Winter's Whispers (The Wicked Winters #10) - Scarlett Scott Page 0,1

liver finally made sense.

“Christ.” His lip curled. “Get it out of here.”

She frowned at him. “That is what I was trying to do when you interrupted me, sir.”

“Blade,” he corrected, sketching a mocking bow. “No sir. No mister.”

Her frown deepened, that hazel gaze of hers—not quite green, nor brown, yet almost gray—searched his. “I beg your pardon?”

“The name’s Blade Winter. Half brother to the host. Reluctant guest. Ardent hater of cats,” he listed off each fact idly, watching, fascinated by her in spite of himself. “Definitely not the sort of cove you ought to find yourself alone with, in a bedchamber.”

Her brows rose. The becoming pink flush had reached the tops of her breasts now. “Oh dear.”

Bloody hell. Mayhap a fortnight trapped in the wintry wilds of England was not going to be nearly as boring as he had supposed.

What a sophisticated, genteel miss thing to say, oh dear. As if they were in the drawing room and she had struck a discordant note on the pianoforte or whatever the hell it was that fancy nibs and ladies did together. Blade wouldn’t know. All he did with fancy ladies who dressed in silk and smelled of sweet perfume was bed them.

“Fetch the liver,” he told her, irritated that she remained, tempting, wide-eyed, and within reach.

Nettled that desire was sliding through him, even now, when he could plainly see she was the last sort of lady with whom he would ever dally.

“Liver?” She blinked.

“Eavesdropping is a talent of mine, especially when there’s a lady stuffed beneath my bed, having a chat with her cat while her arse hangs in the wind,” he said scathingly, just to see if her flush would deepen.

She gasped. “How dare you? My bottom was most certainly not hanging in the wind.”

He could not contain his grin at her prim refusal to say the word arse, which just made him want to remark upon it more. “No need to worry, sweetheart. It’s a plummy arse you’ve got.”

“Plummy!” Her color heightened. Her lips parted.

“Careful. Wouldn’t want to catch flies, eh?” He cocked his head, considering her, his gaze dipping to her bosom once more. And a fine bosom it was, indeed. That the front and upper half of her was every bit as good as the lower back was both a source of appreciation and irritation.

Appreciation because he was Blade Winter, and he excelled at two skills: fighting and fucking. Irritation because the latter of those two skills was one in which he could not currently afford to indulge.

Stupid bloody duel.

He was an expert marksman—came with the trade—and if that twat Penhurst hadn’t moved, his bullet would have grazed his left arm as planned, only enough to put a rip in the coat sleeve rather than enough to make him bleed. And potentially lose the limb.

“Would you go, please?” the interloper in his chamber asked in her perfect, aristocratic English.

Surely he had misheard her.

“Pardon?”

“Miss Wilhelmina will be too fearful to emerge with a stranger here.”

He still could not believe she had named a cat Miss bloody Wilhelmina. It was something only a pampered lady would do, one who had never needed to worry where her next meal would come from. One who had never feared the shadows in the night. One who had never suffered a moment in her privileged life.

“Too fucking bad for Miss Wilhelmina,” he snapped, in a foul mood at the reminder of his cursed past. “This is my chamber, and she is not welcome here. Nor are you. I don’t tup virgins, and even if I did, you aren’t my sort, sweetheart.”

He was being rude, he knew. He had cursed and referenced all manner of things not fit for a proper lady’s ears. But Blade Winter wasn’t a gentleman. And he was only rusticating in the midst of nothing in Oxfordshire because Dom had strong-armed him into it.

As the leader of the bastard Winters, the eldest of them all, and the one who ran The Devil’s Spawn, Dom made such decisions. The rest of them fell in line like good little soldiers. Even if it meant being sent to the monkery where strange, lovely ladies were rummaging about beneath their beds in search of cats with preposterous names.

“There is no cause to use such language, sir, or to be so ungenerous,” the lady in question said now, her tone frosty enough to rival the wintry winds buffeting the outside of this massive old cavern of a home.

“I’ve been traveling for two days, and this