The Princess and the Rogue (Bow Street Bachelors #3) - Kate Bateman Page 0,13

can’t change your mind, Miss Brown?”

Anya stifled a near-hysterical snort. The man was temptation incarnate.

His surname was certainly apt. She’d seen a real wolf once, back in Russia. She and Dmitri had been out riding and a lone male had followed them for several miles, running parallel within the tree line. She’d caught flashes of its silver-grey fur, heard the tireless crunch of its paws in the snow as it ate up the miles, easily keeping pace with the horses.

This man had the same unblinking stare and sinuous grace. He exuded the same subtle threat of danger. Anya shivered. Sebastien Wolff might appear civilized, in his perfectly cut jacket and snowy-white cravat, but every instinct told her to beware.

She’d thought Vasili’s clumsy assault in Paris had given her a permanent distaste for men, but she was horribly tempted to take Wolff’s outstretched hand and allow him to draw her upstairs. To let him show her the pleasure he seemed arrogantly confident of providing.

The thought was enough to shock her into action. “Good night, my lord.”

With a regal tilt of her chin, she hurried from the room and heard Charlotte’s husky laughter as she moved forward to intercept him. Anya rushed back to the kitchens, desperate to leave, and found a cluster of girls chattering like a bunch of excited magpies.

“Is it true?” Amy asked, catching Anya’s sleeve. “The big bad Wolff? ’E’s never been ’ere before.”

“It is ’im,” Jenny insisted. “My friend Kitty’s seen ’im ’undreds of times at the theatre.”

“The last of the Unholy Trinity,” Amy sighed reverently.

“Unholy Trinity?” Anya echoed.

“That’s what everyone used to call ’em. Lords Mowbray, Melton, and Ware. Before the war, before they were earls, they were the most shocking rogues you can imagine. But Melton and Ware are married now. Mowbray’s the only one left.”

Long Meg, a ravishing natural redhead, chuckled. “Wonder what ’e likes? I bet ’e’s a right handful, big man like that. Think ’e wants a five fingered handshake?” She made a crude gesture with her hand, fingers meeting thumb as if encircling a pipe.

Jenny gave a theatrical shiver. “’Ave you seen the size of ’is ’ands? I tell you, girls, I’d do ’im for free.”

Anya snatched up her bonnet and gloves and made for the door. She truly didn’t want to hear any more of the conversation, but she couldn’t help looking back as Charlotte came in.

“What does he want, Charlotte?” Jenny asked.

“Let me take care of ’im!” Amy pleaded.

“I’ll do whatever ’e asks,” Long Meg declared.

Charlotte looked unusually harried. Two small lines had appeared between her brows. “Not the main course,” she said briskly, sending Anya a speculative look that Anya couldn’t begin to decipher. “Just something to take the edge off.”

The girls let out a collective sigh of disappointment, but Anya’s stomach tumbled in dismay. For all his protestations of wanting only her, it seemed Lord Mowbray was prepared to accept the ministrations of any female after all. She told herself she wasn’t disappointed.

Charlotte turned to the brunette on her right. The girl had the most captivating mouth Anya had ever seen, with pouting lips and a fetching beauty mark on one cheek.

“Nan, you’re best with your hands. You go.”

The rest of the girls started to protest, but Nan looked like she’d been handed the keys to paradise. Anya quashed a sudden twinge of—jealousy? Surely not. She had no desire to do that to a man. The whole thing had sounded quite disgusting when the girls had first described it to her in the spirit of “broadening her education.”

But the question of what Sebastien Wolff might look like, naked, aroused, intruded upon her brain and refused to leave. What might have happened if she’d said yes?

Impatient with herself, she waved her gloves at Charlotte over the heads of the fluttering horde. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Charlotte!”

She heaved a sigh of relief as she trotted up the back stairs to her own apartment. Her lips were still tingling, her blood pounding in her ears.

So. She’d met Sebastien Wolff. Kissed Sebastien Wolff. It had been wonderful. Extraordinary. But one thing was very clear: she must never encounter him again.

Chapter 7.

A week after her unsettling encounter with Wolff, Anya slipped into the library of his great-aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Winwick.

“Oh, there you are, Anya,” the duchess said, glancing up from her seat at a handsome rosewood writing desk. “I have a present for you.” She indicated a large, leather-bound book in front of her. “It’s a collection of Russian fairy