Tempting the Bride - By Sherry Thomas Page 0,2

these days? Becoming a publisher—so you think there still aren’t enough bad books to be had? That is a ravishing dress, my dear, dear Miss Fitzhugh; a shame you can’t fill it out with a few more curves—or any, for that matter.

Her ripostes always set his heart aflame. I knew I chose a women’s college for all the right reasons, but a hotbed of lesbianism—my goodness—that is like discovering a vein of gold on the land you’ve just bought, isn’t it? Of course, you would find the vast majority of books taxing, given your trouble with basic literacy—rest assured I will publish a few picture books just for you.

And his favorite, in response to his slur against her figure: My dear Lord Hastings, I’m afraid I didn’t quite hear you. You are mumbling. Is your mouth full of—why, it is!—indeed, a whole cluster of sour grapes. With the tip of her index finger, she’d drawn a line from her chin to just beneath the top of her neckline, cast him a look of pure derision, and swept off. And he’d never been more hopelessly in love.

“You are staring at me, Hastings,” said the present-day Miss Fitzhugh, an edge to her voice.

“Yes, I know, grieving over your soon-to-come deterioration—of course, you are still comely, but age will inexorably catch up with you. You really aren’t getting any younger, Miss Fitzhugh.”

She fluttered her fan. “And do you know what they say of women of a certain age, what they want above all?”

Desire simmered in him at her not-quite smile. “Do tell.”

“To be rid of you, Hastings. So that they don’t have to waste what remains of their precious few years suffering your lecherous looks.”

“If I stopped looking at you lecherously, you’d miss it.”

“Why don’t we test that hypothesis? You stop and I’ll tell you after ten years or so whether I miss it.”

He gazed at her a little longer. He could watch her all night—in fact, he would watch her all night, from wherever he was in Lord Wrenworth’s drawing room—but the time had come for him to depart her chaise before she forcibly evicted him.

He rose and bowed slightly. “You wouldn’t last two weeks, Miss Fitzhugh.”

The ladies retired by half past ten. The gentlemen smoked a few cigars, played a few hands of cards and a few games of snooker. At half past twelve, Hastings was the last person to head up.

Except he didn’t go directly to his room. Instead he took himself to an alcove that allowed him a limited view of her room—unrequited love meant staring at closed doors, imagining otherwise. A faint light still shone under her door; she was probably reading in bed.

Just a few more pages.

Hampton House, her childhood home, had been of a modest size. When he’d visited, he’d had a room three doors down from hers. Every night, her governess would come around and urge her to turn off her lamp. Invariably she would answer, Just a few more pages.

And when the governess had left, he would slip out of his own room and peer at her door until her light was extinguished at last, before he returned to bed to stew anew in lust and yearning.

A habit that he’d kept to this day, whenever they happened to be under the same roof.

Her light turned off. He sighed. How long would he keep at this? Soon he would be twenty-seven. Did he still plan to stand in a dark passage in the middle of the night and gaze upon her door when he was thirty-seven? Forty-seven? Ninety-seven?

He ran his hand through his hair. Time for his lonely bed, which he could have filled with women, but for his reluctance to sleep with anyone else when Miss Fitzhugh was in the vicinity. Perhaps it was some hidden wellspring of gentlemanliness protesting this act of hypocrisy, or perhaps it was merely him being superstitious, afraid that such an infraction would destroy what slender hope he still had.

Her door opened.

He sucked in a breath. Had she sensed him? He pressed his back into the curved inside of the alcove. It was too dark to see well, but she seemed to be poised on the threshold. Was she searching for him?

The door closed softly. He let out the breath he held—she must have returned to her room.

Suddenly she was before him, a disturbance in the air. His heart leaped to the roof of his mouth; endless disastrous possibilities flashed across his mind, all his years of careful pretenses