Last Dance in London (Rakes on the Run #1) - Sydney Jane Baily Page 0,75

her dignity, but she turned me down flat.”

“You would do that?” Julia was shocked to learn he cared how Lady Arabella had appeared unhinged.

“I would,” he agreed. “Poor girl doesn’t know I have the impenetrable shield of a gentleman’s wager at White’s, one I have no intention of losing.”

“Do tell,” Julia couldn’t contain her curiosity. It wasn’t often one got to hear about the happenings inside a gentleman’s club.

“I shall not marry until after the thirty-first of December of next year. If I do, I would forfeit five hundred pounds, and I have no intention of looking into the smug faces of my fellow members as they take my money.”

Five hundred pounds on such a matter! Julia couldn’t help being upset by the frivolity and waste of money better used elsewhere. Not to mention the twinge of disappointment over Jasper being so set on not marrying he’d bet against it.

Then she had an idea.

“If you win your wager at White’s—”

“When I win,” he interrupted.

“When you win, will you donate your winnings to the poor?”

He narrowed his eyes. “What have the poor got to do with my marital state?

“Nothing at all. But you will take in quite a bit from the other men when you win. From your boasting over the soundness of the Marshfield accounts, you don’t need the money.”

“Need is not the point,” he said.

She sighed. “Nevertheless, will you donate the money?”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I ask it of you,” she said, and tried an unfamiliar tactic of batting her eyelashes.

Laughing slightly, he nodded. “As long as we can stop this tedious conversation and speak about us, instead.” Then he used his own tactic of persuasion, cocking his head and grinning at her, looking so devastatingly charming, she thought she might melt onto the sofa cushion.

Julia shook her head. “You are incorrigible.”

“I used to think so,” he said.

The way he looked at her as if she might somehow hold the key to his rehabilitation caused a warm flutter low in her stomach.

“Why did you invite me here tonight?” she asked.

“That’s a pertinent question, deserving an answer. I invited you because I’m a soldier. I’ve fought Napoleon’s army, and I refuse to be cowed by a blue-eyed country miss.”

She tried to makes sense of his words as he rose to his feet. When he reached down a hand to her, unthinkingly she took it, letting him draw her to her feet. Without preamble, Jasper kissed her, stealing her breath and starting a concert of sensations throughout her body, ending in a shiver running down her spine as he sunk his teeth into her lower lip, gently but firmly nibbling on her.

There was a tap at the door. Slowly, he withdrew, leaving her weak-kneed, and went to open the door himself.

“Dinner, my lord,” was all she heard.

Julia was relieved there really was going to be a meal. For a moment, she’d feared she was the feast, and it would have been impossible to deny him partaking of her. Instead, in the same dining room in which she’d sat next to Mr. Furley months earlier, she now let Jasper pull out her chair. They sat close, with him at the table’s head and her at his right side. And the footman began to serve the procession of courses.

If anyone asked, Julia might be unable to discuss the food, as she wavered between enjoyment of the earl’s ability to tell stories and her anxiousness as to what would happen after the dessert.

Was his plan to take her upstairs?

She knew she ate, for the footman cleared away her plate at regular intervals, replacing it with a new one, and her stomach was full by the dinner’s end. Yet she could hardly recall anything until the splendid barberry ice served in crystal tasses à glaces and with it, biscuits accompanying the sweetest wine Julia had ever tasted.

“Dip it,” Jasper offered, picking up a round cookie and dunking it gracefully into the wide-rimmed glass. This he popped into his attractive mouth while she stared.

Following suit, Julia did the same, reveling in the myriad tastes bursting on her tongue before jumping slightly when he suddenly touched his thumb to her chin.

“Just a drop of wine,” he told her, then brought his thumb to his own mouth and licked it. “Delicious!” he proclaimed, while she could barely catch her breath.

His tongue, his fingers, his mouth — gracious, what a wicked man!

She would go upstairs with him and finish what Sarah had interrupted. Her intimate parts were throbbing at the