Page 53 of How to Tempt a Duke

The shift in his mood was notably odd.

“I’m assuming you’ve already sought out this man’s handwriting throughout the other journals?”

He had known she would be thorough. The thought pleased her immensely. “I have,” she confirmed. “There are several examples we can review with the key.”

Silence blossomed between them, ripe with sizzling memories and wanting.

“I must thank you for coming to my aid in the crowd at Vauxhall.”

Eleanor tried to push aside what had happened after his assistance, so she could fully focus on speaking. Only such memories were not so easily swept aside.

“I daresay the Earl was quite upset with my departure.”

She almost laughed at how red-faced he’d been the next morning, when he’d called. Even her mother was beginning to grow weary in her championing of him, despite his considerable wealth.

“Indeed?”

Charles studied her face with the intensity of a man who intended to kiss a woman. Was it wanton to wish so desperately that he would? Heat suffused her entire body in a vicious blush.

“In truth, I ought to apologize.” He spoke in a quiet, intimate tone, impossible to overhear from the other side of the door. “I should not have kissed you.”

Disappointment dragged at her elation. “You regret it?”

He ran a finger down her cheek and she found herself leaning toward him.

“Yes and no.”

Her eyes closed, the better to appreciate the sensation of his touch.

“I’ve been thinking of you far too often...”

Charles’s voice sounded gently in her ear, sensual and low.

“How you rob me of my senses...”

His small sigh whispered across her skin like a caress.

“I shouldn’t have come tonight. In truth, I should never come again.”

Never come again?

Eleanor’s eyes flew open. “Charles, don’t say such things.”

He clenched his jaw and stroked the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. His touch against her mouth brought to mind a curious act described in the salacious tale she’d read, and a small flame kindled the fire.

Curiosity simmered through her.

Did she dare be so bold?

Chapter Seventeen

Charles knew he ought to walk away at that very moment. Leave London with the journals he did have and not return until he was certain Eleanor had been safely wedded and bedded and was forever out of his grasp.

And yet the idea of her marrying Devonington set his blood to boiling.

To imagine her in Devonington’s bed...it was more than he could stand. Not that he hadn’t imagined her in a bed—only it had been his own, her skin like hot silk under his hands.

She regarded him with a brazen stare, as though she could read his thoughts, as though she meant to entice them. It was getting harder and harder to walk away from the temptation that was Eleanor Murray.