Page 79 of The Lady Knows Best

But when she spoke, it was in that other voice. Not a scold, just a gentle warning.

This changes things, you know. Are you sure?

Perhaps Daphne’s conscience wasn’t as divided as she’d thought.

Well, she wasn’t going to waste time arguing. She’d made up her mind—yesterday, at the latest, but almost certainly before that. And her decision had had nothing . . . well, almost nothing to do with what had happened in the library.

She had come to Lyneham intending to find proof of something she had already begun to doubt: that Miles was the worst sort of profligate, representative of a species of men whom women could never trust. The truth, as always, was rather more complicated.

He wasn’t perfect. Except perhaps at this, she thought as his lips traveled down her throat, tracing a searing path. But his mistakes and misspent years mattered less to her than the decency she’d glimpsed deep inside him: his love for his friend, for his grandmother, for Lyneham Park.

And while young women might need advice from time to time, they didn’t need a moralizing lesson, to be told again and again to guard their chastity and refuse to open their hearts. She had written as much, and sent it off to London with Lady Stalbridge.

After all, the goal of the Magazine for Misses was to empower young women to make choices for themselves . . . even if that meant choosing a rake.

“Wait.”

For just a moment, she thought the rough voice belonged to Miss Busy B., urging caution once more.

Then Miles levered himself off her, off the bed. “This,” he said, looking down at her, “isn’t what you deserve.”

She hoisted herself onto her elbows, prepared to argue, to explain her new philosophy on liberty of choice. But before she could speak, he had sat down in one of the chairs and begun to toe off his boots. Then he peeled off his stockings, revealing muscled calves dusted with fair hair. And after he had unknotted his cravat, he stood, stripped off his shirt, dropped it onto the chair.

Her mouth went dry. The darkened library, she realized, had revealed almost nothing at all. But now, she could see everything. His sculpted chest and arms. The V of muscles between his hip bones like an arrow pointing to his arousal, barely disguised beneath his low-slung breeches. The melting heat of his gaze.

Then he crooked his finger, urging her to rise, and she understood he wanted to look at her too.

Though nervous, she complied with his silent request. After all, one of the things that had helped her to make her decision was the realization that he truly saw her, just when she had decided it would be her fate to be forever overlooked.

She unfolded herself from the low bed and began to fumble with the fastenings of her dress.

“I have a better idea,” he said, grasping her by the waist and turning her slowly so she faced the bed and her backside was to the fire. The window cast its pale, stormy light over her face.

“Now,” he said with a devilish grin, stretching himself out on his side on the bed, one elbow against the mattress, his head propped up on his hand, “you may begin.”

She set one foot on the seat of a chair to unlace her boot and remove it, then did the same with the other. “Leave your stockings on,” came the rasped order when she began to reach up to untie her garters.

The dress was more of a struggle, though she had chosen it in the wee hours of the morning because it did not require a maid’s assistance. Though she was sure she must look dreadfully awkward, his face revealed nothing but desire as she managed to undo the buttons and ties and eventually shimmied the dress down her arms and over her hips until it lay in a puddle at her feet.

And then just her shift remained, for she certainly had not bothered with a corset when she had dressed alone in hurried silence an hour before dawn.

When she reached down to grasp the hem, he sat up a little straighter. As she lifted her shift, inch by inch, he watched avidly—looking not just at the skin she revealed, as the garment rose over her knees and up her thighs, but at her. All of her.

She paused at the top of her legs, the hem of her shift drooping just low enough to cover her thatch of dark brown curls. His charming, boyish smile grew strained.

“What advice would Miss Busy B. give a man who’s being slowly driven mad by desire?” he asked.

“Be patient.”

Turning her back to him and her already flaming face toward the fire, she lifted the shift over her head and let it drop to the floor.

He sucked in a sharp breath. The rope cot creaked as he sat up fully. “Did you somehow imagine I wasn’t aching to see this side of you too? My God . . .” She heard his feet strike the floor, and a moment later, his hand swept over her hip and the breadth of his chest was pressed against her back. His whispered voice was reverent. “You’re beautiful—every inch of you.”

“I’m just . . . ordinary,” she insisted.

“I’m not going to waste breath arguing with you.” He dropped an open-mouthed kiss at the base of her neck, in that spot that made her shiver with delight.

“If I’d said as much to you on the night of the Clearwaters’ ball,” she pointed out, “I’m fairly certain you would have agreed with me.”