Page 37 of Better Off Wed

Neither a silent recitation of his catechism, nor a detailed recollection of every cricket match he’d ever played was sufficient to keep his cock from hardening as he’d unfastened her gown and unlaced her corset. If the process had revealed anything more than a crescent of flawless skin at the tops of her shoulders, he might have spent in his borrowed breeches.

What a green lad he was.

It was surely his greenness that made him lust over a woman who would have set a more experienced man to flight.

No matter how lovely. No matter how clever.

No matter whether she seemed to invite his touch.

His innocent touch, he reminded himself. She had merely needed his help. Curling his fingers in the bedsheets, he tried to make himself focus on something, anything else.

But the second of his desires, which involved ransacking Thornton’s study under cover of darkness, was hardly less dangerous.

The book that had brought fifty pounds for poor Mrs. Croft…the French cookbook…was in fact the codebook upon which he had expended so many hours in the last months. And now he knew it had once belonged to Lord Thornton.

Did Thornton understand what he’d had? Were there documents to be deciphered in his possession…more letters in invisible ink, perhaps?

The trouble, Jeremy realized as he reflected on his dilemma, was that his desires weren’t conflicting, but intertwined.

Lady Sterling had stolen the book from Thornton. Lieutenant Hopkins had happened upon it in his sister Laura’s possession. And of course she would not have told the truth about where she had found it, for fear her secret identity would be revealed.

Could Scott have suspected the link?

No. No, certainly not. If he had, he would not have dallied for weeks while Jeremy struggled. He would have seized any opportunity to figure out the codebook. Though the general might have feared Lady Sterling was involved in espionage, not even he could have imagined her to be Hopkins’s sister.

But now Jeremy knew.

Below him, in the study, might lie vital information that could help to ensure the safety and success of his fellow soldiers against Napoleon’s armies.

Beside him lay a woman desperate to find a skeleton hidden in Thornton’s cupboard, hoping that the threat of its disclosure would keep a man’s basest behaviors in check.

Could giving in to one desire help him to satisfy the other?

He forced his hand to relax its grip on the sheet. No. There could be no satisfaction where Laura was concerned.

Even helping her would be a risk. But that, at least, was a risk he could afford to take. Together, they could stop Thornton from ruining any more lives.

He started, as if suddenly awakened. “Oh—sorry. Did I nod off?”

Her hair whispered across the pillow as she turned her head. To his dismay—no, relief—her body did not follow. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not. You were telling me…telling me about the cook—”

“Mrs. Croft, yes.”

“And a book. Did you say your brother was involved somehow?”

“Yes. Fitz sold the old thing to some bookseller. I had no notion a cookbook could be so valuable.” Her quiet laugh fluttered up his spine like a feather-light touch. “I’m not really one for the domestic arts.”

He made a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a grunt, and then eased onto his back. “Are you and your brother close?”

“We used to be, I suppose. When we were children. Then Mama died, and he was sent away to school, and I went to live with Aunt Mildred in Clapham. Between then and the reading of Papa’s will, I hardly saw him.”

“I did not know you had also lost your father. I’m sorry.”

“You are kind. But will you think terribly of me if I say it was no great loss?” She squirmed beneath the awfulness of that confession. “When he drank, which was often, he said unspeakably cruel things to Mama and me, and lewd things to the maids and my governess. Governesses,” she corrected with a sigh. “My aunt bought me a copy of The Rights of Woman and took me to lectures. I learned that my father’s behavior was, sadly, far from unique but also that it did not have to be tolerated. Over the years, I began to imagine I could do something to stop men like him.”

“And so you became Lady Sterling.”