Not Proper Enough (A Reforming the Scoundrels Romance) (21 page)

“For your bachelor quarters.”

“For an escape from Bouverie.”

“Why?”

“Bouverie reminds me too much of my father.” He put the key in the lock. “Every time I step foot in the place, I feel the weight of centuries of expectations.” He opened the door and held it open for her. “At times, it’s more than I care to deal with.”

His butler, Golde, kept candles burning in the chandelier in the entrance to the town house, so the foyer was softly lit. Exactly as he preferred. Light reflected off the crystal
drops in the chandelier, from the gilt frame of the mirror across from the door, and from the mirror itself. As he turned from the door, he stole a glance at Eugenia. His heart skipped a beat.

This was his home, and Ginny was here. Against all reason and decency, she was here with him. He had every bad intention in the world so long as it sped them toward the moment when she agreed to marry him. When he had, at last, convinced her that her feelings were safe in his keeping.

Without giving voice to those thoughts, he escorted her to his study and lit candles before he crossed to the sidebar. Eugenia stood in the center of the room, her cloak drawn tight around her, candlelight flickering off her hair. He’d imagined this several times, being alone with her, though most often those dreams had a bedroom as the setting. He found the bottle he was looking for and turned back. “If we’re going to get drunk, whisky’s as good a way to go as any.”

“If you say so.” She slipped off her cloak and draped it over a chair.

“I do.” He studied her while he opened the whisky. “I can take you home if you’d rather.”

She shook her head.

“Good.” He opened one of the cabinet doors and found several bottles of wine on their sides. But it was glasses he was after. “Here we are.” He retrieved two tumblers from the back of an upper cabinet and splashed two fingers into one and half that amount in the other. “Aigen gave this to me. From the Wateresk distillery in the Grampian Mountains.” He crossed the room to hand the smaller portion to her. “Have you been drunk before?”

“Tipsy once. On wine. But not drunk.”

“Ah. A virgin. Not to worry, I’ve experience with virgins.”

She turned pink, but she laughed just as he’d hoped she would.

“We’ll go slowly.” He smiled down at her, and he thought
she was the most alluring woman he’d ever known. “I promise it won’t hurt a bit.”

“Men always say that to girls.” She glanced into her glass. “They always lie.”

“We’re a sorry lot, we men. A sip, Ginny. Like so.” He demonstrated what he meant and waited for her to try.

She did, but too much for someone who had no experience with drinking. Her eyes went wide, and she coughed. “Goodness. I don’t think I like it.”

“Try again. A very small sip this time.” Her eyes were a pure, clear blue. This close to her, he could see her lashes were longer than they looked because the tips were so pale. He lifted his glass. “To my bloody father.”

“Don’t curse.”

“We’re drinking together. I’ll curse if I like.” He lifted his glass to her. “So should you.”

“I couldn’t.”

He took a slow sip of his whisky, and she did the same, a wisely smaller one than before. “Better?”

She stared at the whisky. “Yes, actually.”

“Good.” He took her hand and walked with her to the fireplace. Here, in his home, the servants were instructed not to let the fires go out when he was in London. Still with her hand in his, he put a foot on the grate. “What do you think? Of the whisky.”

They remained silent while she drank what was left in her glass. He’d not given her much. She tipped the glass and watched the few remaining drops pool. “The taste grows on you.”

“It does.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I’m drunk.”

“Not yet.” Fox let go of her hand to fetch the whisky bottle and pour another finger into her tumbler. He added more to his and set the bottle on the mantel. He didn’t intend to drink much. He needed a clear head. Wanted a clear head, at any rate. “Shall we sit?” He gestured toward the velvet sofa that faced the fire. She frowned in that direction.

“My lovely, darling Ginny, come sit. You can’t be comfortable standing. Nor warm enough, either.”

She sat primly on the sofa, not quite in the center.

“Shall I put more coal on the fire?”

“Please.” While he did that she lifted her face to the ceiling. “This is a very masculine room.”

He finished with the fire and walked to the sofa, bringing the whisky bottle with him. “It is. But then, this is my private office, and I am a man.”

She lowered her chin, and he dragged his eyes upward just in time. Her gown barely exposed her upper shoulders, but there was more than a hint of an inviting roundness of bosom. He did like a woman with an inviting bosom. Everything about her appealed to him. Always had. He stared into his tumbler. He could see parts of the ceiling reflected in his glass as well as orange lights from the fire.

“You said you’d take scandalous advantage of me.”

He looked at her, and he could see all her doubt and worry, and it made his heart clench. “Do you want me to?”

Her smile faded. “I don’t know. I’m here, so I think I must.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to think anymore. It only makes me feel sad.”

Fox put the bottle and his half-empty glass on a table beside the sofa. “I’m happy to oblige you.”

“Tell me a secret.” She met his gaze. “Something shocking.”

“I still want that quick fuck.”

A smile flashed over her face. “That’s not a secret. I’m not shocked, either.”

“Others would be shocked if they knew I was saying such things to you.”

“True. But you might as well tell me the weather is cold. Come now, Fenris. Tell me something that will shock me.”

“Very well.” He searched her face. “I’ve not been to bed with a woman for nearly a year. Not since before I went to see you at Bitterward.”

“To see me?” She waved a hand at him. “You never did. You came to Bitterward to propose to Lily.”

Here he was, alone with a woman he desired, and he was practically paralyzed by the possibility that he’d do something to scare her off. “Did I?”

She took another sip of her drink. A bigger one than the others she’d taken. “I think I like whisky.”

“You like excellent whisky.”

“Yes. I think I do.” She slipped her feet out of her shoes and curled her legs underneath her. She lifted her eyes to his, and he did like the way she smiled at him. “Have you got a cheroot?”

“I have.”

“You promised me, after all.”

“I did.”

She held out a hand and wriggled her fingers. “You men smoke and drink when you’re alone together.”

“Among other things.”

“Robert said you talked politics and mathematics.”

“He and I did.”

She settled more comfortably on the sofa. “Once, though, he admitted you talk about disreputable subjects, too. Ballet girls and courtesans and ladies you wish were not ladies.” She gave him a sideways look. “The Incomparable and the like.”

“The Incomparable has had her congé from me for some time.” He went to the desk drawer where he was fairly certain he had a cheroot. After a moment’s search, he found an ebony socket, and in another moment, one cheroot tucked away in a different drawer. “I’ve only the one here. I’ve more in my private quarters. I can fetch them if you like.”

She let her head fall back on the sofa. “I don’t mind sharing. If you don’t.”

“I don’t.” He returned to the fireplace and lit the cigar from a taper. He nodded at her, cheroot in hand, and sent a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. After a bit, she held out a hand. “Fenris.”

“Fox.” He cocked his head. “When we are private.”

“You said you’d teach me to smoke. Was that a lie?”

“Never.” He sat beside her on the sofa and handed her
the cheroot. He did not let go, however. “Have you smoked before?”

“Twice a virgin.”

He laughed at that, and so did she.

“I believe I’m drunk enough to try.” Still with her head on the sofa, she blinked at him. “How does one know if one is drunk?”

“Are you feeling relaxed? That the world is a pleasant place?”

“Yes.” Her gaze turned inward. “Yes, I believe so.”

“I’d say you are likely mildly inebriated.” With his other hand, he reached for her whisky. “Let it settle on you for a bit. If you get too drunk, too fast, you won’t remember tomorrow that you’ve seen me naked.”

Her mouth twitched. “I have not.”

“Not yet.” He let go of the cigar. “You shall, Ginny. I promise. Don’t try to inhale your first time.”

“Overbearing man.” She nodded. She put the socket to her mouth, inhaled, and promptly choked.

“I told you not to inhale.” He reached across her for the cigar and took it. “As with anything worth doing, practice is required.” He inhaled and blew out a smoke ring. They watched it slowly expand and then vanish.

“That’s very nice.” She took the cigar from him and, this time, took only a puff that she immediately let out. “Observe,” she said, waving the cigar. “I’ve made a smoke cloud better than yours. Mine hasn’t a hole in the middle.”

“Talented woman.”

“I am. Very talented.” She stretched out her arm and picked up her whisky, which he had set on a table on his other side. She was, he assumed, unaware that her bosom pressed against him while she did so. She straightened and took a drink. “Did you see the way Dinwitty Lane was looking at Hester this evening?”

“Not especially.” Christ, he was randy as hell, seeing her with a cigar in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other. “I did see him staring at you, though.”

“Wondering about buttons I expect.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “He’s jealous he’s not had his hand down your dress.”

“Neither have you.”

“No, but he doesn’t know that.”

She looked at him over the rim of the tumbler and blinked once before wrinkling her nose in dismissal. “Lady Baring thinks Hester should marry her son Edward. Lieutenant Fraser.”

“Not a bad match, I’d say.”

She put the cheroot to her lips again with no better result than before. When she’d finished coughing, she blinked several times. “She offered to speak to her son. The lieutenant. But I think it’s because her eldest was interested, too.”

“I don’t want to talk about Miss Rendell.”

“She could fall in love with you, you know. If you tried even a little bit.”

He took her whisky from her again. “No more for a bit.”

“Why?”

“Because I intend to take advantage of you, and I can’t if you have any more to drink.”

She made a face at him. “Don’t treat me as if I’m a child and you’re a nurse insisting I eat my peas properly.”

“I have always liked peas.”

“Turnips, then.”

He shifted on the sofa so he faced her and draped an arm along the top. “I especially like turnips.”

“There must be some vegetable you don’t like. I’m that one.”

“I was a perfect child in every way and ate every vegetable ever to be put on my plate.”

She let out a breath. “Lord, you would be. You’re perfect in every way.”

“As I mean for you to discover.”

“You know what I mean. We do not have a pleasant history, you and I.”

“I beg to differ. Our recent history is very pleasant indeed.”

“I’m going to start calling you the Incorrigible.”

“If you like.”

She took another drag on the cigar, drew too much, and set off coughing. “Heavens, this thing is vile.” She sat up, head down while she waited for her lung spasms to subside. “You take it.”

He did so and stood to toss the thing into the fire. When he rejoined Eugenia, he sat closer to her than before.

“You’ve not told me a single secret about you.” She shook a finger at him.

“I told you I’d not been intimate with a woman since before Bitterward. That’s a secret only we two know.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It isn’t.”

“What do you call what happened in the Turkish room?”

“I call it damned arousing.” He drank half his whisky and then the rest and wished he had more. “I don’t understand why I’ve remained so besotted with you over the years. But I have done so, and here you are, Ginny, in my private home. Quite alone and just drunk enough that you haven’t slapped me.”

“I don’t like you,” she whispered. “Not even a little.”

“I know.” He lowered his head to hers, and he thought,
To hell with decency. And to bloody hell with caution
. “Isn’t it delicious this way?”

E
UGENIA HELD
F
ENRIS’S GAZE BECAUSE SHE’D COMPLETELY
lost her mental footing. His arm looped around her shoulders, warm and insistent, and he sat so close their torsos nearly touched.

Fenris had always been fastidious about his dress. It was a habit he shared, unknowingly, with his cousin Lily. Always perfectly put together. One didn’t have to like the man to appreciate his looks. He was a long-legged specimen, taller than average with dark hair that flirted with being brown. For so slender a man, he was impressively broad through the shoulders. His light brown eyes were heavily lashed. His mouth was, she noticed yet again, surprisingly tender.