Sweet mercy. How did he ever end up in this position? “Women cannot duel.”
“Only a gentleman would think so,” she said a bit smugly.
A wild cry came from the lady on the desk and a pleasured grunt from the viscount. Ethan supposed the man had just entered her. He swallowed with difficulty. Lady Charity tried to turn around and peek; however, he held her shoulders so that she remained facing him.
“Still pleasure?” she asked, fidgeting.
“Yes.”
“I am ignorant about the act…she sounded hurt, but of course, you are certain it is pleasure.”
Ethan suspected she was blushing.
“I know,” he said gruffly.
The sounds behind the drapes echoed louder, the sound of slapping flesh and moans rife on the air. Ethan cleared his throat, doing his damnedest to concentrate on the lady before him and to not allow the sounds to rouse his lust.
“I love hats,” she said in a rush, sounding flustered. “Sometimes, I even make my own.”
“Hats?”
“Yes. I…ah…did you know that in 1751 King George I granted Sybilla Masters a patent to design and sell hats? Though the patent was granted under her husband’s name, both Mr. Masters and King George stated publicly that it was her idea.”
“That must have been a great triumph for her skills and creativity to be acknowledged,” he murmured.
“It was. I have seen some of her prints and patterns, and they are really wonderful and clever.”
Ethan realized then how much she admired women who lived outside the mold society tried to shape for them, and it was because she saw herself in those women. An unknown sensation wrenched tightly in the vicinity of his heart. Lady Charity seemed to have developed a considerable style of her own. She was not a sensible, tractable sort of female and certainly not a lady who saw her actions as reckless or improper, but as simply a lady who aspired or dared to live. A feeling of admiration rose in him, and he frowned, for Ethan believed in rules of conduct and propriety. “Did you know that you have thirteen freckles dusted over your cheeks and nose?”
“That was not a particularly flattering observation.”
“That I was compelled to see them negates that rebuke.”
Her soft, wondering gasp whispered across his skin like a touch. “Did you count them, my lord?”
Some amongst the ton might consider her pale skin and easily freckled cheeks unattractive. Not Ethan. He thought her remarkably pretty, even if she was a bit brash. “Yes.”
“When?”
How aghast she sounded, as if they were an imperfection she hated for anyone to notice. At his silence, she said, “Is it in the same vein you were able to discern my identity though I am in disguise?”
“How intuitive.”
“So, you have been watching me,” she whispered.
He did not like that low throb of delighted awe in her tone. “Absolutely not,” Ethan said gruffly. “I noticed them in a passing glance.”
“You noticed thirteen freckles at a glance? How powerfully astute you are.”
Now she sounded amused and delighted.
“It was quite incidental at that moment; everything about you simply imprinted itself in my thoughts.”
“And which moment was that, my lord?” she asked with an indefinable emotion in her voice.
Bloody hell.
He had not meant to say that either. Clearly, her closeness and that perfume he could not place were robbing him of his damn senses. Lady Charity shifted closer, a mere whisper in the dark, but Ethan’s entire body tensed.