Page 12 of The Defiant One
"You seemed rather upset that I . . . shall we say, stretched the truth about your experiments, so I took it upon myself to issue her an invitation to Blackheath just to set the record straight."
"Lucien," gritted Andrew from between clenched teeth, "I am perfectly capable of handling Lady Celsiana Blake without your assistance."
"Yes, why don't you? Handle her, that is. She and her brother are in the Gold Drawing Room awaiting you."
"Gerald is in the Gold Drawing Room awaiting him," snapped a tart female voice from the doorway. "I am not."
"What are you doing here?!" shouted Andrew, bolting straight up in bed, which, given the fact that he slept without a nightshirt, without a cap, without anything, in fact, save for the auburn hair that curled crisply on his chest, was a mistake. Lady Celsiana Blake got an eyeful of bare skin, sinewy arms, and a lean, flat belly laddered with hard muscle.
"A servant brought me up!" she cried, staring at his chest and blushing furiously.
"Here?"
"The duke said I was being taken to your laboratory!"
"Damn you, Lucien!" roared Andrew. "What the bloody hell is the meaning of this?"
Lucien's casual cross-armed stance, his innocent expression, never changed. "Really, Andrew. I do wish you'd watch your language. There is a lady present."
"Not anymore there's not!" Celsie raged, and jerking her chin up, turned on her heel and marched down the hall in a rustling fury of agitated skirts and petticoats.
"Ought to go after her, I think," mused Lucien. "She's probably heading for your laboratory . . . Wouldn't want her to find any animal experiments going on, now, would we?"
"You cursed bastard!" Leaping out of bed, Andrew swept up a blanket, wrapped it around his hips, and ran barefooted down the hall in pursuit of his visitor.
Celsie was halfway down the hall when she heard him pounding after her. She picked up her pace, turned a corner, and whirled, her face flushed with fury and embarrassment as she confronted the source of her distress. "Don't your servants even know the way around your house?" she howled. "Your brother said the servant would bring me to your laboratory! That was no laboratory, that was your — your —"
"Bedroom!" Andrew shouted, equally furious.
"I have never been so humiliated in my life!"
"Well, don't look at me, I wasn't the one who invited you into my blasted apartments!"
"Had I known they were your blasted apartments, I would never have set foot in them!"
"And yet you would have set foot in my laboratory? Without my express invitation?"
"Your brother said I could inspect it!"
"My brother be damned! I don't want you or any other nosy, annoying, interfering, female in my laboratory!"
"What, do you have something to hide?" she challenged.
They stood glaring at each other, Celsie quivering with rage, Andrew's fists clenched and his eyes blazing. Celsie tore her gaze from his face. But instead of landing on a place of safety, it fell to his magnificent chest, rising in a perfect inverted triangle of lean muscle and male strength from the blanket wrapped around his hips. Appalled, she jerked her gaze up, and saw instead a clenched jaw cloaked with dark auburn bristle; a set, angry mouth; and rich, sleep-tousled hair that gleamed like burnished chestnuts in the light coming in from the window.
"Oh!" she cried, and ripped her gaze from his face.
Instead, it dropped to his feet. His bare feet, with their bare toes and their bare ankles and their bare calves, which were, like that splendid, oh-so-manly chest, sparsely cloaked with auburn hair.
"I'm leaving," she announced, doing an about-face and storming off down the hall.
Andrew marched right after her, his long shadow completely dwarfing her and the path ahead of her so that she could not escape it no matter how fast she walked. "Good."
"I knew I should never have come here in the first place!"
"You are entirely correct, you never should have come here in the first place, and at such an ungodly hour, besides."
She spun around so fast that he collided with her chest. She shoved him away. "What do you mean, ungodly hour? It's nearly noon! How was I to know that you sleep the days away? Do you practice your evil experiments by light of the moon, then, so God himself can't see the wickedness that you're up to? Do you?"
