Page 36 of A Relentless Rake

“I didn’t know,” she answered, “but I suspected. Something tells me you haven’t gotten everything you want from me yet.”

Everything he wanted… His cock jumped. What he wanted from this most proper woman was hours and hours of completelyimproper distraction. Hell, he’d even let the chit lecture him on arches and bridges if she wanted to. As long as she was naked.

He cleared his throat and dragged his focus back to his mission. “Not yet.”

“Well, it must be something very important or you wouldn’t be bothering with me.”

She had no idea how important.“Perhaps I simply find you interesting.”

She gave a gentle laugh of disbelief.

He resisted the urge to cross the room to her, knowing that would only lead to trouble. “The punch stain aside,” he asked, “did you enjoy yourself at the ball?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “Thanks to the Earl of St James.”

He feigned ignorance. “Who?”

“Alexander Sinclair, Earl of St James.” She picked at an invisible speck on her dressing gown. “Oh, I’m certain you know him. He’s a perfectly horrid man who forced me to waltz with him.”

Shame squeezed his chest.

“That’s unfair of me.” She shook her head. “He isn’t horrid so much as difficult…shameless, vexing, arrogant, self-important…” She shrugged, but her hard gaze never left him. “A cad.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”Very sorry. “Was he inappropriate with you? Did he touch you?” Good Lord, he sounded jealous of himself. “You said he forced you to dance with him.”

She smiled as if he’d said something amusing. “A lady can’t refuse an earl, no matter how much she wants to.”

That stung. “And you wanted to refuse him?”

“Yes.”

He shifted awkwardly. This conversation was making him damnably uncomfortable. “He’s a bore?”

“Not at all.”

“Hideously scarred and missing a leg, then.”

He thought he saw her eyes sparkle, but it could have been a trick of the firelight. “He’s quite handsome, actually.”

Handsome.Thatwas better. “Well, then—”

“But he’s also disreputable,” she interrupted. “Rumors follow him everywhere he goes, and the gossipy old hens cackle constantly about all the women he’s seduced, the bets he’s wagered, the drunken orgies—”

“Orgies?”Christ.His reputation was worse than he’d thought.

“For someone like him to choose me for the first waltz…” She shrugged a slender shoulder. “Well, everyone was thinking it.”

“Thinking what?” he prompted despite himself. The picture she was painting of him wasn’t at all one he could be proud of, even if most of it was wrong. Yet he couldn’t deny any of it without giving himself away.

“That the Earl of St James would give the first waltz to someone like me only because he planned on bedding me.” Her voice lowered with embarrassment. “Or already had.”

Every soft word stabbed into him as if she’d gone after him with her carving knife after all.

“My reputation is all I have, and he placed it in jeopardy tonight. It was a shame, really,” she added remorsefully, “because I did like his intelligence and wit, and I really did enjoy dancing with him. Had he been anyone else—like you—I might have had a perfectly marvelous time.”

With that, the knife stabbed straight into his heart.

She rose from the chair and picked up the iron poker to stir the fire. The small flames bit into the last pieces of coal. “But I don’t think you’re here to hear about the ball or my opinion of St James.”