at my home,” he revealed. “We are crossing off item number five on your list this evening: go to a gentleman’s private apartments. You may thank me later, my dear.”
Jo was inside Mr. Decker’s townhome at half past eight in the evening. Alone.
Specifically, she was standing within his library, with its walls of books and array of pictures and sculptures. The art seemed innocent enough, at first glance. It was only when Jo studied it in greater details that she realized the pictures and sculptures all shared a commonality. They were erotic in nature.
The picture before her, for instance, appeared to be an innocent enough image of a gentleman and lady standing before a bookshelf in a library or book store. Upon closer inspection, she realized the gentleman had his hand up the lady’s skirts, and that her intimate flesh was exposed for his touch.
She could not stifle her startled gasp.
“Do you like what you see?”
The dark, low voice at her back had her spinning around to find him offering her a glass of wine.
She swallowed, eying him and the goblet, his long, elegant fingers. His handsome face. “It is vulgar.”
He smiled. “So is your list, my dear.”
True.
She accepted the glass from him. “Yes, but you have this on display in your library.”
“And?” He raised his glass to her in mock salute. “I am accustomed to born-in-the-purple aristocrats imagining me a philistine. Besides, it is my library.”
That was logic, she supposed. It was indeed his library. However, it was simply not done to have art of this nature on display. Goodness, what must his servants think? Or any of his guests, for that matter?
“This is what you enjoy gazing at when you are in search of a book?” She took a sip of her wine, thinking it may relieve the sharp edge of nervousness which had been haunting her from the moment she had been handed up into his carriage earlier. “What must your visitors suppose when they see what you have chosen to grace your walls?”
He gave her an indolent shrug—a gesture she was coming to recognize as his signature. “Who gives a damn what they think? I did not ask to hang it on their walls, now did I?”
What an odd manner of thinking about things he possessed.
It was eerily refreshing. But subversive, also. Many of the men and women in her social circle flouted convention in one way or another, it was true. But none of them—not the most daring of the lot—would proudly display the sorts of pictures Mr. Elijah Decker had upon his library walls.
“Your female acquaintances,” she found the courage to press, “they do not object to the depictions?”
His gaze was inscrutable as it tangled with hers. He was still near enough in proximity that he could devastate her ability to resist him, and she knew it. She treaded on dangerous ground indeed.
“I do not bring female acquaintances here,” he admitted in a low rasp, before taking a long sip of his wine.
She was briefly fascinated by his Adam’s apple moving as he swallowed. Then by his tongue, licking a droplet of claret from his lips.
“You brought me here,” she could not resist saying.
“As promised, I am aiding you with accomplishing each item upon your list.” He took another sip of wine, watching her.
Fire seemed to lick her, from the inside out. She liked his predatory stare upon her, heaven help her. She liked being here, alone with him. It filled her with a wild rush, with a vast sense of possibility. In this moment, suspended from her ordinary life, she was not Lady Jo Danvers, expected to make a proper match and not embarrass her family by causing a scandal. In this moment, she could be as wicked as she wished.
“Thank you,” she said at last, when she could not fathom what else was expected of her.
He shook his head, a smile playing with the corners of his mouth. “Too easy, bijou.”
Jo did not bother to protest the use of the diminutive he had bestowed upon her. “What do you mean, too easy?”
“I told you to thank me later, but I did not say how,” he elaborated, his gaze sweeping over her. “The uttering of two simple words will not be sufficient, I fear.”
Oh.
Surely he did not mean to cross off one of the other items on her list this evening?
A flush crept back to her cheeks. And why did the idea fill her with an incipient yearning instead of the trepidation she