Maryann smiled, knowing she could always rely on her brother.
“I want to catch fireflies,” she murmured, standing.
“Fireflies!”
“Yes…fireflies,” she said over her shoulders, making her way to prepare for an outing with her friends in St. James Park. Their merry band of sinful wallflowers needed to be told that Nicolas St. Ives, London’s wickedest rake, had asked her, Maryann Fitzwilliam, a known wallflower, to wait for him.
And she needed to desperately ask their opinion on if she was being foolish at the dreams that had blossomed through her heart last night and the frightening realization that she was indeed falling hopelessly in love with Nicolas St. Ives.
Chapter Seventeen
Nicolas had sat in his study for the last few hours, staring at the same ledger. Well, there was some progress, for he had at least turned the first page. He was wholly distracted by thoughts of Lady Maryann and had no notion how to dismiss her from his awareness.
Lady Maryann was an unexpected, inexplicable force of chaos in his well-ordered and purpose-driven existence. Nicolas didn’t trust his unfamiliar, extraordinary reaction to her, simply because he had never felt it for another. She lingered too much in his thoughts and dreams and despite his honed willpower, he could not dismiss her from his awareness. He recalled the faint evocative perfume he smelled on her skin, suspecting it was more the lady’s unique fragrance.
Last night…and well into this morning had been like a dream, one he wanted to recapture and hoard deep inside his heart. Hell, it even perplexed him to be thinking about his damn heart. When he’d whispered to her to wait for him, the desire had surged from a place inside he hadn’t known existed. He had ached and hungered, and for the first time he had found himself yearning for an existence he had not allowed himself to contemplate even briefly.
So, you are not afraid to love then.
How delighted she’d sounded, how mysterious and naughty that curve to her mouth had been, and that look in her eyes. He swallowed, tipping his gaze to the ceiling. And when he had lewdly dragged her quim across his aching cock without any care for her sensibilities, he’d felt the start of surprise in her body, tasted the moan of surrender.
A loud knock on the door jerked Nicolas from his reverie, and then his normally unflappable butler entered, appearing distinctly harried. “I know you are to be undisturbed, your lordship, but despite informing this gentleman you are not available to callers, he has rudely barged in and is demanding—”
A shadow loomed behind him, and a large imposing figure pushed past his butler.
“All is well, Dobson, you may leave,” Nicolas murmured, staring at the Earl of Tremelle, who was Viscount Weychell’s father. “To what do I owe the honor of this unprecedented visit?”
The earl took his time looking around the large study, from the wall of bookcases, to the globe tossed casually on the green and gold oriental carpet, the scrolls on the sofa closest to the fire, and then to Nicolas, who sat behind a large oak desk with a pile of ledgers before him and a half decanter of brandy.
Nicolas saw an arrogant man, slim and impeccably but conservatively tailored in almost unrelieved black. His waistcoat gave the only variation in color from the pristine black of his costume and white of his linen. A faint golden stripe was barely perceptible in its black silk cloth. Nicolas admired the conceit; it was effective. The earl’s face might have once been considered handsome, although the lines now cut deep and around his thin mouth were set into a permanent expression of sour disdain.
“I have been watching you for some weeks now,” the earl said, walking over to the bookshelf and taking up a small leather-bound book.
The words fell in the air, the tone of the earl a man confident in his societal power.
Nicolas leaned back in his chair, reposing at ease, one leg stretched out before him, adopting an indifferent mien. “You have been watching me,” he repeated softly.
“You are a hard man to pinpoint with your erratic schedule.”
“Then I tip my hat to your investigators.”
The earl smiled, but his eyes were chilled. This man was furious. And he was Weychell’s father.
Ah, so it’s you.
The shadowed man on the board was the Earl of Tremelle. This was the man who sought his weakness…and this was the man who had ordered for Maryann to be placed in harm’s way. And how unconcerned he appeared standing