“If I do not?” she interrupted his tirade. “What then?” Her cheeks flushed again but this time ’twas not embarrassment nor timidity. No…’twas the flush of excitement, perhaps one of anger, that heated her skin and brought a spark to her eyes. “Perhaps I want to be treated as a female, as a woman, when we’re alone. No more, no less. What say you, Mr. Zeus Tanner?”
How could he say anything when some inner sense told him this was the first time she’d allowed her mouth to unburden her tongue?
“Would you treat a wife as one or the other but not both? Mayhap a lady”—the word dripped distain like venom from a viper—“thinks of her birth as blighted as you do your own, have you paused once to consider that? Mayhap a lady is trapped beneath both convention and propriety, strapped down by responsibilities and duty to those relying on her to the very detriment of her own self, her womanly self!” Eyes flashing fire, she pierced him with her sincerity, her wish to be anything other than what she’d been born—a L-A-D-Y.
Both hands flexed with the need to touch the womanly lady before him, but he restrained the urge. Crinkling the letter in one and tightening his grip upon the stocking with the other, he remained resolutely silent, resolutely in place, instinctively granting her the freedom she’d been denied previously, that of airing her grievances against the very sex that sought to dominate and control her.
“Have you ever, even for one second, given any thought to the plight of a young, aristocratic female, one locked by the unfortunate circumstance of her ‘exalted’ birth into a marriage—a union—not of her choosing? Well, by all that’s good and holy, I will choose this time!”
Though bridled (she’d not raised her voice sufficiently to reach beyond the confines of the room), her very intensity screamed at him, each syllable slamming into his ears, pounding through his blood, and settling into his loins, weighing his staff with desire, and him with the desire to answer her in kind—as a man, and not as her social inferior. Two human beings, one male, one female, choosing to forsake the boundaries and strictures of the world to which they both belonged in order to reach an accord, together.
In any other scenario, save this mad one she’d constructed amid solicitors and servants and shields, two strangers would never have such an occasion to talk and behave as freely, as scandalously, as they each continued to do so.
That he stood before her, both attracted and appalled, more riveted than repulsed, spoke volumes as to how badly he wanted her. Lady Juliet. Her fire, her boldness, her pointy little chin and plump little breasts. As her heat and vivacity continued to warm him, thoughts of revenge faded to the background; images of her, challenging his head and warming his bed, surged to the foreground.
“I will choose!” she repeated hotly. “Because— Because…” Her breath caught as a single, stifled sob worked free. Brandishing her arms in front of her as though warding off bad memories, she breathed deeply.
When her splinted leg shifted, tipping her forward, Zeus feared her balance was soon to follow. He jumped toward her to assist.
Shaking her head, she motioned him back.
After several inhalations, she regained the control she’d lost for so short a time. Pressing her spine into the settee, she speared him with her earnest gaze. “I will choose my next spouse because I refuse to live with doubt and fear and regret for the rest of my life. If this marriage scheme fails to procure me the right husband, it won’t be for lack of trying. Or for lack of trying something different! Now… I acknowledge that my request is beyond the pale, beyond the bounds of everything and anything considered acceptable on any level of society, but…but the dreaded…ridge above your…your…below your waist has captured my attention thoroughly and I crave the sight of you, yearn to see what manner of man you might be.”
As though acceding to her impassioned plea, the wrinkled letter drifted from his grasp.
To prevent its escape, Zeus tightened his stranglehold on the stocking. Too bad his mind had already flown the coop, his sane thoughts scattering like wayward chickens.
More like a cocky rooster, his damn cock only wanted to do her bidding.
She gazed up at him, enraptured, granting him a look of such pure adoration, Zeus had the ghastly feeling he could spend the rest of his life living up to the image of the man he could be in her sight but would never attain if he retained pride and walked away now.
“For God’s sake, stop looking at me like that!” Brains over ballocks, he chanted. Mind over mattress.
“I cannot help it,” she admitted with breathless abandon, motioning toward his randy rooster. “You appear so very…decisive where Letheridge was…was nothing but a wan imitation.” She lowered her voice as though confiding the veriest of secrets. “He really possessed a wimpy winkle, if you must know.”
A growl scraped up his throat. He didn’t. He didn’t need to know.
“Please?” So earnest, so innocently excited in her entreaty. As he stood there, wavering, her eyes grew big and round. “I have it! I’ll trade you my petticoats for a glimpse of your masculine protrusion,” she finished on an embarrassed, brazen whisper.
But Zeus could no longer appreciate her adorably inviting and horribly inappropriate offer. He was too busy appreciating the delicate length of leg visible beneath her shift as she hastily untied and shucked the layers of petticoats bound round her waist.
Allowing the last one to fall free on either side of her now discernible hips, she beamed up at him, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked. “There! I’ve
