And then undeniably a contest.
It was long enough for the heat radiating from his body to join the heat radiating from hers until her eyelids felt weighted and she yearned to close them. Long enough for her breathing to go shallow, and rather spiky.
She was close enough to see herself reflected in his coat buttons.
And to see that reflection rise... and fall. Rise... and fall.
One inch. A slight forward tilt of her head. And then her cheek would be against his chest. She could feel the beat of his heart. This seemed an eminently reasonable thing to do.
And she knew, too, that his view from where he stood was the pale swell of the tops of her breasts, and the little shadowy divide between them.
And so she continued standing absolutely motionless. It might have been the most wanton thing she’d ever deliberately done.
He would not win this.
Suddenly there was his voice. Low, slow, far too intimately close. “I imagine it’s maddening when something comes along to disturb those centuries of peace you described, Lady Lillias. Something that causes you to lose sleep. To toss and turn . . .toss and turn. Something over which you’ve no . . . control . . . at all.”
He no doubt noticed how the breath she took shuddered.
She needed it in order to get the last word. She knew she would.
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Cassidy. But Odysseus lashed himself to the mast, if you’re looking for a solution to your current dilemma.” She addressed this to his waistcoat buttons.
“Adorable suggestion. You’ll be disappointed to learn that I have greater trust in my powers of resistance than that poor bastard did.”
And then she mustered all of her courage—which was in truth considerable—to tip her head back. The sudden sight of the sensual curve of his mouth so close caused a jolt right between her legs. She found his eyes were heavy-lidded. Inscrutable. And as hot as the lit ends of two cheroots.
“Perhaps that’s only because they haven’t yet been sufficiently tested, Mr. Cassidy.”
She stepped back just as his expression changed to something more fierce.
And the only thing that kept her from turning around as she walked away was the certainty that he would watch her, helpless not to, until she was no longer in view.
Chapter Six
“Do you remember Mrs. Locksley?” Delacorte said wistfully a few hours later, over two pints of the dark at a pub they’d escaped into after a misguided foray into a music hall. “She was pretty.”
Delacorte had indoctrinated Hugh into the types of entertainment thrifty men who were not debauchers could enjoy in London, including donkey races, festivals oriented around people chasing pigs that had been greased, lectures, boxing matches, darts in pubs, singing flash ballads in various pubs, meals in pubs, and walking about the city.
The pub was smoky and crowded and lively. A fire was leaping. No drunks were starting knife fights. The waitresses were pretty and flirtatious and none of them had yet attempted to sit in his lap. The dark ale wasn’t terrible. He’d had worse.
Which was a blessing, as Hugh felt he needed to drink more than the usual restrained taste of brandy he usually indulged in after dinners at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
He was here to smugly prove he did indeed have greater powers of resistance than that poor bastard Odysseus.
The Grand Palace on the Thames’s rules required that guests be present in the little sittingroom for at least four days of the week, and he’d rather be there right now.
Only he knew he wasn’t actually proving anything at all. He wasn’t so much lashed to a mast as he was lashed to the woman by an invisible cord that tugged and sawed at him even when she was well out of sight.
While he’d measured and sawed boards for the stage this afternoon, he’d thought about the tops of her breasts. He suspected they rivaled the apple blossoms in the little garden for their silkiness.
A minute part of him thought he might die, as if from starvation, if he didn’t lick one soon. She’d certainly played that moment with deuced skill, he thought grimly. She was clever and fierce and did not back down from a challenge and these were qualities he admired in anyone... to an extent.
But she was playing a reckless game.
A different kind of man would have her on her back with alacrity.
He found at once that he gravely disliked the notion of her playing a similar game with any other man. This realization blackened Hugh’s already capricious mood around the edges.