“Panic not, dear one. For now, I shall impatiently await your offering.”
“Aye, please.” Remaining seated, she shuffled her weight from hip to hip and awkwardly tugged until the dress slid beyond her posterior. Then she whipped it up and over her head as fast as humanly possible, mussing the prim knot she’d tamed this morning beyond redemption.
Emerging from the dark cocoon of her dress, Juliet was reminded of a chrysalis bursting forth into a splendorous butterfly—one with a slightly broken wing—and resolved to put aside any remaining reticence, to do away with her nettlesome nerves. If, as she was beginning to surmise, she’d found the man she intended to call husband, then did she not owe it to herself to enjoy the remainder of their “interview” to its absolute fullest?
Straightening her spine and swinging her head back like a sauce-box, she found his face through the screen. “There. It is off.”
He advanced two steps, then stopped, his nostrils flaring.
Could he, too, smell her desire?
Her eyes longed to drop below his chin; maidenly uncertainty held them in place. Despite her focus on that granite feature, with its chiseled indentation surrounded by a faint shadow of whiskers, she made out the massacre of his neckcloth, one long end swaying across an expanse of chest so broad—
She looked.
Looked and gasped. For not five feet from her, nearly bare, save for the rumpled silk bisecting it, was the finest example of manly beauty Juliet could’ve conceived. The lightly furred, ridged muscles stretching across and tapering down were sun-darkened. Just inside his hip bones, dual shadowed indentions disappearing into his buckskins tempted her fingers to learn his hidden secrets. The arms tensed at his sides were no different, sculpted shoulders and biceps beckoning her forward.
Oh, to have those arms wrapped around her, to be held against such a formidable display of strength and grandeur. To lay her troubles at his feet and have him slay dragons alongside her… Aye, this was the man she chose.
“And what”—her voice sounded hushed to her own ears—“shall I grant you in exchange for your neckcloth?”
“Your face,” Zeus told her, resolved. To be this hard, aching this fiercely for a wench he’d yet to see? One who’d led—nay, continued to lead—him on a dreadfully merry chase? “It’s the outside of enough, madam! I would see you now. Your face, your hair, your breas—” The word he hadn’t meant to utter aloud strangled off when she emerged from behind the screen.
More petite than he’d expected, given her force of personality, he struggled to take in everything about her at once. Critically so, for at first glance, Zeus feared he was doomed.
Doomed to crave her the rest of his days.
Her nose was too long, her chin too pointed. Lips too narrow. And eyes? Definitely too expressive. The blue-grey of a churning sky before a tempest, they matched the thunderous, late-day clouds pressing in beyond the raised windowpane. Blinking up at him with uncertainty and appreciation and desire…
Aye, definitely desire.
“Lady Juliet Ashland,” she said by way of introduction, curtsying with care. Twin spots of color blazed from her cheeks and she angled her head to hold his gaze while lowering her body. “I am honored to meet you, Mr. Tanner. Very honored.”
Despite features his analytical mind thought anything but perfect, she appeared perfectly adorable to him, her allure only enhanced by how she openly admired him, as though he, too, exceeded her expectations.
As his pride—among other things—inflated under her regard, two additional items registered at once.
First, that the glorious sunset hair, trapped in a disastrously uneven knot hanging near one shoulder, was the finest he’d ever seen, calling forth his fingers to ensnare themselves in it from here ’til infinity, and secondly— “Your leg! It’s splinted!”
In little more than shift and stays, she straightened and hobbled toward him, bracing part of her weight on a simple axillary crutch. “Glad I am to note your powers of observation.”
He strode forward and scooped her against his chest, the crutch crashing to the floor.
No sooner did it land than Jacks hollered through the door. “Milady? Has the bounder overstepped?”
“Have I?” Zeus inquired in a whisper, hefting her in his arms.
The color on her cheeks blazed hotter. “Nay.”
She threw her arms around his neck as he carried her to the settee, leaving Zeus confounded as to why she’d hide her person—when she possessed such a devilishly pleasing exterior—and speculating how soon he could taste the narrow, tremulous smile that tempted more than any lush pout.
“Milady?!” The manservant banged on the door.
“’Tis nothing!” she called out as Zeus carefully placed her upon the cushion. He fancied she stroked one hand down his bare chest before he stood upright. “Now leave off your duties for the night, Jacks! ’Tis an order!”
Zeus stepped back, rounding the low table. He had to because if he tasted her now, he wouldn’t stop until he’d licked all of her and his eyes weren’t done yet. Not even close.
“Lady Juliet, the honor is all mine.” He bowed, ridiculous with his neckcloth dangling before him, but necessary nevertheless, for here—despite the tangled hair and improper (no thanks to him) attire, despite the appalling habit of asking after his faults, despite the brazenness to trade clothes with a stranger—was the “lady” he’d never truly thought to claim for his own.
The one he couldn’t wait to make his.
“Z. J. Tanner, yours…” He returned to his full height, for once keeping his expression diffident. “Dare I hope for the rest of the evening, and possibly the rest of our lives?”
As if that reminded her of what brought them together, she nodded decisively and arranged herself, shift, stays and all, as demurely as any maiden. Cheeks still pinker than he would’ve predicted, given what she’d required of him so far and willingly forfeited in exchange, she captured his gaze and bid, “Please read your remaining character reference.”
“My what?” He couldn’t have heard aright.
“The character. From your mistress.”
“Read it? Out loud? To
