to use seduction to get what he wanted. After all, he’d seen the bastard in action before. He’d once faced Murray over a table at an exclusive gaming hell and lightened the other’s pockets by a thousand pounds. Murray had retaliated by luring Sally, Severin’s then-mistress, into his own bed.
Severin had enjoyed a mutually beneficial arrangement with Sally, an obliging female who never confused sexual pleasure with intimacy. All she had wanted was a generous stipend and the lease on a cottage, which he’d been glad to provide in exchange for her professional services. It had been damned inconvenient to find her replacement. More to the point, Murray’s past actions showed that he had no compunction about using a female as a pawn in his games. Severin wondered how much Lady Beatrice knew of Murray’s past dealings…and his present motives.
Regardless, Murray was an unforeseen obstacle, and Severin wasn’t looking for complications. That was why he’d come to Staffordshire: to find an aristocratic spinster who would jump at his offer of a marriage of convenience. Now that he’d met Lady Beatrice, he didn’t think she had any interest in jumping for him or anyone.
Did he want to go through with his plan to offer for her? After their brief exchange, he wasn’t sure of his odds, and he wasn’t keen on taking on a losing proposition. On the other hand, he had an ace up his sleeve: he had not revealed his title. Murray had greeted him as Severin Knight—the news of his inheritance was only now spreading through London—and Severin hadn’t corrected him…yet.
As a businessman, Severin knew how to bide his time, play to his advantage. Surely his title would make Lady Beatrice look favorably upon his suit. He didn’t have time for an extended courtship. By now, his siblings had probably torn apart his new Mayfair mansion brick by brick, sending Aunt Esther running for the hills.
As he contemplated his conundrum, awareness stirred his nape. He turned and saw Fancy Sheridan entering on her papa’s arm. Her eyes met his across the room; she smiled shyly.
His blood heated with startling swiftness, probably because it had been simmering since their meeting earlier today. He didn’t know what it was about the chit that made him itch with lust. Although pretty, she was not his usual preference. In truth, Lady Beatrice was more his feminine ideal, yet he felt no physical pull, no crazed desire to get to know his potential duchess between the sheets.
Fancy Sheridan, however? He burned to know her in the biblical sense.
Get your mind out of the gutter, he told himself in disgust. You need a duchess, not some toothsome tinker’s daughter.
He steeled himself as the Sheridans approached. Fancy—Miss Sheridan, he corrected himself—looked the part of a genteel young lady this eve. Instead of plaits, her glossy brown tresses were bound in a topknot, baring the slender curve of her neck. She wore a simple pink gown that flattered her petite and curvy form. The off-the-shoulder cut displayed her smooth, sun-kissed skin and the rounded tops of her bosom. She had a gardenia pinned to her bodice, right between her breasts, and he had an urge to bury his nose in that fragrant, shadowed crevice—
Bloody hell, man. Rein it in.
“Good evening, Mr. Knight,” Milton Sheridan said.
“Sir.” Severin inclined his head. “Miss Sheridan, may I say how lovely you look?”
The nicety rolled off his tongue. It was the sort of thing a gentleman would say to any female, even if she resembled a mythical Gorgon. The women he knew would think nothing of it; indeed, Imogen had been the first to train him in the art of courtesy.
Even though he had been her family’s servant, one who still reeked of the stews, she’d snuck out to the stables to give him lessons, teaching him his letters and how to speak and act like a gentleman.
It is considered ill-bred for a gentleman to show excessive emotion, she had explained. Feelings should be expressed only in private…and even then, only the pleasant ones. That is how men and animals are different: men have the self-discipline to curb their baser instincts.
He had absorbed Imogen’s lessons, hoarding the time he spent with the angelic daughter of the house like precious coal to get himself through wintry reality. By that time, his maman had been in Bedlam, doing worse with each visit, and there’d been naught he could do about it. Thanks to Imogen, his only friend, he’d learned to curb his helplessness