Page 40 of Lord Ashley's Beautiful Alibi
“Noon, then?” He reached out his hands.
She took them, needing every minute with him she could grab. “Come for breakfast.”
He snorted. “Twelve it is.”
“When you come tomorrow, will you have details on what we do? How? When we go?”
“I will try. I promise nothing. This is complicated, Augustine.”
“Gus.” With what they had shared here, he must call her as she was best known to herself. It was the mark of friendship, yes? “Those who are my friends and family call me Gus.”
“Gus,” he uttered as if it were the most delightful thing he’d committed to memory since his own name. “Tomorrow.”
By his very regard of her, she stood bedazzled. “You’ll tell me.”
“Anything you wish to know.”
“Because we are friends.”
“Above all.”
Chapter Ten
Kissing Ashley lastnight was not what she had expected.
Gus rolled to her back, arms out like a human sacrifice on her massive bed, and grinned. Certainly, kissing him was not what she had wanted to do.
But then the feel of his lips on hers had brought an explosion that felt like lava. Fierce, uncontrollable. She narrowed her eyes on the view of thetrompe l’oeilpainting on her ceiling. Hades absconding with Persephone.
Hmmm.
The Earl of Ashley was not chasing her. The difference between him and most men at this court had struck her from the start. True to his calling, a man of delicate sensibilities, even if he appeared to be as formidable as a fortress, he was a man she could admire, even cling to. And if she were not careful, when she kissed him again—for she had to—she could get lost in him. A man of finesse and diplomacy with lips that laughed and bewitched.
She would be careful. Rational.
Their kisses on the Malmaison road were that of desperation on his part and shock on hers. Even desire. No wonder she had felt compelled to sink her teeth into him.
She slapped a hand over her mouth and chuckled. Love at first bite, it was not. More like fascination at first taste.
And then, because she told herself to forget the saboteur on the road, she had parted with him but had, in truth, never erased him from her reverie. Then he reappeared like a genie from a magic lamp.
Ashley. An earl. A diplomat. An exquisitely built mountain of a man who kissed like a lover.
“As if I know what that is!” she whispered to herself.
Her only kisses had been the barbarous press of Pascal Moreau’s wet lips to her that night he’d tried to rape her.
She curled up into a ball and buried her face in her pillow.
Ashley’s kisses were no comparison to that brute’s. “Even in the road, his lips were…”
Tender. His of last night were the stuff of—could she dare name it?—rapport. More, actually. Camaraderie.
Ah! Like a military pal.
How complimentary, Gus!
She threw back her covers and sat up, disturbed but rejoicing in the results. All evening long, she had avoided—but relished—the sidelong glances sent her by those at the salon. Ashley and she—by those kisses and minutes on the veranda—were officially entangled. Those who mattered here knew it. Even Vaillancourt had absorbed her with his dark, malicious eyes as if he had always known she could be seduced.
