Her voice, however, gave away the lie in her words. She was breathless. Her eyes dipped to his lips. She felt the same need as he did, he would vow, burgeoning, or so it seemed, by the second.
“Do you not, Miss Hilgrove?” he asked slowly, his head lowering toward hers.
He was far taller than she, and how he appreciated the disparity in their heights. She felt like something small and precious he wanted to tuck up against his chest and run away with. Straight to his bedchamber.
She said nothing, her resistance wavering before him. He could take her mouth and she would be willing and complicit. Perhaps he could take her, even.
But he would not. There was something intensely delicious about skirting the periphery of the profane with this woman. About teasing a lapse in propriety, an abandonment of judgment, of being reckless and wild and wanton. Luring her into the same. And then stopping, just short of consummation.
“Have you nothing to say, my dear?” he mocked gently. “Your tongue is so often quick to flay me, and yet you remain strangely silent.”
Damn it, he did not want to think about her tongue or what else it might do to him.
His boldness appeared to shock her from the almost trance-like state into which she had fallen. She blinked, those impossibly long, dark-gold lashes fluttering over the brilliance of her eyes. “Do not toy with me, Your Grace. I am not the mouse to your cat. If you think to win this wager by flustering me, or by luring me into indecency, you are bound to be sorely disappointed.”
Good God, how he wanted to feel her lips beneath his, her body curved against him. His hunger for her was all-consuming. He could almost taste it.
He straightened and stepped away from her, forcing himself to break the heaviness of the moment. To split the desire vibrating on the air in twain. He could not afford to dally with her, he reminded himself sternly. No matter how delicious the prospect.
No matter how tempting the notion of luring her into indecency, as she had phrased it.
“If I were toying with you, my dear Miss Hilgrove, you would know it,” he told her.
And then he forced himself to turn away and go back to the seat he had vacated behind his desk, as if he were not currently plagued with an erection to rival Priapus himself.
Bloody fucking hell. How was he going to survive six more days of such torture?
How could she possibly withstand six more days of working in the same room as the Duke of Westmorland? Isabella just barely contained a sigh as she made her way through the sprawling townhome that was large enough to fit four modest-sized homes within it. The busts in the picture gallery fixed her with sightless stares of condemnation, as if they could see into the wickedness deep in her soul.
Was this unwanted, unexpected reaction to the duke why good women fell? Why Eve had taken a bite of the forbidden fruit? Isabella was no naïve young miss. She was seven-and-twenty years old. She had believed herself impervious to such wretched weakness where men were concerned after Henry.
And yet, Isabella had been tempted to kiss the Duke of Westmorland. Tempted to press her lips to his, to give in to the presumptions he had made about her—namely, that she would succumb to his handsome looks and forget all about her devotion to her cause. Which she had not done, thank the Lord.
But not for lack of wanting, much to her shame.
Her attraction to him was so potent, unlike anything she had ever felt before. For those few moments when she had been trapped in the spell of his proximity, she had felt not just a deep, intense connection, but an awareness. A simmering crackle that had settled all through her, overwhelming her sense of right and wrong. Overpowering the need to win this wager and obtain his endorsement for her fledgling school.
Until he had abruptly put an end to it, before she could discover just how deep the reserves of her foolishness ran. With a grim sigh as she descended the staircase, holding on to its ornately carved, polished rail, she admitted to herself that her reserves were, quite possibly, shockingly endless after all.
It hardly made sense, the way he made her feel. She did not like the dratted man. Not one whit. He was arrogant and overbearing and cold. He had dismissed three of her best typists without good reason.
He was also handsome and tall and he smelled delicious.
On the last thought, she stumbled and nearly went cartwheeling down the steps in an undignified heap. She saved herself at the last moment by catching the polished wood rail in two hands, but not before her heart leapt with calamity in her breast.
“Isabella, do wait!”
The exclamation, made from above, had her halting, embarrassment causing her cheeks to tingle. She glanced up to discover the duke’s sister on the floor above, having likely born witness to her nearly humiliating tumble down the grand staircase.
And all because she had been so preoccupied by her thoughts of him.
Westmorland.
She thought of how he had invited her to call him by his title alone, and heat flared in her belly. Heavens, she needed to regain control of her faculties. This was nonsense.
The duke’s sister rushed down the stairs, still wearing her trousers and bold scarlet bodice. “Where are you rushing off to in such a hurry, my dear? I do hope Benny was not a bear today.”
Benny.
The sisterly sobriquet forced Isabella to tamp down an injudicious burst of laughter at how far the duke who had seduced her with a mere look earlier was from the adoring brother.
“His Grace was most polite,” she lied, gritting her teeth as she thought of how near he had come. Of how he had lowered his head until their lips
