Page 21 of A Relentless Rake

“Would you like to know more?” She dangled the question in front of him the way a little girl dangles a string of yarn in front of a kitten. Although as a cat, he was really more of a panther. “Icouldtell you…”

His jaw tightened. The panther knew he was being toyed with. By the mouse. “If you care to enlighten me.”

Tracing her fingertip idly over the coverlet, she coerced, “I would be happy to, but…I need a dress.”

“Adress?” he repeated as if he couldn’t possibly have heard her correctly.

“A gown, actually. You see, I’ve been invited to a ball tomorrow evening, and I don’t have an appropriate dress to wear.”

His eyes narrowed. “What does any of this have to do with mathematics?”

“Oh, a great deal.” Her fingers plucked at the coverlet, no more concerned with his dark glare than if he’d invited her for an afternoon picnic. “Ineed a dress,youwant answers…” She shrugged.

He pushed away from the dresser and drew himself up to his full height. “Blackmail, Miss Everett?”

“I prefer to think of it as an exchange of favors.” She pinned him beneath her gaze, all feigned interest in the coverlet now gone. “I’ll tell you about my brother’s work, and you’ll have a gown delivered to me tomorrow.” And then she would find a way to repay him the cost of it…somehow. One ha’penny at a time.

“And what makes you think I know anything about ball gowns?”

“You speak in a whisper to hide your voice, but your tone and cadence are clearly that of a gentleman,” she said matter-of-factly. “And one educated enough to know about my brother’s work. You’re knowledgeable enough about Westminster to know of the Everett School, which means you’re either wealthy enough to afford to live on the west side of London or you’re a servant for someone who does.” She slid an assessing look over him. “But you’re no man’s servant. From what I can see, you’re not someone who takes orders. You’re someone who’s used to giving them.”

“And what,” he bit out each word, “does that have to do with dresses?”

“A man who moves in your social circles would surely have access to fashionable ladies and know where to find a ball gown on such short notice.” She taunted him with another glance through lowered lashes, another look of mock innocence. “Certainly a man who knows so much about shifts and stays and the women still inside them.”

He cursed beneath his breath, then snarled, “Stand up.”

Her heart skipped at the brusque order, and she squeaked out, “Why?”

“If I’m going to find you a dress, then I need to know if it will fit.” He gestured for her to crawl out of bed and approach the faint glow of the banked fire. “Unless you’d prefer I take one of your stays with me for measurements?”

She shot him a glare as she slid out of bed. She grabbed her dressing robe from the chair and scrambled into it, then cinched the belt tightly around her waist.

With a crook of his finger, he called her closer. “Come.”

She approached slowly on bare feet, her heart pounding harder with each step.

He rotated his finger in the air. “Circle.”

She hesitated. This man was certainly no fairy godmother, and stealing a magic wand would surely have been easier than coercing him. Yet she pulled in a deep breath and did as he ordered, turning in a circle so he could have a complete look. His gaze felt as palpable as if he were touching her with his hands…down her front and across her hips, down her legs to her bare toes.

Then his eyes slowly retraced their path, this time lingering in places that made her flush and stirred a low ache between her thighs. As if she weren’t wearing her dressing gown. As if she were wearing nothing at all.

“Your turn,” he prompted, suddenly hoarse. “Your brother’s work?”

She cleared her throat to remove the knot his gaze had put there. “Roman arches establish an equilibrium of tensions and compressions with downward weight equalizing outward pressures, inward stresses matching outer strains, and a prime focal—”

He put up a hand and interrupted her. “Roman arches?”

“You said you wanted to know about my brother’s work.”Theirwork, she corrected herself, even though most of the calculations were hers. The masked man had been right about that, although she hated to admit it. “His work focuses on compression and stress ratios.”

“What does that have to do with architecture?”

“Everything.” She placed her hands on her hips and leveled at him the same no-nonsense look that quelled even the most rowdy of schoolgirls. “Have you ever crossed a bridge in London or stepped foot into St Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey without it crashing down around you? Then thank an ancient Roman.”

His mouth twisted at that chastisement, but wisely, he said nothing.

“It was the Roman arch,” she continued, a schoolmistress taking advantage of a teaching moment, “that the Gothic architects exploited to build Europe’s great cathedrals and last century’s engineers to stretch bridges over—”