“I think your husband was the worst of men. A hard-arsed, bracket-faced buffoon. A reprobate and a bastard in the worst possible sense.” As though stunned by hearing the oaths spewing from his mouth, Mr. Zeus Tanner tensed his jaw, inclined his head in a brief bow. “Forgive me. I think, regardless of whatever experience you claim to have, you’ve never been bedded properly.”
“And you know how to do that? Bed me…properly?”
His head came up, eyes flashing fire. “I most certainly do!”
“Please go on.”
“With…bedding you?” he said raggedly.
Juliet gave a negative shake of her head. “With your reading.”
She thought she heard him mutter “I’d rather get right to the bedding” before he plainly said, “In truth, I’ll do most anything to postpone finishing this letter.”
“Most anything?” Juliet sought confirmation. Dare she ask what kept crossing her mind? Oh, it was too brazen by half! Wivy would be aghast to learn Juliet risked her already shaky reputation (ruined by running the advertisement in the first place, according to Wivy) to request such a thing.
Who says Wivy must know? She’s not here any longer, now is she?
But you are. And he is.
And oh, merciful heavens, he was so very big and brawny, his powerful muscles so spectacular. His sun-lightened hair and sun-darkened body the complete opposite of Leth’s scrawny, whey-toned self and slouchy stature.
“Aye,” he said assuredly, likely having no clue what manner of wicked thoughts now danced temptingly through her head. “You’ve already tested my mettle with your higgledy-piggledy array of questions, my taste buds with your huckster of a scone and my patience with your confounding ability to prevaricate. Why not test me further?” He ended on a relaxed laugh. “What would you have me do? Or answer? Though my current ensemble is certainly not fit for king nor court, I remain most courteously at your service.”
His glib-tongued wordplay tempted a smile, but the compulsion to see more of him stript to skin prevented her from responding in kind. “Would you…”
“Would I what?”
“Would you…mayhap…consent to… Oh blazes! Forget I asked. Or didn’t ask.” She huffed a sigh. “I pray you will forgive the interruption. Now do go on with her letter.”
“No. I want to know what you want of me.” Anything to avoid completing the dreadful letter. Only the sheerest of will allowed Zeus to refrain from crushing it in his fist. “Would I…what? Come now, if we’re seriously contemplating a union between us, should there not be freedom to speak? Regardless of topic?”
“Aye, I would wish for that as well. Though I confess it is not a freedom that’s been granted me in the past.”
“I am granting it now. Inquire away.”
Again she hesitated, her eyes skittering like a scared rabbit, jumping all over the place but returning time and again to the area below his waist. The area that, despite his best efforts, kept responding to her undisguised interest. “Lady Juliet?”
In a hushed voice, she quickly sped through, “Would you perchance show me your male part?”
The silence after her whispered request weighed on him like a quarry full of stone, slowing his thoughts, stalling his response.
Zeus was hard-pressed not to snap his fingers in front of his ears, to test their acuity. To bang a flat palm upside his head. Had he heard her aright?
As if to tell him he had, the far-off grumble of thunder reached his awareness easily enough. It sounded like encouraging applause. And why should that surprise him? The Baseborn Bastard and Lady Scandal were putting on a grand show.
“Did you not hear me?” She blinked up at him with equal parts sincerity, curiosity and, it looked to him, pure mortification. “Could you be persuaded to lower your buckskins and show me your…your…”
“My male part,” he choked out, finishing what she couldn’t bring herself to utter a second time. “Aye, I heard you. I’m just attempting to ensure I understood. You…want…” He spoke clearly and plainly—possibly to shock the little she-devil clear to her toes? “To view my dirk? My cock? Now? Here? Have I got the right of it?”
“You do indeed.”
As that unruly appendage responded to her honest, if outrageous, request and his mantra changed from brains over ballocks to ballocks for brains, Zeus actually debated showing it to her. “Are you insane? Bound for Bedlam on the next cart out?” he asked, his dismay not fabricated in the least, trying to convince them both just how asinine this was. “Am I? For still standing here—like this?”
Arms spread wide, with the blighted letter clenched in one outstretched hand, her pale stocking dangling from the other, and his silk neckcloth waving in front of his nude chest like a white flag of surrender, Zeus wanted to deliver a sharp slap to his deuced responsive male part, chastise it into calming down. Better yet, deliver several sharp slaps to her posterior to punish her for being so positively enchanting and without guile or guilt. To ask such a thing! And of a stranger!
Instead of administering that well-deserved smack to either his person or hers, Zeus waited…wondered…willed himself to ponder…what might Lady Scandal do next? “At least you’re living up to your name, I’ll give you that.”
Her lips pursed and she sniffed as though something soiling the very air she breathed wafted in front of her nose. “There’s no call to be disparaging. I—”
“I meant it as a compliment.”
“You did?”
4
Magnificent Protrusions & Manly Paraphernalia
A compliment?
Hell if he knew anymore. About any of this. “Aye, I did. I like your gumption, woman—and before you reprimand me for any perceived slight, I know full well the honor you do me, reflecting upon my suit. It escapes me not that your inherent place in society elevates you so far above my reach you might as well reside in the heavens. As a man of no birth, no military accomplishments and nothing to recommend him save several heartfelt references and my own desire to claim your hand,
