He grimaced. “I like it too well, as you know.”
“Good.” Her smile conveyed something of the cat in the cream pot. He loved this new sensual confidence.
“Then show some mercy.”
With a gesture that made his heart slam against his chest, she flicked a drift of golden hair behind one shoulder. He only released his breath when her attention shifted to the books he’d removed from the shelves. “Have you found anything interesting?”
Right now, she was the only thing in all the world that he found interesting, and he suspected she knew it. But he seized the chance to discuss a more neutral topic than how she looked wearing nothing but his shirt. With every movement of that beautiful body, he became more aware that all that lay between him and warm, bare skin was a flimsy layer of cambric.
“Not so far. Perry has a standing order for the latest publications, but he’s not much of a reader. Since Olivia left, the pages haven’t even been cut on the new books. Sad, really.”
Casually she picked up a small red volume and opened it to the frontispiece. “Who’s Olivia?”
“You really don’t keep up with the gossip, do you?”
She sent him a wry smile. “Only when it comes to the notorious Earl of Ashcroft.”
Again he felt a twinge of shame that she knew so much about his decadent antics. Although his decadent antics had brought her to his bed in the first place.
But surely they’d moved beyond that shallow bargain since.
He wasn’t sure enough of her to lay money on it. And that was the damnable fact.
He settled for the most uncontroversial answer he could manage. “Olivia Raines used to live in this house on an occasional basis. She’s now the Countess of Erith.”
Diana replaced the book on the pile in front of her and picked up another one. “Aristotle. Lord Peregrine made a show of learning at least.”
Ashcroft reached over to take the book. Her fingers brushed his, and awareness sizzled through him. What in blazes was wrong with him? He was too old to go weak at the knees just because a pretty girl shared an innocent touch. “You read Greek?”
“A little.”
“And Latin, I’m guessing.”
She shrugged. “My father was a Cambridge man, and I was his only child. In the absence of a son to teach, he gave me an unusual education for a girl.”
Ashcroft laughed softly and with unmasked self-derision. “Good God, I’m in thrall to a blasted bluestocking.”
She stiffened, and the beautiful ease drained from her manner. “In thrall?”
Yet again, he’d said something to trouble her. Her secrets loomed close, although for a few moments, she’d almost been confiding. Pretending he hadn’t noticed her abrupt change of mood, he flicked idly through the pages of the beautiful old book. The Ethics, clearly something he needed to keep, if only for his own edification. Perhaps he should start by telling his lover the unadorned truth. “Oh, yes.”
His confession didn’t please, devil take her. “Ashcroft…”
“My reputation as a rake will never recover if the gossips discover I’m bedding a bookish female.” Avoiding the looming argument, he broke his stare and turned to sift through another pile. “There’s nothing much here that takes my fancy.”
He was grateful she took the hint about changing the subject. “He likes Walter Scott.”
“No, he doesn’t. They were just what he thought a man about town should stock in his library. I doubt Perry has read anything except the sporting papers since he left Eton.”
“It’s a pity he’s changing this room. It’s the nicest in the house.” Ashcroft was glad to notice the reappearance of her smile. “Except for our apartment upstairs. I have a great fondness for our apartment upstairs.”
Ashcroft bit back a groan. He was trying to talk to her, to conv
ince her he was more than just a throbbing pillar of unending lust. Then she had to go and mention bedrooms.
Still, he manfully struggled on with his attempts at a civilized conversation. “You’d enjoy going through my library at Ashcroft House.”
She cast him a glance under her thick lashes. “This is where you boast of actually having read the books there. I promise to be impressed by the…volumes.”