Fact was, despite her off-putting fondness for onions, he’d often found her mouth worthy of appreciation (if not its very own sonnet), for she typically kept it open and active, chattering about everything yet saying nothing. He could spend two nights a week in her company and only be called upon to utter a handful of sentences per fortnight.
Add her lack of expectation for meaningful conversation to her lusty fervor for lovemaking and was it any wonder he’d made her his mistress a decade ago at the absurd age of twenty-one?
His long nap complete, Cy stretched and sauntered over, placing his ugly mug on the desk until he received the expected scratch behind his ears, then thanking his master with a sloppy bark. Daniel blotted the ever-present drool with the handkerchief he kept at the ready. He’d rescued the one-eyed mangy mongrel, now plump on doggie pudding and old age, when he’d caught the scarecrow of a pup being whipped for making off with the baker’s meat pasties. A coin flipped in his direction persuaded the baker to turn over the dog. A meat pasty in Daniel’s outstretched hand persuaded the frightened animal to follow.
It might have taken several years and several hundred hours to win the canine’s trust, but Daniel had accomplished the deed, and gladly. He had no use for those who beat others, whether they had four legs or two.
Cyclops gave a hearty whine and pushed past Daniel to nuzzle the drapes aside where he promptly pressed his nose to the windowpane, the unrelenting storm on the other side making a hash of the view.
Daniel frowned at the grey sky. I know, mate. I detest this weather too.
But he detested more the dance necessary to find a new mistress. Waltzing the pretty and paying glib compliments to secure a warm and willing body in his bed might prove to be his undoing. Of a certainty, contemplating it posed significantly more pain than Penry’s lightning jab, else he would have seen the task done before now.
Gad. Ten weeks.
His head clunked forward into his waiting hands. Ten blighted weeks equating to seventy long nights he’d palmed his staff rather than find another ladybird to do the job for him.
He scrubbed at his hair as though the friction would lessen the growing tension centered in his groin. Blast. If he chuffed his pipe any more frequently, he’d likely yank the thing off.
The momentary ease such release brought was just that—a few seconds’ respite from urges growing ever more insistent. A surging morning erection growing ever more persistent. “I need a woman.”
“Well, aren’t you the fortunate one?” A decidedly feminine voice jerked his head upright. “Just as you call out to the universe, I present myself in all my wilted glory.”
Raking his hair into some semblance of order, Daniel skewered his sister with a glare. He hated being caught unawares.
Beyond the glass panes Cy had revealed, rain drizzled freely and her fashionable attire did the same. The once pristine walking dress, made of the palest cream French cambric and complete with intricately fringed hem, was topped off with a fur-trimmed spencer in what was supposed to be a coordinating spring green. Wet, it looked more like something Cyclops had cast up after emptying one of Daniel’s snuff boxes.
What a decline for the costly toggery (he should know; he’d paid enough for it when she’d spied the plate in Ackermann’s and pleaded with him to have it made up). Evaluating it now, he doubted the finely woven cambric would ever return to its former, undrizzled-upon glory.
The delicate, coordinating parasol he’d commissioned as a surprise had obviously been a waste of his blunt—it was bound up tight, unused. Everything else dripped and sagged. Her once-new bonnet, her dark blond hair beneath. And the spencer’s fur trim? “You have a…dead ferret strangling your neck. What b-brings you here this fine spring…day?”
And damn him for remembering so much about ladies’ stylish apparel. Useless information, now that he’d seen his precious Elizabeth matched in a happy union.
All smiles and sunshine despite her disastrous, dripping attire, she swept toward him, pointing that conspicuously dry parasol his direction. “Ridicule all you want. It won’t do any good. I’m in a lovely state of mind and have no intention of allowing anything to alter it.”
She paused to scratch Cy beneath his chin when he bounded toward her. “And aren’t you the most remarkable boy?” Her shining eyes found Daniel’s. “Sometimes I forget how good he looks. In my mind, he’s still the scrawny bag of bones you described in your letters.” Elizabeth had only been in town a short while. Married in the country last fall, she’d spent the time since living on her husband’s estate and the majority of time before chained to their father’s.
When Cy began snuffing at her hand, Elizabeth laughed and returned her attention to the dog. “I do apologize, Sir Cyclops, but I don’t have any treats. Ann’s in the kitchen”—she mentioned her lady’s maid—“I wager she’ll sneak you a dollop of whatever’s to be had.”
“What he needs. Mmm—” Surprised rather than frustrated when his lips unexpectedly stuck together, Daniel faked a cough into his fist, and then finished, “More food.”
“What have you been up to? Providing Cyclops new toys to chase after?” Her tidying efforts complete, she straightened and grinned, her brown gaze fairly shimmering with joy. “Rain or no, it’s too glorious a day to shroud yourself up like this.”
Coming up beside him, she relinquished the frilly parasol and placed it square on his desk—still spring green, he idly noted, and not the muddy color of Cy’s snuff-induced cascade as was the rest of her gown.
He plucked at the parasol’s dangling fringe, as arid as a desert, and gave her sopping dress a speaking glance. “Useful item.”
“Stop that.” She slapped his hand away and smoothed the
