cooped up indoors.
She suppressed a groan of delight as she stepped into one of the new gowns. The deep claret color was flattering, the workmanship exquisite. What was Wolff’s game? Was he trying to buy her affection, her capitulation, with dresses? Did he, in his mind, already see her as a kept woman, a mistress he could dress—and undress—at will?
The thought made her shiver, and she stiffened her spine. She would not accept charity. Nor could she be bought. Even if she had to sell every one of her remaining diamonds, she would pay him back.
Chapter 17.
Seb caught himself drumming his fingers on the table and forced them to still. What was wrong with him? He’d stayed out of the house all day to avoid being under the same roof as his irritatingly beguiling guest, but now he couldn’t wait to see her, to spar with her again. His blood pounded in anticipation.
He shouldn’t have given into the impulse to buy her clothes, especially not ones that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a high society ballroom. But the sight of her in that shabby lavender gown had caused him something close to physical pain.
He told himself it was purely aesthetic preference. A woman that beautiful shouldn’t be dressed in threadbare, styleless garments. It was an affront to the natural order of things.
Thanks to his half-Italian parentage, he possessed an eye for beauty that stemmed all the way back to the Renaissance. His ancestors had doubtless patronized artists like Caravaggio and Donatello in the same way he enjoyed buying his boots from Hoby and his coats from Weston.
He wasn’t a tulip of fashion, like the ridiculous dandies who flounced about town in pale satins and silks, but he made no secret of the fact that he enjoyed the sybaritic pleasure of a well-cut coat and a perfectly tied neckcloth. Benedict and Alex never stopped mocking him about it.
His love of beauty extended to his choice of bedpartners too, but despite his reputation as a rake, he’d always been discerning. Beauty alone wasn’t enough to hold his interest. He required intelligence, a quick wit, and a sense of humor from his paramours too.
His “guest” had all those things, and more.
The dining table had been laid for two. With a start, Seb realized he couldn’t recall the last time he’d actually dined at home. He’d taken to eating with Benedict and his wife, Georgie, or Alex and his wife, Emmy, or grazing from the buffet in the public half of the Tricorn. More often than not, he’d asked Mickey to bring him a plate of food in his study so he could eat with one hand and read a report from Bow Street with the other.
No wonder Lagrasse scowled at him. He hardly noticed what he was eating most of the time.
Tonight he would savor every bite, just as he would savor the company of his guest. She was a woman of contradictions. She liked caviar and knew the tsarina’s favorite cake, but she was also friends with some of London’s most expensive courtesans. None of it made sense.
He’d set Jem Barnes, one of Bow Street’s youngest informants, to the task of listening out for news involving any more Russians in the criminal underworld. If there were plans afoot to capture his reluctant houseguest, he wanted to hear of them.
He sucked in a breath when she appeared in the doorway. Why in the name of all that was holy had he bought her a dress in such a provocative deep red? It was hard enough to keep his thoughts and his hands off her as it was. It would be well-nigh impossible now he’d seen her in that fever dream of a dress.
The low-cut bodice displayed the perfect globes of her breasts and the soft architecture of her shoulders and throat. She’d piled her hair up on her head, but a few thick tendrils brushed her collarbone and skated temptingly close to the valley between her breasts, like a trickle of honey. One he wanted to trace with his tongue.
Seb cleared his throat and gestured to the place setting opposite him. “Good evening, Miss Brown. Have a seat.”
He did not rise or pull the chair out for her as he would have done for a woman of higher social rank. He watched her for a reaction, to see if she was irritated by the omission, but she didn’t appear to expect it. She seated herself without fuss and sent him a