“I wondered if you would notice,” he said with a grin. “After you mentioned it, I thought that if you liked it, it might not be too bad. But the scent is making me hungry. For food, I mean.”
“I daresay you’re always hungry for food, but in this case, the rosemary and thyme in it may be sharpening your appetite.”
“Perhaps. Not to mention the wine the rosemary and thyme are soaked in. Which reminds me . . .” He reached under the table and pulled out a bottle and two glasses, then set them down behind her. “This place has another advantage. The marble and the darkness keep the champagne cool. Do you want some?”
I’d like some of everything you have to give me, sir. “Champagne? Of course. I have a weakness for champagne, I confess.”
Wearing a sly expression, he opened the bottle and poured two glasses while she took off her bonnet and laid it on the table. The window was directly behind them, letting in a cool breeze.
“So, if I pour enough of it,” he said as he handed her a glass, “you’ll let me have my wicked way with you?”
After they’d each had a couple of swallows, she put her glass to the side. “Or you’ll let me have my wicked way with you,” she said, and started unknotting his cravat. “I mean to seduce you, dear Duke, assuming that’s still what you want.”
“I’ve been wanting that since the day we met,” he said roughly.
She faltered. “The day we met? That long ago? You hid it well.”
“I don’t know how I managed to hide anything, honestly.” His gaze dropped to her bodice, where her fichu-cravate was loosely tied. He began to untie it. “Every time you stuck that damned pencil in your mouth, I found myself wondering what it would be like to . . . thrust my tongue in your mouth. To be your pencil, as it were.”
She burst into laughter, which clearly startled him. “I couldn’t figure out why you kept staring at my pencil! Oh, Lord, I should have realized it was something . . . naughty.”
He’d finally worked loose her fichu-cravate and taken it off, apparently not even aware when he’d dropped it on the floor in his eagerness to look at what she wore beneath it. “Now, this is naughty,” he said. Her gown was perfectly presentable with the fichu and very definitely not presentable without. “Did you wear this for me?” he rasped, as he ran a finger along her low-cut bodice.
“Of course,” she said in what she hoped was a sufficiently seductive voice. “It’s the only gown I have that unfastens in the front.”
Even as his gaze burned into her, he groaned. “You’re a bit of a tease, aren’t you, my lady?”
“If you say so.” She tugged off his cravat and draped it around the champagne bottle. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“You know all right. You just don’t know you know.”
While she was trying to make that one out, he walked over to the pile of cushions, picked up a nice fat one, and brought it back to toss onto the table. Then he examined her gown. “I can’t figure out where it unfastens.”
She could understand that. Men rarely understood the mysteries of female garments, and telling him it was an apron-front gown would be about as informative to him as calling it a dress in Chinese. “Just watch.” She unfastened the two decorative buttons on her shoulders and let the front drop down.
Before she could do more than that, he’d unpinned the part covering her corset and shift, then unfastened the ties that kept the skirt in place, allowing the entire business to fall open from her neck to her pelvis.
“Well!” she said. “It didn’t take you long to figure out how that worked once I got it started.”
“I keep telling you, I’m an engineer. I’m a quick study at things like figuring out how something is put together.” His gaze skimmed her in a provocative sweep meant to entice her. “And now I wish to figure out how you’re put together.” With that, he lifted her up and set her down on the cushion.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she cried. “There’s a window behind me!”
“I’m aware.” He stretched past her to close the window. “But it’s in full sun, so I’ll see anyone approaching long before they see you. Besides which, this clever gown of yours will look perfectly respectable from behind.” His eyes burned into hers. “But erotic as hell from the front.”
The thrill that his words gave her seared her from her head to her privates, making her squirm a bit on the cushion. “Geoffrey—”
His kiss cut her off. It was hard and fierce and somehow lavish, too, like a working sword in an ornamental scabbard. He took his time kissing her as he pulled down her corset, then untied her shift and maneuvered it until it lay beneath her bare breasts, lifting them a bit for his gaze. Next thing she knew, he’d kissed his way down to her nipples, so he could suck and tease them in turn, sending frissons through her that had her trembling with need.
Raking his hair back with her fingers, she found the collar of his coat and hooked it with her thumbs on either side so she could tug it off. Or try futilely to, anyway, until he realized what she was doing and shrugged it off for her before tossing it over onto the cushions.
But when she unbuttoned his waistcoat, he wouldn’t let her push that off, too. “If your family comes looking for you,” he warned, “we must be able to dress quickly. But if you’re looking for a way to occupy those deft hands of yours . . .” He swiftly unbuttoned the fall of his pantaloon trousers, then lowered the falls to expose his drawers.
They were expanding rather impressively. As she stared at them, they seemed to expand even more.
He chuckled. “As I said, a tease.” He tugged her hand down to cover him there. “But I don’t mind, as long as I get what I want in the end.”
“And what is that?” she asked in a breathy whisper.