slip beneath her guard with her favored breakfast, lure her into conversation and learn what he could from the information she had collected.
She would be in his home, at her most vulnerable, and primed for seduction. Yes, tomorrow morning, Jenny would fall straight into his hands like a ripe peach. And with her books, she’d all but told him how to go about it.
Chapter Twelve
This was a mistake. Jenny knew it even as she slipped out the servants’ entrance into the greyish dawn light that spread itself over the city. A terrible mistake that might well end up costing her dearly. And yet, her feet moved of their own accord toward her own doom.
Was it possible for one to know a thing before it had happened? To see the future stretching out before oneself; every trap and pitfall laid out with perfect clarity? Why, then, was she taking no steps to avoid them?
There were just twenty paces between her door and his, and she counted each of them out in her head as if she were walking up a scaffold instead of crossing the mews. It had had to behim—perhaps the only man in all of England who could destroy her. And she had come anyway.
She was such a fool.
And still, her hand lifted as of its own accord as she paused outside his door, and rapped upon the solid wood. She would probably put her own neck into the noose when they hanged her.
The door swept open, and Sebastian loomed in the doorway.Loomed? No—it was simply that he was so tall. It was hardlyhisfault that she had to crane her neck up to look at him. He had left off altogether too many garments—he wore only a white linen shirt and a pair of brown trousers. No shoes; not even so much as stockings.
“Jenny,” he said, and his voice was warm and a touch rough—as if he had just rolled out of bed. “Come in.”
“You—you’re not dressed.”
“You’ve seen me in less.” It was practically a purr, thick as honey, and she felt her cheeks burning as bright a pink as her morning dress.
She slipped by him as he held the door open for her. “What sort of man sits naked before a window,” she grumbled. The hairs at the nape of her neck lifted as he stepped back inside and shut the door behind them, thesnickof the lock unnaturally loud within the otherwise silent interior of the house.
“One who knows a woman is watching.”
She was here onbusiness, and she would do well to remember it. Well, notbusiness, precisely, but certainly notpleasure. “Anyonemight have seen you. You ought to—you ought to keep your curtains closed.” She turned away, lingering in the small entryway. The house was not large, though it probably consisted of at least a couple of bedrooms. Still, it would be unbearably rude to go where he had not directed her, making free with a space that was not her own.
“Come,” he said, heading for the stairs. “I’ve been to the bakery already. Your profiteroles await.”
Good. She hadn’t managed to lay hands upon the time through the evening than to do more than nibble at anything—nor had she the inclination, with her stomach knotted with nerves. Though how she would manage to eat now, she hadn’t the faintest idea. Her stomach clenched still; not only with hunger.
Jenny followed him up the stairs, like a lamb led to slaughter, her heart racing in her chest. It was not a dining room to which he took her, but tohisroom—where she hesitated at the threshold, the ledger clutched in her hands.
“Well?” he prompted. “My desk is here. I thought we would work while you eat.” Itshouldhave sounded innocent, perhaps even industrious. She was certain he had meant it to. But it never could have, for all that he had, indeed, sat at one of the two chairs he’d carefully positioned before the long desk that took up most of the right wall—because his bed dominated the left.
