Flirting With Fortune

After a rustle of fabric behind her, she felt the warmth of his bare skin as he drew a finger down the length of her jaw. He was cheating, taking off his glove like that.

“Such beautiful skin. As pure as silk and twice as soft.” Now he was using his most effective weapon—that mesmerizing accent of his.

Colin let his fingertip trail down the column of her throat and along the edge of her cashmere shawl. He pulled away, and she almost protested until his hands found her waist and slowly, inexorably, pulled her to him. When she was oh so lightly pressed against his chest, he leaned down and nuzzled the sensitive skin just below her ear.

Good heavens, she could hardly breathe and he hadn’t even touched his lips to her yet.

“I love how perfectly petite you are. You fit against me as if we were molded for each other. See how well my hands fit your waist?”

Yes, she did. His touch was still feather light, though, and she longed to feel him embrace her solidly, pulling her against him.

When his lips finally touched her neck, she sucked in a lungful of air, squeezing her eyes shut against the need to turn to him, to give him her lips and have him kiss her properly. Each kiss seemed lighter than the one before, so soft he could have been trailing her finest paintbrush across her skin. Even so, she felt every one through her whole body, as if a thread wound from each spot, and each kiss, each pull of the thread made her fingers and toes curl.

It was the sweetest torture she could have ever imagined.

“I swear, a stor, you taste every bit as good as you smell.” His whispered words were as sweet as a caress, and she bit her lip against the need to turn around.

His lips found her earlobe, a spot she had never considered anyplace of note. She was wrong. Lord have mercy, was she wrong. Of its own volition, her head tilted toward him, silently begging for more. He obliged, scraping the incredibly sensitive skin with his teeth.

And she was lost.

She turned to him, her arms wrapping around his neck as she pressed her lips hard against his. He didn’t hold back, didn’t torture her with any more featherlight touches. Instead, his arms went fully around her waist, pulling her to him so tightly that her feet left the ground.

She no longer felt the cold, no longer heard the birds or smelled the leaves. All there was in the world was the heat of his body, his scent, his strength, his soul.

By the time he set her down, they were both panting, leaning against each other as they tried to catch their breath.

After a moment, he sighed and smiled down at her. “Havers, lass, perhaps we should get back before I decide to whisk you away to Gretna Green and be done with it.”

She didn’t even try to stop the giddy grin that came to her lips. Yes, they should definitely get back, because at this rate, she might just let him.

* * *

She wasn’t going to make it. Yes, Beatrice knew that she should wait to tell anyone about the betrothal until Papa and Evie had been properly notified, but she was fairly dying with the need to tell someone about it. She couldn’t possibly share all that had transpired between her and Colin, but at least she could share her happiness.

Which, incidentally, was how she came to find herself being shown into Sophie’s drawing room the very next day.

“Beatrice!” her friend exclaimed, her dark, curly brown hair fluttering about as she rushed to greet her. She was as bright and sunny as her lemon-colored gown, holding her hands out in greeting. “I’m so glad to see you. I should have known you’d come the moment I laid eyes on it this morning.”

It? Beatrice came up short, all thoughts of her good news falling by the wayside. “Laid eyes on what?”

Sophie looked at her as if her dress were on backward. “Whatever do you mean, ‘laid eyes on what?’ What else? A Proper Young Lady’s Fashion Companion, of course. You must have seen the second letter that was printed there.”

How could she have possibly forgotten that it would be out today? It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had written the letter and drawn the cartoon. But, having already acted as though she had no idea what Sophie was talking about, Bea shook her head. “My copy must have been filched by my sisters. What does it say?”

Sophie gaped at her. “Truly? Do you mean I actually know something before you do? Gracious, what a red- letter day. And I can’t possibly do it justice from memory. Give me just a moment and I’ll go fetch it.”

She hurried away, nearly knocking over a spindly little side table in her haste. Red-letter day, indeed. Biting her lip, Bea settled on the settee beside the fireplace, extending her hands to the warmth. She couldn’t wait to see the next installment. She was doubly happy now that she had finished it while she was still so furious at Mr. Godfrey. With the sort of bliss currently flowing through her veins, she doubted she could have gotten across the force of her emotion on the subject.

The patter of Sophie’s slippered feet on the wood floor heralded her return. “This one is quite a bit bolder than last time—just wait until you see it. There is absolutely no possible way this isn’t Mr. Godfrey.”

She plopped down on the cushions beside Beatrice and thrust the magazine into her waiting hands. Ignoring the letter, Bea’s eyes went directly to the cartoon, which filled the entire lower half of the page. “I do believe you’re right,” she murmured, mainly because she could tell Sophie was waiting for her to say something.

“Of course I’m right—even a blind person could see the resemblance. Well, not a blind person, but certainly someone exceptionally shortsighted. His features are hardly even caricatured.” She swept a finger over the perfect likeness of his hair and facial features, all of which Monsieur Allard had painstakingly transcribed in the etching.

“Indeed,” Beatrice replied absently, studying the scene on the page before her. In it, two men were synchronizing their watches, all the while leering at a young woman standing nearby. The caption read, Give me three minutes to get her alone and then pretend to stumble upon us. By the end of the night, her dowry will be as good as lining my pockets.

“He must be absolutely livid to be represented this way. Do you think this is based on something that actually happened? Oh,” Sophie exclaimed, her hand going to her mouth as her eyes widened, “do you think the author is getting revenge? How utterly scandalous!”

“I don’t think it is so much revenge as the man getting what he deserved.”

Sophie’s brow knitted. “Isn’t that revenge? I mean, if he did something truly dreadful and the victim wanted him to be made to suffer for the offense, isn’t that actually the definition of revenge?”

She did have a point. “I suppose you are right. Well, if it is revenge, then I commend the author for using the experience for helping others.”

Sophie grasped her arm, leaning forward as if she had the most delicious of on-dits to share. “Did you hear then? About Miss Briggs?”

Drat it all, had she managed to miss two major events? This whole betrothal business seemed to be hindering her normal vigilance. “What happened with Miss Briggs?”

“Beatrice! You’re supposed to be the one who knows everything. I shan’t know what to do with myself if our roles were suddenly reversed. Although, if that were the case, then wouldn’t I already have known it to be so?”

“Sophie!”

“Sorry, sorry. All right, Miss Briggs. My sister—Sarah, that is; the others are much too young to have any good gossip—told me that Miss Briggs told Miss Chamberlain that she figured out from advice from the last letter that Lord Jenson was only asking the very highest dowered—is that a word? Anyway, he was asking only the ladies with the highest dowries to dance.

“Normally, she wouldn’t have minded such a thing, since she freely admits that her father hopes to purchase a nice title for the family, but she had actually quite liked Lord Jenson. Better to have seen his motives now than for her to have fallen for the man only to discover he was after her purse.”

“Are you telling me,” Beatrice said, trying to separate the meat of the story from all of her asides, “that Miss Briggs feels that the first letter saved her from the attentions of a fortune hunter?”

Sophie nodded, her brown eyes alight with the joy of having imparted information that Beatrice hadn’t