Page 30 of How the Earl Entices

Grace eyed the rusty lock. She wasn’t so certain. “The benches will all be taken.” If not with travelers who weren’t lucky enough to snag beds, then certainly by men too drunk to stagger upstairs to their own rooms. As if fate had read her mind, a raucous cheer went up from downstairs. Besides, with his wounds still healing, he wouldn’t be fit to travel in the morning if he slept on a hard bench or the floor. “We can share this room.”

Somehow.Good Lord, it was tiny, so very tiny. And Ross was big. She swallowed hard and didn’t dare let her gaze drift to him. Soverybig.

“Are you certain?”

When she jerked a nod, Ross pulled the door closed and flipped the lock.

Doing her best to calm her racing heartbeat, Grace watched Ross sit on the bed and yank off his boots. As he placed the second boot under the bed, he glanced up. “Aren’t you going to undress?”

“Of course,” she murmured, thankful that in the dim light from the candle he couldn’t see the flush that rose into her cheeks as she reached for her travel bag and realized that in order to put on her night rail she’d have to remove her clothes.Allof them. With him sitting on the bed less than four feet away.Thatshe simply would not do.

But she couldn’t ask him to step out into the hallway, not when they were supposed to be married.

She was being silly. She was a widow with a child, for heaven’s sake! She certainly wasn’t an innocent who needed to protect her virtue. Both of them were adults, after all, with nothing the other hadn’t seen before. In his case, most likely hundreds of times with dozens of women. And it wasn’t as if he cared what she looked like beneath her clothes.

Butshecared, even if that made her a goose to be nervous. It had been ten years since a man had seen her undress, since before she’d given birth—

“Would you like me to turn around?”

Oh please God yes!She forced a casual shrug of her shoulder. “If you’d like.”

The scoundrel arched a knowing brow but wisely said nothing. He pushed himself off the bed and turned his back.

She let out a deep but silent sigh and grabbed up her night rail. Keeping an eye on him to make certain he didn’t turn around, she quickly kicked off her shoes and stripped off the kerchief at her neck, before reaching to remove her dress. “This must be difficult for you.”

“It’s a pleasant change.”

Thatwasn’t the answer she expected. “Oh?”

“Usually I’m the one undressing the woman who’s sharing my bed for the night.”

She froze, her dress half off. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Amused laughter colored his deep voice. “But my interpretation is far more entertaining.”

Blast the devil! She snatched up her travel cape and threw it at him, hitting him over the head with it. Chuckling, he hung it on a nail jutting out from the wall.

“Imeantthe lodgings.” She untied her petticoat and let it fall away from around her waist. “You’re a viscount. You must be used to private suites, feather beds, brocade curtains—”

“Earl.”

She paused as she reached for the front lace of her stays. “Pardon?”

“I inherited four years ago,” he said quietly. “I’m Earl of Spalding now.”

Her stomach roiled. She’d tiedan earlto her bed and then blackmailed him into helping her? Oh good Lord.

He turned his head slightly to ask over his shoulder, “You didn’t know?”

Heavens no! “We don’t receive a lot of society news in Sea Haven.”

“Does it make a difference?”

She shrugged off her stays and set them onto the growing stack of clothes on the floor at her feet, with no other place in the tiny room to put them. “Will you try any less hard to help me once we’re in London, simply because you’re an earl?”

“Of course not.”

She reached beneath her chemise to untie her stockings. “Then it makes no difference to me who you are.”