“If you drink all of my present, you will have to get me something else,” she teased.
“The shops are closed now, but I can think of something which won't cost anything,” he said.
She burst out laughing. “I bet you can,” she said. He loved the sound of her laugh. He loved the gentle easy banter that went back and forth between them whenever they were close. It was what the ladies of the ton did not have: spark.
“You had better give me a glass then,” she said, holding out her hand.
He gave her his half-full goblet and then watched her take a sip. “My goodness, that doesn’t even feel or taste like wine. It’s like sipping something that is barely there.”
“Fine wines are my passion,” he told her.Along with you,he didn’t add, but he could have.
“Did you go to see Ernest?” she asked. He shook his head.
“Can you imagine what he would say if he saw us here?” Rose mused.
“Good job he never will,” Will replied. “He will make a good investment partner, I have no doubt, but my lord is he ornery.”
“I think he was badly treated as a child. I think it all stems from being unloved.”
“In all honesty, who would want to love him?” Will asked, but a dark cloud came down across Rose’s features, so he moved the conversation on.
“I have to go back to London tomorrow.”
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
“Oh.” That was all she said.
“There are things I must take care of.”
“When are you likely to return?” She asked.
He had the impression she had taken a while to choose the right words for that sentence. A guardedness had appeared in her eyes.
“I am not sure.” The guardedness increased.
Will took a sip of his wine and studied her closely. It seemed she tried very hard to feign nonchalance, but her body always betrayed her.
He stood up and took up his chair, moving it in front of hers and sat down. She was watching him. He kneeled down, picked up one of her feet, and placed it in his lap.
“What are you doing now?” She was amused rather than wary.
“I was trying to think of that extra present, and then I remembered the first time I was in this room.” He slipped her low-heeled silk pump from her foot. “You asked Anna for a foot massage. I thought I could have a go.”
“You?” Her amusement grew.
“Why not? How hard can it be?”
He began to rub her toes gently through her stockings. The sheen of the material made it easy for his hands to glide across her foot, warming the muscles with his fingers.
Rose squirmed beneath his touch. “That is… actually very good. Do you have any idea what you are doing?”
“Not at all,” he laughed, and she did too.
The firelight cast a warm glow over both of them as he plied his fingers up and down her foot, pressing his thumb into her heel and arch all the way up to the ball of her foot. She threw her head back, revealing her bodice and the mounds of her breasts above it. Her breathing, raising and lowering those mounds, captivated him. He now wanted to touch more than her feet but forced himself not to.
He pulled her other foot up into his lap too and slid off her other shoe. Now he could run his hands down both sides of each foot before working his way back up the middle. Rose groaned.
“Lord, you can do that all night,” she said.