“I didn’t want her reputation to be damaged if her damnedclothingwere to be seen in my curricle,” he’d protested. “I know what it’s like to be the subject of all that icy English disdain. I thought I could get it back to her before anyone saw me. I went up through the blasted back garden!”
“Peter,” she’d found herself saying, the shock of his Christian name on her lips like a little warm spark, “you cannot havethought that no one would notice your climbing their house like Romeo at the Capulets’ garden wall.”
“Wasn’t that a balcony?”
“You—what?”
An errant curl fell over one dark eyebrow. “Doesn’t Romeo climb a balcony?”
“I— That’s not at all the point, but no, it is a garden wall.”
“I really think it is a balcony.”
She wanted to smack him, but she restrained herself for fear she’d end up brushing his stupid hair back into place. “Peter! You probably have a First Folio in the Stanhope residence. Check when you get home. Don’t climb anything else.”
He hadn’t. He’d been all decorum for at least a day. He’d gone to Almack’s—Selina had had to apply to Lady Jersey directly to ensure that his voucher to the exclusive social club wasn’t revoked after the climbing incident—and danced quite nicely with everyone.
He’d walked with Iris in the park. He’d called on Lydia at the Hope-Wallaces’ house, and Selina had dashed down the street to confer with Lydia as soon as she’d seen the Stanhope carriage trundle away.
It had, according to Lydia, been fine.
“Fine?” Selina had demanded. “That’s all you have to say?”
Lydia had shrugged. “It was fine. He talked. I listened. Everyone left satisfied.”
Everyone, that was, except Selina, who found herself decidedly unsatisfied by the whole affair. Of all the ways she’d ever thought to describe Peter Kent, the ninth Duke of Stanhope,finecertainly would not have made the list.
In fact, the list of words she might use to describe Peter Kent had taken something of a turn.
It had started with the dream. She had been reviewing severaltexts for inclusion in the Venus catalog and had fallen asleep after reading one particularly salacious memoir.
That was all. She had simply been reading. And reading had translated to dreaming. It had nothing to do with the man himself.
But whenever she thought about Peter Kent—and she seemed to be thinking of him quite a lot—she could not help but recall it.
It had been hot in the dream, sohot. That was what came back to her the most strongly. He’d been smiling, that sharp pleased grin, as he’d slipped her frock from her shoulders. Sweat had beaded between her breasts, and he’d pressed his mouth to her skin and licked her there.
His hand had burned as he’d slid the fabric down her torso. She could not have said where they were. Somewhere dark and fragrant, the air heavy. His mouth on her skin made her feel boneless, her body drifting, need rising in a long, slow crest.
Her dress was gone. She could see the long, muscled expanse of his body. His mouth was between her legs, her fingers tangled in his hair. She had no thoughts but desire, her body a conflagration that began and ended with Peter’s touch.
When she’d woken, she’d been damp with perspiration, her body sensitive and achy, and now every time she tried to organize Peter’s courtship, her mind tumbled her back into that strange, hot dark.
Infuriating, she might have described him.Impossible.
Not for her.
Not for her to dream about. Not for her to think on as she flipped the pages of a Belvoir’s book, and most especially not when desire tangled in her belly, and images—of his dark curls between her thighs, of his mouth, of the bare skin of his throat—rose in her mind.
She swallowed and tried to turn her mind back to his marital endeavors. That was what she needed to think on. His marriage. To someone else.
He hadn’t even made half a week of sedate courting. There had been the incident with Lydia’s horse in Rotten Row, and then another memorable outing with his brother and sister that had involved Lucinda, ices, and a large wolfhound she’d enticed into Gunter’s Tea Shop. Selina and Lydia had been able to hear the shrieking from down the street at the millinery.
Stanhope was, in truth, a walking scandal. He’d made no inroads thus far in appearing to be swept away by romance and—if her conversations with Lydia were any indication—rather little progress in securing a wife besides.
“He needs help,” Selina said now, drumming her bare fingers on the table beside her plate.
“Mm.” Her brother somehow made this wordless grunt sound deadpan. “And you know just what kind of help to offer him?”
