Bedding her was a secondary conquest now, falling behind the raging need to make her his in every way. To own her heart.
He could not quell the sound of self-disgust rising from his throat, half growl, half groan.
She paused, her fingers hovering over the keys as she glanced up at him. “Your Grace? Is something amiss?”
Yes. Hell, yes. Everything was amiss.
He was tired of staring at reports and pretending he gave a damn about them. He was sick to death of relying upon formality to control his need for her. Being shut up in this chamber with her, mere feet away and yet unable to touch her, was pure and utter agony.
He stood. “Something is indeed amiss, Isabella.”
She stood as well, her eyes framed by those sinfully long lashes that gave her an almost fey quality. “Have I displeased you in some way? The first report was rather cumbersome, and I needed to review it in its entirety before beginning.”
“There is nothing displeasing about you, Isabella Hilgrove,” he reassured her, his voice grim.
In truth, there was one displeasing thing about her—she was not kissing him. Mayhap two—she had invaded his space and yet remained hopelessly out of reach.
“Then do you wish to take a break?” Her eyes widened as he stalked closer. “I can ring for some tea if you would like.”
He would be damned if he would have her ringing for his tea as if she were his servant.
“I do not want tea.” What he wanted was her.
He had spent the better part of the last hour fantasizing about all the places he could have her in this very room. Upon his desk. She could ride him while he was seated in his chair. Against the bookshelves lining the wall. On the rug. The possibilities were endless. The torture was undeniable.
Her lips parted. It had been too long since he had kissed her. Days had passed. Days.
“I do not want tea either, Your Grace,” she said, her voice deliciously breathless.
She was not as unaffected as she pretended.
Thank fuck.
“Excellent.” Barely restraining the urge to pull her into his arms, he stalked past her. “Perhaps a break is in order, do you not think, Miss Hilgrove?”
And a return to the intimacy of the previous night would do as well. He despised calling her Miss Hilgrove. Hated this forced distance between them, both physical and emotional. But he could not linger upon that now.
Instead, he focused his mind upon the questions that had been eating away at him, along with the desire for her.
“Of course, if that is what you wish.”
Her voice was hesitant, with a questioning air now that had been absent before. He was behaving erratically and he knew it, but damnation, she did things to him. Things no woman before her had ever done.
He stalked to the window, pretending to peer into the London traffic beyond the gate surrounding Westmorland House. “Perhaps we might indulge in a little chat. What do you think, Miss Hilgrove? I confess, I cannot help but to wonder how it is you came to know Lambert.”
“We were both guests at the same house party one summer, many years ago now,” she said. “We spent a great deal of time together. I thought him charming and witty and so very sophisticated. We share a love of poetry, and later, he was kind enough to send me the book you discovered.”
Indeed.
Her ready response did not please him.
He turned back to find her standing where he had left her, beside the typewriter, her hand gracing the back of the chair she had so recently vacated.
“How did you come to be a guest at the same house party?” he asked, genuinely curious, trying to stamp the rest of her words from his mind.
“My mother was the youngest daughter of Sir Richard Bowdon. When she married my father, who was a tradesman, she was cut off from much of her family, including my grandfather.” Isabella’s gaze was unwavering, searing his. “Not all the Bowdons were willing to turn their backs upon her. Some invitations would arrive, usually for country house parties where our additions were hardly noticed. Father never accompanied us, wanting nothing to do with the quality.”
This news was surprising, though he supposed it explained rather a great deal about the enigma that was Miss Isabella Hilgrove. Her aristocratic connections were thin and limited, but she carried herself with the air of a gentlewoman, and her intelligence spoke for her. So, too, did her work ethic and stubborn insistence upon adhering to class differences make sense. Her father was a tradesman and her mother gentry. Their alliance could not have been easy, particularly if Isabella’s mother’s own father had cut her off.
“And yet he married your mother,” he could not resist pointing out.
A small smile flitted with her lips. “Theirs was a love match. He met my mother when she visited his London shop. He lost his heart to her the moment he set eyes upon her, or so he claimed. I tend to believe him, because Papa was not terribly softhearted. Mama and business were his two great loves.”
“What of you?” he asked. “Surely your father loved you as well.”
Her smile turned wistful. “He did in his way, I believe. But my mother’s constitution was quite frail. After she had me, they did not dare risk her having another child, lest she not survive. I do think Papa would have preferred me to have been a son, someone to carry on his shop. As it was, I had no heart in keeping it alive. When he died, I sold the shop and invested most of the funds in my typewriting school and my home.”
Now he understood her devotion to her typewriting school. Her association with Lambert made sense as well. However, he still did not know what Lambert had meant to her or what had occurred between them. He did not like to think
