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P.S. I know there is no accounting for taste, but from the soppy look he got in his eyes each time your name was mentioned, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that Lord Wennington sent those seeds because he likes you. Goodness only knows why.

She dropped the letter in her lap and shook her head. Just when she had thought her feelings for Guy couldn’t get any more complicated, the wretch decided to rescue her family behind her back and not mention it at all. Not even as a way to get his hands down her breeches!

How noble and utterly romantic was that?

Guy’s mother had placed Lottie at the other end of the dining table again, but each time their eyes had met, the unmistakable heat in hers wreaked havoc on his body.

He liked that she wanted him. Almost as much as he liked that she didn’t play games. He knew, just from the way that her gaze devoured him, that she wanted to finish what they had started this morning. That she wanted to touch him and wanted him to touch her—and the sooner, the better.

But imagining her as ripe and ready under the table as she had been this morning was not without its pain. Thankfully, his mother had placed Lady Lynette right beside him again and that alone kept stopping his pistol from firing and disgracing him beneath the tablecloth.

“Are you looking forward to our impending concert, my lord?” Guy offered the horrid woman a polite, noncommittal smile as he toyed with his trifle, wishing this interminable dinner over with so he could spend the rest of the evening with Lottie.

“Are there any particular tunes you would like us to play?” She touched his arm and that instantaneously did wonders to deflate his painful cock. “What is your favorite?”

“I’ll listen to whatever it pleases you to play.” It wasn’t as if he had a choice! He would be stuck there listening to it until the damned musicale came to an end to please his mother.

“Well… I thought we’d start with some Beethoven to wake us all up after this large dinner and then…

” His ears immediately tuned Lady Lynette out again.

She was wearing a gown cut too small to hold her copious breasts and, likely on purpose, a mountain of trussed-up cleavage spilled out of it which she accidentally touched often to attempt to draw his eyes there as she droned on.

They weren’t bad breasts. In fact, they were good enough that they might have impressed him two weeks ago, before he’d caught his first glimpse of Lottie’s by the pond.

But now that he had been fully converted to the small but oh-so-sensitive breasts camp, Lady Lynette’s bountiful charms did nothing for him.

Frankly, if Lady Lynette scooped them out of her bodice, laid them in his dessert plate, and smothered them in cream right this minute, he wouldn’t care.

But when he got his hands on Lottie’s later, he was keen to test his theory that she would climax just from having her breasts pleasured alone.

Then he was keen to test how quickly she would come when he pleasured her down there .

It seemed only polite after she had invited him to touch her there earlier.

He would start with his fingers and then use his tongue—

A pair of hands clapped in front of his face, snapping him out of the erotic fantasy.

“Come along, nephew!” His aunt was glaring at him and, to his mortification, while he had been wondering what Lottie would look like in the throes of Guy-induced ecstasy, half of the dinner guests had already left the table.

Including Lottie. “You are going to sit with me.”

That wasn’t in his grand plan for the evening. “But…”

She hooked her arm through his elbow and dragged him up. “Your mother is saving us three seats at the front.”

Like one of the condemned on their way to their execution, Guy shuffled into the next room where his mother sat beaming and beckoning.

He searched the rows of seats for Lottie, hoping she had found one in the back so that when he came up with a believable enough reason to excuse himself mid-concert, she could easily slip out unnoticed behind him.

Except Lottie had been commandeered by Miss Maybury’s mother and father and was seated, sandwiched between them, right in the middle of the middle row.

She shot him a frustrated glance as his aunt dragged him to the front, as unhappy about the situation as he was.

The universe was clearly plotting against them and at least another hour of sexual frustration loomed before him.

Except it wasn’t an hour because the dire musicale droned on for two. By which time Guy was ready to murder someone. But somehow, he managed to thank all the ladies for their performances, beside his insistent mother, before he was able to make his excuses and leave.

He shot Lottie a heated look and she shot one back, and was almost out of the door when Mr. Maybury collared him. “I had a special bottle of port brought from home for all us gentlemen to enjoy over our billiards tonight, my lord.” He tapped his nose. “Along with the finest cigars from Cuba.”

“Sadly, you will all have to enjoy them without me tonight, Mr. Maybury—with my complete blessing, of course—as I have an early start tomorrow and—” His blasted mother jabbed him in the ribs before she trapped his arm like a vise.

“But you can spare our neighbor half an hour after he has been so generous, can’t you, Guy?” It was more an order than a question because she was pinching the skin of his bicep hard. “You are the host, after all.”

“Well… er…” Out of the corner of his eye he watched Lottie get spirited from the room by his aunt Almeria. She twisted briefly and caught his eye, and he could tell by her expression that she wasn’t going to be allowed to escape anytime soon either. “Of course.”

And because the universe wanted to punish him some more, it was another hour before he could escape the blasted billiard room. But at least the rest of the house was quiet.

Guy quickly checked every single downstairs room he could possibly think of where Lottie might be waiting for him, from the library to the linen closet, but all to no avail, then had to conclude that she had gone to bed like everyone else.

But did she want him in it?

He pondered that conundrum as he readjusted the insistent bulge in his breeches for the millionth time before he jogged up the stairs.

Wanting some mutual touching and satisfaction was a long way off from wanting him inside her and he didn’t want to appear to be pressuring her into full-blown intimacies by knocking on her door.

But on the other hand, what if she was waiting for him too so that they could finish the mutual touching they had started to their mutual satisfaction?

Guy knew his way around a woman’s body but he had never understood how their blasted minds worked.

And he had no idea how to approach such things.

If he were Bill, he’d likely know precisely how to handle this situation.

Would know all the right things to say and would do it with such seductive, flirty charm he wouldn’t look like an idiot.

Guy, on the other hand, was in grave danger of looking like an idiot because, as he stood outside Lottie’s bedchamber, he was halfway to tongue-tied already and he hadn’t even knocked on her door.

Good grief, but he was pathetic!

Annoyed at the nerves that were getting the better of him, he lifted his hand to tap on her door and almost choked on his own tongue as it swung open and there she was.

Her golden hair hanging all loose and enticing, bare toes poking out from beneath the hem of her robe, and the sultriest smile he had ever seen on her lips.

“What took you so long?”

“I’m sorry… I…” What the blazes did what took you so long? actually mean in this context? “Mr. Maybury wanted to talk about the black rust on his wheat and—”

She grabbed a fistful of his cravat. “Just shut up and kiss me.” Lottie dragged his mouth to hers as she simultaneously yanked him inside.