She directed a winsome smile at his cravat, and scurried away.
Gabriel shut the door and leaned against it, suddenly feeling as if he’d been released from some sort of velvet rope. A manacle chaining his body to hers. She could have walked him like a hound, and he’d happily submit to her leash.
She was going to destroy him. That’s all there was to it.
God. Why hadn’t he taken Raphael up on his advice to pay for a woman’s touch so long ago?
Regardless of what his face used to look like, he could have had a strumpet in the dark, he could have… done any sort of thing, really. And if he had, maybe the mere press of Felicity’s hand wouldn’t have him tied up in absolute knots.
He curled his fist around the ghost of her grip, savoring every whorl and ebb of gloveless fingertips.
“Cheever,” the trill of her sweet voice rang from down the hall. “Could I trouble you to check in on Mr. Severand? He’ll need to arrange for his things to be brought for an extended stay.”
“Of course, Miss Felicity, and I’ll set him a place in the servants’ hall for supper.”
“Actually, he’ll be joining Mrs. Winterton and me for dinner; we’ll have much to discuss.”
“Very good, miss.”
Could I trouble you… Who spoke to their servants in such a way?
Felicity Goode.
Looking around the guest room, he felt so strange… he was in her house. Inside the very place he’d watched for so long in the golden glow of the windows as he stood outside in the cold.
He’d have to remember not to get comfortable here. As soon as he put the severed pieces of the bastard who threatened her into the ground, he’d disappear.
All he had to do was keep himself from killing the lucky blighter she selected to marry.
Chapter 3
Many people had accused Felicity of burying her face in a book, but in this instance, it was true in the literal sense.
The search for her spectacles in the hothouse had been unsuccessful, and she hadn’t wanted to bother anyone else by asking them to hunt for her. She’d simply have to go to the optician and purchase a couple of new pairs.
When a delivery cart arrived with a few sparse trunks for her intriguing new employee, she did what any self-respecting lady of the house might do…
She hid in her parlor to avoid having to meet anyone.
As pitiful as she was, she could only summon strength for so many strangers in a week’s time, and Gareth Severand took up a lot of space. Not only in the physical sense, but also more indistinguishable ways. It was as though she could feel where he stood beneath her roof, like a shadow in the walls.
This awareness both enthralled and exhausted her, and she had to save herself for the torture that was tomorrow’s impending ball.
When her parents were alive, she’d not been allowed to read novels, so she and Mercy had sneaked them from libraries and friends’ houses.
But now she could keep them in the open on her very own bookshelves, and escape into the world of Fabian and Maryanne as they explored their passions on the high seas.
She draped herself on the chaise by the fire, one foot propped on the seat and the other on the floor as she reclined on a tufted pillow.
Even if she had recovered her spectacles, Felicity suspected she’d have held the book just as close to her eyes so her mind could absorb the words in a whisper. Each paragraph was so mortifyingly, titillatingly scandalous, she often had to peek around to make certain no one knew the debauchery in which her thoughts were absorbed.
Fabian, a reprobate and a pirate, was stalking the prim and proper Maryanne. Not cornering her, per se, but wickedly seducing her.
Relentlessly enticing her.
And even though he’d stolen her from her betrothed, the handsome but villainous Duke of Rottersham, Maryanne had just succumbed to Fabian’s ravishing kiss.
Felicity’s own lips parted as the scene came to life in her mind. A windswept sea. A man-o’-war bearing down upon the woman who would make this villain her lover.
And a kiss that was both forbidden and unholy, sealing their fates and their hearts together.
Every time Felicity encountered such a scene, her ever-tense muscles seemed to both awaken and melt. Inside, her body became both liquid and sharp.
Several sensations twisted inside of her all at once.
When Fabian ran his fingers over Maryanne’s lips, Felicity echoed the motion on her own mouth, tickling the edges of the sensitive nerves with her fingertip. Agitated, she drew her touch down her chin and the delicate skin of her throat, then fiddled with the braiding at her bodice, right above her tightened nipples.
Even her hair seemed to stand on end as she smoothed down the silk panels of her ribs, now lifting with the quickening pace of her lungs.
Her hand hesitated on her belly and her thighs clenched as she gorged on words both carnal and confounding.
Here the descriptions became flowery and opaque… the entire scene eventually fading behind a closed door.
The book mentioned that Fabian had used his hands and mouth to create inevitable spasms inside of Maryanne.
Inside? With his mouth?
Certainly, Felicity understood the allegorical depictions of carnality between men and women. The mechanics of it. She and Mercy had stolen numerous medical texts on anatomy from Titus, and then she’d done her level best to fill in the gaps with her own romantic literature.
But what did this mean? What could a man’s mouth do to a woman’s insides?
Perhaps she’d work up the bravery to ask Nora…
Except she didn’t want to picture any sort of wickedness between Nora and Titus. The very thought made her clap her hands over her eyes and groan with unnecessary chagrin. If Mercy were here, she’d be bold enough to
