Page 48 of The Bachelor
She was holding his hand. She was complaining about her suitors. He liked both things better than he should, especially after an evening of being forced to watch her dance with every fool in creation. Of fighting to keep his jealousy under control when all he wanted was to punch her partners in the face.
And thus prove to Fitzgerald that he was unequal to the task of spying on anyone.
Damnation! He had sworn not to become besotted with her. What was wrong with him? Heknewbetter. He had to be careful, had to not let her manipulate him into going along with her plans, whatever those were. It may not seem like it sometimes, butshewas not his employer. Thornstock was. And Fitzgerald, hopefully.
“Where are we heading?” he asked her, more gruffly than he’d intended.
“To the orangery.”
Relief coursed through him. He’d forgotten Beatrice’s mention of Greycourt’s orangery, a separate building that could be entered from the garden or the house.
“There, we can have both privacy and a nice stone floor on which to dance,” Gwyn added.
He groaned. The last thing he needed was privacy around her. His record on that score hadn’t been good so far. He didn’t know which was worse: being alone with her while taking her in his arms, or attempting to dance and falling flat on his face at her feet.
Still, God save him, the prospect of holding her for an entire dance tantalized him. Even knowing she was secretly corresponding with Malet didn’t keep him from wanting her. So he’d have to use their privacy to his advantage.
After all, two could play her game. She wanted to lull him into letting her do whatever she pleased? Fine. He would let her. It might be the only way to get to the bottom of what was going on between her and Malet. If he asked her flat out, she wouldn’t tell him. She’d already had ample chance today to tell him that Malet had corresponded with her. But if he strengthened their intimacy, she might begin to trust him enough to confide in him.
He snorted. Now he was lying to himself. Forget strengthening their intimacy—what he really wanted was tobeintimate with her. Even the thought of it made him hard.
Damn, they’d better reach that orangery soon, before they ran into one of her many suitors—or worse yet, one of her brothers—who might take note of the decided bulge in his breeches.
He needed to take his mind off desiring her. “So tell me, what are some of the other pieces of ‘balderdash’ gentlemen have ‘spouted’ at you this evening?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. My eyes are like emeralds—”
“They are.”
“And my lips are like cherries—”
“Once again, they are. So far, I cannot fault your suitors’ flatteries, which sound more like compliments.”
“Come now.” She eyed him askance. “You can’t tell me you would blather such unimaginative observations.”
“No, I would merely call you something ‘big and white and round.’”
“What are you talking about?”
He raised a brow. “This morning? When I called you Luna, goddess of the moon and queen of the stars? That was your response.”
She winced. “Oh, dear, that was very bad of me. And once I thought about it and realized you weren’t comparing me to the moon itself, I rather liked it. No woman should complain about being called a goddess and a queen.” Her voice turned acid. “It’s certainly better than being told I have lovely, childbearing hips.”
“Someone actually said that to you?” he asked, incredulous.
“While he was dancing with me. I swear it.”
He shook his head. “Even I have the good sense not to say something like that when trying to woo a woman.”
“I should hope so,” she said with a smile.
Her smile would melt stone, and he was not as immune to it as he should be.
They had reached the orangery now. She let them in by the garden door and hurried over to the stove that made the orangery cozy and warm even on a chilly spring night. Igniting a piece of kindling off the stove fire, she went around lighting candles. He would have preferred to be in the dark with her, but he didn’t want to alarm her by saying so.
Clearly nervous, she was chattering about the architectural wonders of the orangery—how Greycourt had replaced the slate roof with glazed glass and how he used stoves for heating it in winter rather than open fires because it was better for the oranges.
He barely heard the rest. He was too busy drinking his fill of her in a gown that was probably a bit fast for an eighteen-year-old but suited a woman of her age perfectly. Despite the virginal white, the bodice was seductive as hell, cut low enough to show the swells of her bosom. And it had this line of gold ribbon or embroidery or something that swept from just below her right breast—where the high waist was—down diagonally to end at the left hem of the gown, where it then circled the hem a couple of times.
