He’d stopped in on Saturday when he’d visited the bookshop. “This wasn’t a planned visit. Allow me to introduce my friend, Miss Anne Pemberton.” He realized he should not have used her real name, but as he’d learned on the way here, it seemed he didn’t particularly care about hiding things at the moment.
Mrs. Watts bobbed her head, her white mobcap pinned tightly to her gray curls since it didn’t move even slightly. Whereas Anne, after removing her bonnet, nodded, and a slender blonde curl fell against her temple.
“Welcome,” Mrs. Watts said. “Can I get you anything?”
“I’m going to give Miss Pemberton a brief tour.” He took Anne’s bonnet and her gloves and set them on a narrow table beneath a mirror along with his own. “I’ll let you know if we require anything.”
“Very good.” Mrs. Watts turned toward the back of the house. “I have warm spiced cakes if that interests you,” she called before she disappeared.
“That is very tempting,” Anne said. “Much more tempting than salty biscuits.” She looked around the small entry hall, with its marble tile and solitary painting.
“You’ll find this house wanting after my residence in Upper Brook Street.”
Her eyes met his. “I don’t think I could find anything wanting about you.”
Her words heated him, and he let them, relishing the connection between them instead of resisting it. He showed her the dining room and the library, which looked rather sad since most of his books had been moved to Mayfair.
“You outgrew your library,” she said. “Is that why you moved?”
“I moved because I wanted to live in the best place.”
She looked up at him. “And Mayfair is the best? I’d say the best is wherever you’re happiest.”
Then that had been the small house he’d lived in with Eliza near Blackfriars. The first place where he’d felt he belonged. “Where have you been happiest?” he asked.
“Right now. Here, with you.” She squeezed his arm. “I would ask you the same, but I doubt you’d tell me. Though, perhaps I’m mistaken. You’ve already revealed more of yourself today than in all the time I’ve known you. Thank you,” she added softly.
“I’ll show you the drawing room upstairs.” He escorted her from the library and up the staircase that wound back on itself.
Decorated in yellows and golds, the room was warm and inviting, or so Mrs. Watts told him.
“This is beautiful,” Anne said, taking her hand from his arm and walking around the perimeter. “But it looks as though you just furnished it yesterday. Everything seems so new and untouched.” She stopped at the marble fireplace with its gilt decoration.
“I rarely spent time in here. Yellow was Eliza’s favorite color.”
Anne faced him, her shoulders tense. “Eliza was your wife.”
“Yes.” He walked toward her. “But she never lived here. I bought this house after she died.” They’d dreamed of living in such a place. And they’d been so close. He’d started looking at properties in Cheapside just before she’d died.
“Yet you decorated a room for her.” Anne’s head tipped back slightly as he came to a stop just before her. “You loved her very much.”
He drew a stuttering breath. “More than life. She was going to have our child.” It was his fault they were gone, victims of the choices he’d made. He bit the inside of his lip, trying to make a physical pain overshadow the emotional one.
Anne took his hand and led him from the drawing room back to the staircase hall. “What else is on the first floor?” She’d recognized his anguish and sought to banish it.
“My private rooms. Do I need to show them to you?”
“Yes.” She gazed up at him expectantly with perhaps a bit of silly exasperation that made him laugh.
Smiling in spite of the melancholy that had gripped him a few minutes ago, he took her into his sitting room.
“Now, this is your room,” she said, letting go of his hand and turning in a circle to survey the space.
“Why do you say that?”
“Dark, brooding colors with hints of brightness.” She picked up the bright orange pillow on the dark blue chaise. “Like this. It reminds me of your eye.”
Laughter did escape him then. “Well, that might have been on purpose. A friend gave me that.” A lover who’d come here on occasion but whom he hadn’t seen in months.
She waggled her brows. “So I’m not the first friend you’ve brought to your private rooms.”
He advanced on her, pinning her so the chaise hit the backs of her legs. “You’re the best one I’ve brought here.”
Her eyes lit with pleasure. “Well, that’s lovely.” She glanced toward the closed door that led to his bedchamber. “I can guess what lies that way. Are you going to show me that too?”
“I know you want to see it.”
“I’d like to do more than see it.”
He traced his fingertips down her cheek and across her jaw to her chin. “What did you have in mind?”
“I think I’d like to spend some time there. If you’re amenable.”
The stiffness of his cock and the desire pulsing through him said he was more than amenable. Even while his brain urged caution. “We shouldn’t.”
“We shouldn’t have gone to Paternoster Row today either. I think I’ve come to know you rather well, Lord Bodyguard, and you don’t always adhere to the rules.” She put her hands on his chest and, pressing her palms flat, slid them up to his collarbones. “And you know I don’t. The key is not getting caught breaking them.”
“You are a siren.”
“And I’m going to look at your bedchamber.” She slipped from between him and the chaise and went to open the door. With a glance over her shoulder, she smiled at him, then went inside.
He had no choice but to follow her into madness.
She stood near the wide bed and crooked her finger at him. Powerless to resist, he went to her.
A few strands of her hair brushed her nape, tempting him. She touched his cheek. “I know you don’t want me to say this, but I love you. And I want you to do what you told me before. With your mouth. Then I want to touch you. Please?”
Dear Lord, she was going to completely break him. Except he was already broken.
“If I do that, there will be no going back,” he rasped. “Do you understand?” At her nod, he started to unbutton the front of her costume, a long garment that covered her upper half and exposed the blue and ivory of her skirt. “You’re going to marry me, Anne.”
Her eyes rounded as her hand dropped down to his shoulder where she squeezed him tightly. “What?”
“If I’m going to put my mouth on you and you’re going to perchance do the same to me, we will wed. If you accept that, we may continue.”
She put her hands on his, stilling his movement. “That doesn’t seem a reason to marry.”
“It’s more than you had with your former betrothed, is it not?”
“It is.”
He didn’t move despite his body demanding he do so. “I await your decision.”