Page 6 of Buon Natale, My Wicked Rogue (Wicked Widows’ League #18)

“The Earl of Ashington.”

At the servant’s announcement, Angela sat her wineglass down. Her second glass in less than an hour.

The book that Lady Wyndam had loaned her remained face down in her lap, unread.

As he entered, she first noticed his expertly tailored suit.

The dark blue wool clung to his tall, elegant form, from his narrow hips to his broad shoulders, just as expertly as his evening suit had.

His frothy cravat and pale grayish-green satin waistcoat made his green eyes seem all the more vivid.

She sucked in her breath. He’d been handsome by candlelight, but in the sunlight streaming through the window, he was unequivocally gorgeous.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Berry.” His deep voice was smooth as silk and sent gooseflesh over her.

“Good afternoon, Lord Ashington. Won’t you take a seat?” She held her breath, anticipation prickling over her whole body, in hopes that he might sit beside her.

He sat in the chair opposite her settee. When she offered him coffee, her preferred beverage, he took a cup, sugar, and no cream.

She shuddered, unable to bear the thought of coffee without milk. She poured herself a cup and added a teaspoon of sugar and generous amounts of cream until the color of the liquid in the cup was a pale tan.

She lifted the cup to her lips and became aware of him watching her. She paused with the cup at her lips. “Pardon me, my lord?”

He arched one of those coal-black brows and grinned. “You take some coffee with your cream?”

“It is the only way to drink it.” And she took a deep drink, and he drank his coffee. He declined any of the macaroons. She ate one, for she loved these treats.

“Did you enjoy the Guy Fawkes celebration?” he asked.

“Yes, very much. It was very much like our Fourth of July celebration back home in Boston.”

“You Americans wouldn’t find the idea of blowing up Parliament too shocking. You’ve had your own tea party over taxes.”

“Oh, my lord, let’s not discuss politics.”

“What shall we discuss?”

“Did they catch the men who chased us last evening?” she asked.

His eyes widened just a fraction. And did his charming smile falter a bit? Caspita! She ought not to have mentioned something so serious. But sitting here with him alone, she’d grown nervous, like a schoolgirl. When pressed for a topic of conversation, her mind had frozen.

And she had wondered what had happened with the search. But perhaps they had not been caught after all, if his reaction was any clue.

“I wouldn’t worry about those men. They must have seemed quite menacing to you two young ladies on the road at night. However, they turned and ran when the driver fired his weapon in the air. Obviously, they were unarmed. I don’t think you were in any real danger.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure if she could agree with him. Perhaps he wasn’t the protective sort. Did it matter? She wasn’t looking to him for protection.

A hollow ache under her left breast startled her. But it didn’t matter that he wasn’t protective. At least, it shouldn’t. So, what was troubling her? Was it that the flip response reminded her of Jacob’s fecklessness?

Yes.

With a deep inhalation, she pushed the notion down and forced herself to smile.

“What is it, Mrs. Berry?”

She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

“Like last night, you are smiling at me, but it isn’t genuine. A lovely smile, to be sure, but it doesn’t reach your beautiful hazel eyes.”

A tingling roiled through her belly. A roil of dismay, not pleasure. It wasn’t pleasant to be read so clearly by him. Mrs. Wyndam said that the Earl of Ashington had much experience entertaining and pleasing women. That likely included a skill for reading their expressions and emotions.

Well, didn’t that show that he at least cared more about people’s feelings than Jacob had?

Perhaps.

“Sorry, Lord Ashington. I am simply disturbed that those men are still at large.”

That wasn’t a lie. She was troubled about that.

“Please call me Evan.”

She inhaled sharply at that. So, they were already on a first names basis?

And he was a nobleman. A curl of pleasure blossomed in her chest. All right, there was something about him being a nobleman that pleased her.

Her heart began to hammer against her ribs.

All right, she could also admit that it excited her that he was a nobleman. Quite a conquest for her first affair.

Her first affair? Were there to be others?

Let’s just see about this one first.

Her gaze fell to his mouth, noting again the sensual fullness of the well-shaped lips and then sweeping over his shoulders, his midsection, and downward.

Everything about him pleased her. He’d been created to be a sheer delight to a woman’s eye.

When she returned her attention to his face, his gaze bore into hers, knowing and hot. Heat blossomed in her stomach and slid lower. Her nipples tingled. She didn’t look away or attempt to hide her flushing cheeks or her growing arousal.

If he were to ask, in the nicest, most romantic way, to be her lover, she was sure she would say yes.

Oh, please don’t let him do or say anything crude or distasteful.

She couldn’t bear any further disappointment.

He placed his hand on her flaming cheek. She hadn’t noticed that he’d removed his gloves. Maybe he’d done that before entering the chamber. The shock of his bare, warm flesh against hers made her already tingling nipples draw into points and ache.

Such a pleasurable ache. Her mouth went dry with the excitement of the moment.

“Bellissima.”

He had decent pronunciation for an Englishman. That showed a thoroughness for details, did it not?

“My first genuine smile from you.” Warmth filled his voice.

She felt her mouth stretch wider, involuntarily responding to him as every other part of her seemed to be doing.

“And what a beautiful smile.” He removed his hand from her cheek and traced a fingertip along the edge of her jawline, then down along her neck to rest in the hollow of her collarbone. “Do you have any jewelry with you here in England?”

“I have a string of pearls.” She had left her wedding rings at home in America.

“Hmm.” He caressed his fingertip back and forth along her collarbone. “A string of pearls just as modest and drab as the rest of your wardrobe?”

“Pearls cannot be called drab, no, my lord.”

“Evan.”

“They cannot be drab, can they, Evan?”

His grin made her catch her breath. “What is it?”

“I like hearing you say my name. Few people call me by my name, and none say it as lovely as you do.”

“I hear that you have many, many women. Surely, they call you by your given name.”

His eyes widened. “Many, many women, eh?”

“So, I have been told.”

“Lady Wyndam has been telling tales. I take it.”

“She says many ladies have sung your praises.”

“She flatters me.”

“I wonder.” She rolled her eyes, and he chuckled softly. “Surely, such contented ladies called you by your given name?”

“Most have called me Ash. It is what I am known by to most people.”

“Why didn’t you ask me to call you Ash?”

“I am not sure why not.” He traced along the lace collar of her day dress, right below her collarbone. Their bodies were somehow closer now. “I think I wanted to hear you say my given name.”

“Oh.” She heard the delighted wonder in her voice, the delight she couldn’t and didn’t want to hide from him. “Why do you think pearls are modest and drab?”

“Lady Wyndam says that she will invite you to the Widows’ League Christmas party. Are you going to accept?”

She nodded.

“Then you will need something sparkly and expensive for your lovely neck. You’re going to need some pretty frocks to wear in the evenings.”

“How tedious and ostentatious that sounds.”

“I know. You are so ravishingly beautiful.” He resumed tracing her collarbone with his fingertip. “You don’t need embellishments.”

“You think not, eh?”

“You know it is the truth, Bellissima.”

She wasn’t so foolish that she’d play coy about the topic. She’d known since she’d left the schoolroom that men found her attractive.

“However, these things are necessary in the world you are about to enter.” The assessing way he was staring at her made her consider what he might really think of the issue.

“You don’t really feel that way. You want to see me in those jewels and clothes?” He was the same as every other decadent nobleman, was he not?

Again, the heart-stopping grin. “Yes, I’d like to select those things and see you dressed up in them.”

“I knew it.”

“Then I’d love to strip you out of them and have you bared for my pleasure.”

She caught her breath. That could have been a very crude thing for him to have said. And it was likely too early for him to have said it, even for potential lovers such as they had become.

But the smooth, sensual timbre in his voice made the words a caress and a high compliment. Like the burn of good Kentucky whiskey, rude but stimulating.

“You’ll need a skilled dresser who can style your hair to match the other ladies.”

“Now we’re judging my hair, are we?”

He touched the mass of ringlets at her nape and traced the circlet of yellow primroses and vines at her crown. “This is very artful. Did Lady Wyndam’s lady’s maid arrange this for you?”

“Yes, Lady Wyndam insisted on it.”

“Your hair is as gorgeous as the rest of you. But you are too conservative in the way you dress it. Let Lady Wyndam find you someone to take to the house party who can guide you in what is customary and what is not.”

“You certainly believe in seeing to the fine details.”

“I don’t want you to feel out of place. I want you to enjoy yourself.”

“Yes, I see.”

“And I love seeing a beautiful woman well-coiffed and beautifully dressed.”

“For the reasons you mentioned before, for the undressing and unwrapping and all that.” She waved her hand, lifting it into the air.

“Yes, now you understand. It is like receiving a beautiful gift and unwrapping it.”

So, he really was shallow in his way. And quite boyish. She didn’t like how the realization put a hard little knot in her belly.

And she didn’t want to admit her disappointment.

She was here to have some adventures and to enjoy herself.

She wasn’t looking for anything deeper. It didn’t matter if he was cocky or shallow.

He was also deliciously handsome and sensual and amusing.

So, she pushed the feeling away and allowed him to draw her close into an embrace.

“Let the days until December twelfth pass quickly,” he murmured with his lips pressed into her hair, near her ear with the warmth of his breath tickling her earlobe.

That night, Angela listened to the clock downstairs chime twice. She reclined in bed, watching the shadows that the tree made on the walls as the wind gusted outside. Raindrops pattered on the window. The weather outside was just as turbulent as her thoughts.

He wanted to be with her at a grand party full of aristocrats.

Yet, he hadn’t even properly kissed her.

She had wanted him to kiss her. Very much.

The arrogant jackass hadn’t even attempted to kiss her.

And here she was going along with what he wanted and the pace at which he wanted. Going along with what everyone else wanted. All her life, others had tried to make decisions for her.

When she was eighteen, a man twenty years her senior, one from her mother’s opera troupe, asked for her hand in marriage.

Her father, a man she had never even set eyes on, had already settled a respectable dowry on her.

And she knew that her mother, the great opera singer Maria Breda, and this man were in league to get their hands on her dowry.

How fortuitous it had seemed when she had met Jacob, a visitor to Italy, and that she had fallen in love with him.

When he asked her to run away with him and marry him, she explained that she would void her generous dowry.

Jacob had scoffed and said he and his family were wealthy and would not need her dowry.

She had loved him all the more for this and thrown caution to the wind and become his bride on the voyage to America.

The decision had turned out to be less than desirable, no?

But she had met his father and known a father’s love for the first time in her life.

She had learned how to keep accounts and manage an extensive network of storehouses.

Eventually, he had instructed her in the finer nuances of investing.

For those reasons, her marriage to Jacob could not be called a complete waste of her time.

And it had been her decision. She had taken the reins and asserted her will in the situation. Well, this affair with the Earl of Ashington should be no different. She would not obediently wait to attend some gala event so he could show off his latest conquest to his world.

With that, she threw back the quilts and left the bed. She wrapped her robe around herself in the chill, went to the writing desk, and lit the candle. She knew just what to say and dipped her quill with determination, then wrote quickly with a flourish:

Lord Ashington,

I am looking forward to attending the Christmas ball with you.

However, I would like to get to know you better beforehand.

I desire to be courted by you, but not under so many watchful eyes.

I am certain that a gentleman of your skills can arrange a place of privacy for us to get to know each other intimately.

Angela

For a moment, she stared at the page, seeing the truth of her own desires in black ink upon the cream-colored parchment.

Her heart beat a little faster, partly from trepidation at her boldness.

She drummed her fingers on the desk with a sense of rising pleasurable anticipation.

It felt good to assert herself with this powerful English gentleman, especially one who had so bluntly made several demands of her.

She folded and sealed the parchment.

Well, let’s see how he responds to this.