She’d toyed with using a pseudonym and abandoned the idea. It was hard enough playing the strumpet’s part, however temporary. Lord Ashcroft addressing her by another woman’s name when he took her would shatter her.
“Just Diana?”
“Yes.”
He wouldn’t recognize her family name even if she had any intention of providing it. Once this was over, she planned to disappear without possibility of discovery. Although a man like Lord Ashcroft had no need to pursue a reluctant lover. He’d quickly find another warm body to fill any vacancy in his bed.
Now she sat before him, it was more difficult to treat him as the cipher he’d become in her mind. The jade eyes were beautiful, startling in his saturnine face. His nose was long and haughty. His brows were straight and black as sin, like the thick hair tumbling over his high forehead.
Like his heart, something in her whispered.
He was handsome. She’d known that. She’d seen sketches of him in the papers. But nothing readied her for the magnetic attraction of those intense, masculine features. Or the vibrant sexuality emanating from him like a low incessant hum.
She’d prepared to deal with a weakling, a victim to his vices. If that was true about Tarquin Vale, it didn’t show in his face. For a terrifying moment, she doubted all she’d heard about this rapscallion.
He looked a man of experience. He looked, to her astonishment, a man of judgment. He looked, curse him, anything but bowled over by either her brazen offer or her rustic attractions. Her unformed, hopelessly optimistic ideas about bringing the Earl of Ashcroft under her spell and keeping him there faded like mist under hot summer sun.
This man, she could already tell, did nobody’s bidding. Unless it fitted precisely with his own inclinations.
“So we’re to be strangers in every sense except the carnal?”
She forced herself to maintain her role. “I seek pleasure. Experience. I seek knowledge from a man who knows his way around a woman’s body. Memories to warm a cold, lonely night.”
“Quite a responsibility.”
To her surprise, she found herself releasing a breath of laughter. “I’m sure you’ll rise to the occasion.”
His arched eyebrows acknowledged the unintentional double entendre. She blushed and hated herself for it. She needed to appear sophisticated and confident.
“So what’s in it for me?”
She bit back an urge to tell him in the bluntest terms. She hadn’t expected to have to plead her case. In her wilder imaginings, she’d expected him to drag her off to a bedroom the moment he saw her. Or shove her down onto the carpet.
So far, her imaginings had caused nothing but trouble.
So what was in it for him? “A cooperative, undemanding lover.”
A superior smile curved that expressive mouth. “Cooperation I’ve already got. And believe me, I insist upon a demanding lover.”
Curse him and his word games. She tried to sound seductive. Even in her own ears, she didn’t succeed. “I offer you an adventure. I offer you something outside your usual pastimes.”
The smile didn’t waver. “And of course you’re completely familiar with my usual pastimes.”
How did a lady convince a reluctant gentleman that she belonged in his bed? With every moment, Diana edged further and further away from what she knew.
“I’ve heard the gossip. A chaste female has the advantage of novelty. Especially a chaste female who makes no call upon you apart from sexual congress.”
He released a short laugh. “I’ve had the best. What makes you think a chaste female will hold my interest?”
She quashed a twinge of pique that she had to draw in this buyer like a costermonger selling apples by the roadside. “Then take up the challenge of transforming a chaste female into a wanton.”
His bright green gaze turned speculative. “Ah, now that could be interesting.”
Diana’s shoulders tightened as she made herself ask the one question that mattered. “Do you accept my terms?”
Another of those electric silences fell. Bristled. Extended.
Lord Ashcroft tapped his fingers together in a considering gesture and surveyed her with glinting jade eyes. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Automatically her hands curled around the pearled reticule in her lap. She tensed as she awaited his answer.