Page 27 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
She licked the back of her teeth. “I forgot to tell you. We had some work done on the house and now there is a properly plumbed commode on this floor. But it’s a little temperamental, you must remember to prime the water tank with two quick pulls. Wait ten seconds or so, and then pull slowly and firmly.”
Alas, her preamble, full of useful information, inspired in him not lust, but a richly layered doubt. His reply was guarded. “I see. Thank you.”
Silence.
And to think she’d left both her tea gown and her new stockings at Mrs. Watson’s, a stone’s throw and half a world away.
“I also have something else to tell you.”
“Yes?”
He didn’t look impatient, merely a little puzzled, as if he absolutely couldn’t fathom what else she could possibly have to tell him. And she, who had cackled with glee as she had penned her faintly smutty scene, and who had propositioned him time after time over the years, almost couldn’t go on.
She pulled a little at her collar. “I’ve decided that you’re right. It’s time for us to go to bed.”
“Ah,” he said.
What did thisahmean?
He set down the fireplace rake, nudged the brass candlestick on the mantel a fraction of an inch to the left, glanced back at her, who stood stock-still in the same spot, and said, “Well, aren’t you going to take off your clothes?”
Charlotte hadthe urge to throw something at him. A bag of feathers, perhaps. Or maybe a freshly baked bun. The rascal! She’d been about to doubt herself.
At the same time, she felt a bubble of mirth rise up, threatening to erupt into an unusually wide smile. So he was paying her back for the provocation of her little story, was he? She flattened her lips so she wouldn’t actually smile and said rather severely, “Well, aren’t you going to protest more?”
He raised a brow. “I can hardly protest when you haven’t done anything.”
True. Compared to sending him a mildly—all right, highly—erotic story via the Royal Mail, standing fully dressed in the middle of his room didn’t seem much of a transgression. Still, Ash, whose stick-in-the-mud-ness she had bemoaned for years, beckoning her towardgreatertransgressions?
True, the tea gown and the stockings had been explicit encouragements. But those had beenveryrecent developments and without quite realizing it, she was still expecting him to restrain her, rather than tempt her to do her worst.
His new attitude was novel, heartening,anda little unnerving.
She unbuttoned and shrugged out of her jacket.
“I’ve seen you quite a few times in a blouse and a skirt,” he said.
His tone remained unmoved, but his gaze slid down the length of her body—and then back up. When their eyes met again, his pupils had become darker.
Her heart beat faster. She discarded her blouse and corset cover. “How about now?”
The column of his throat moved. “I’m beginning to feel my... outrage rising.”
Outrage. Hmm, was that what rose on a man these days? She hooked a finger at him. “Don’t just stand there, young man. Come help me with my corset.”
His fingers closed around the candelabra on the mantel. “That is an unspeakable request, young lady. Is there a fainting couch in readiness for me?”
Decorously she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and patted the bed behind her. “Will this do?”
He left the mantel, his gait slow yet predatory, a panther prowling the jungle at midnight. She held her breath. She loved him in motion, all fluid, kinetic agility. But he stopped halfway across the room. “What if I don’t help you with your corset? Will you stop with this debauchery?”
“Hardly. I don’t need any help to remove my skirt. See?”
She wriggled out of her grey mohair skirt, stepped on the bed stool, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Many yards of fabric remained on her—corset and chemise, two layers of petticoatsanda pair of merino cool pantalets—but her reflection in the mirror appeared distinctly disreputable.
He tilted his head up a fraction of an inch. He’d always had dark, Byronic eyes. But in all their years of acquaintance, he had never considered her like this, a slight smile on his lips, and a heavy-lidded regard that was frankly... sexual.
“Looks like I may not escape fleshly corruption tonight,” he murmured.
