she recognized all too well.
“Josephine.” Her brother Julian’s voice was cold as Wenham Lake ice, her name cracking like a whip above the din of the tempest.
They had been caught.
Decker could blame his current predicament upon his prick.
He could blame it upon lust.
He could blame it upon that cursed list Jo had unintentionally delivered to him, which had made him randy as a sailor returned from a lonesome tour of the seas.
But in the end, the fault for what had happened between Decker and Lady Jo Danvers fell solely upon his inability to resist the forbidden. He was the experienced seducer. He was the jaded man who sought pleasure at all costs. He was the one who had continually pursued her, unable to put an end to the mad attraction between them despite all the risks.
Only one fate derived from dallying with virginal misses. Decker had known it, and yet he had ignored it for the sake of his raging, unabated desire for her. Now, he was about to pay the price.
With his life.
“I expect you want me to marry her,” he told the irate Earl of Ravenscroft as he faced the man in his own study, dripping on the carpets.
He was soaked to his skin from the relentless storm still raging outside. Jo had fared little better, but she had been bundled off by his efficient housekeeper, who had clucked over her like a mother hen and taken her to a chamber for tea and towels. Which meant Decker was alone to face his reckoning.
Ravenscroft’s nostrils flared, his jaw tense. “Why the hell would I ever allow my sister to bind herself to the likes of you, Mr. Decker?”
Right. Fair enough question, sir.
He supposed because I almost touched her cunny earlier would not prove an appropriate response. So close to paradise. Only to be denied. Decker nearly laughed aloud at the bitter irony. But then, the Earl of Ravenscroft’s fist connected with his jaw, obliterating all humor.
Damnation, the blighter had a deuced unforgiving right hook. Decker cradled his aching jaw. That blow was deserved. If he were to encounter a man dashing about with his own sister in the midst of the night when she was old enough for such nonsense, he would be similarly tempted to do the man grievous bodily harm.
Actually, he would slit the bastard’s throat.
Decker opened his mouth, testing his jaw’s ability to properly function, staring at the earl. “I have compromised her, have I not? That is the way such matters ordinarily proceed, I gather. The gentleman offers to marry the lady he has compromised to keep her reputation from being sullied.”
“Yes, you have, you despicable bastard,” the earl growled. “She has only recently come out. She is naïve and innocent, and you managed to corrupt her. I want better for her than a scoundrel who would insult her by luring her around London.”
Decker could not argue with Ravenscroft. He was despicable. And he was a bastard. However, Jo was not as naïve and innocent as the earl believed.
Thanks, in part, to you.
He banished the reminder. The list had come from her saucy mind, had it not?
“If you do not want Lady Josephine to marry me, then what do you intend?” he asked.
“Marriage to someone else.” Ravenscroft sneered. “A suitable gentleman. But I demand your silence and discretion, Mr. Decker. And I also command you to stay the hell away from my sister from this moment forward. You will never see her again. You will not send her notes. You will never so much as speak her name.”
“Out of the question,” he snapped before he could think better of the words.
What are you doing, you fool? You do not have to marry her. Carry on with your life.
“You dare to defy me?” the earl asked, his fist clenched anew at his side.
Decker stood his ground. “I owed you the first blow, but consider this a warning, Ravenscroft. If you throw your fists at me again, I shan’t calmly allow you to abuse me. I will hit you back.”
And hard.
He would slam his fist into the earl’s pretty nose.
“You owe me a hell of a lot more than one blow, you cur,” the earl ground out. “I caught my sister in your lap in the midst of the night. And this was not the first occasion upon which you spirited her about London to God knows where. I ought to beat you to death for the lack of respect you have shown her.”
“She was always