startled.
He did not want to know of her experience or lack thereof. Very well. That was not entirely accurate. Truthfully, either knowledge was exciting. To know that she had experience thrilled him. To know she was an innocent thrilled him, too.
Bloody hell.
She thrilled him. The. End.
“I can only speak of my sister’s experience with the tonic. She’s the only subject to have tested it. I’ve been uneasy subjecting it to anyone else.” She might have attempted it on herself, but she, fortunately, had been in good health with no pains or aches, and, admittedly . . . her sisters had put a bit of fear in her.
What happened if she was afflicted with raging lusts? She had no one to slake her desires upon.
What if she tested it and then assaulted a stranger? Someone she was not even remotely attracted to? It seemed a grave risk.
Ideally, if the tonic were to be tested again one of her sisters should take it for they had husbands only too happy to satisfy any raging desires that should overcome them. But neither one would agree to that even if they were here.
In fact, ever since Nora had dosed Char with the tonic, her sisters had been rather distrustful about taking any of her herbal remedies. It was rather galling. They’d always trusted her before.
“You said the tonic eased your sister’s pain?”
“Yes. Yes, it did,” she confirmed.
Charlotte had not felt the misery of her cramping belly. That much was true. She had felt nothing save the deepest arousal. At least that was what she had claimed. Whether the pain had been truly absent or replaced with arousal, who was to say? And did it matter if the pain was no longer felt?
“Then it seems clear what we must do.”
She blinked and angled her head sharply. “Is it?”
“Indeed. I will take your tonic.”
Chapter 19
Nora stared at him for several moments, her mouth working as her brain searched for the proper reply to his outrageous announcement. “You are mad.”
“Why would you say that?” he asked in all mildness, as though he had not just declared a lunatic idea.
“Y—you . . . cannot take it.”
Absolutely not. He could not take the tonic. Just the notion of him . . . the very austere Mr. Sinclair all hot eyed and titillated was unthinkable. She swallowed thickly.
Unthinkable . . . and yet exciting when she did permit herself to think of it. She envisioned him as he had been in the carriage, all deep dark eyes and gravelly voice that she felt like a caress.
Except in her imaginings she would visualize him touching her.
His hand would land on her ankle and slide up, up, up . . . slipping beneath her skirts, skimming over her stockings until he reached her garters. And there he would make haste, ripping the ribbons free, shredding them in animal speed so that he could get to her skin, get to her. Her breathing fell faster. Oh, dear.
“Miss Langley?”
She snapped free of her little fantasy and looked at him, the very controlled Mr. Sinclair. This very restrained and self-possessed gentleman would not appreciate any remedy that robbed him of his control. Who would, for that matter?
“Yes?”
“You need a test subject, and as the tonic is for a member of my family and I am the one responsible for you being here—”
“Are you the one responsible for my presence here though?” She had rather forced herself on him here. Looking back at her behavior, she felt a small dose of shame. She could still hear the duke’s voice in her head, dismissing her so coldly, so imperiously. He’d made her feel small . . . so small and unwelcome that she wanted to flee this place with what dignity she still possessed.
He ignored her interruption and continued, “I should be the one to take it.” He flattened a hand to his chest covered only by the elegant lawn of his shirt. No jacket. No vest. This was the most casual she had ever seen him. Casual and loose and she rather liked him this way—disheveled. “I should be the one,” he insisted.
She could not allow that to happen under any circumstance. At least not without Lady Elise on hand. She should be the one, of course, to help him if the tonic affected him as it did her sister. Otherwise he would be left to the agony of his unfulfilled desires.
And what if Lady Elise did not help him with that? They might be courting,