Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(52)

Or when he was removed from service, which seemed far more likely given his recent carelessness. He forced himself to read the correspondence from Carnes in full, but his mind remained diverted.

Fifty thousand pounds for this year’s needed improvements. The leaking roof had been repaired, thank fuck, but the crumbling southern wall needed to be addressed. Something about an increase in the turkey flock. Fodder cabbage, turnips, and sheep.

There it was again, damn it all.

Bergamot.

And her laughter the first morning after he’d made love to her. Her laughter had been like a gift: unexpected and treasured, a joy to his soul. That beautiful, mellifluous sound had wound its way inside him, imprinted itself upon his very memory, so that he would never again hear another woman’s levity without thinking of her. Of Daisy with her spun-gold hair and her sad eyes and insuppressible daring. Of how he had once laughed with her and it had been the best fucking morning of his life.

The only morning in as long as he could recall where he’d allowed himself the luxury of being. He had been Sebastian, and she had been Daisy, and none of the mire surrounding them had intruded.

Realization struck him then, with the force of a fist straight to the jaw. He didn’t just lust after her. Bedding her had not been based upon basic sexual need alone in the same way it had with his past lovers. It had been necessary, yes, but in the way that filling his lungs with breath was necessary. Why else would he have been caught up in her for an entire week and still more lost than he’d ever been?

Bergamot hit him again.

He lowered his nose to his shoulder and took a discreet sniff. Jesus, his neck smelled like her. It was as if she’d planted her scent on him as another method of feminine torture. He must have been remiss in his morning ablutions, but he couldn’t say he minded now, for he liked the way she smelled.

He liked Daisy.

A knock sounded at his study door, and unless he was mistaken, it wasn’t the knock of any of his servants. Which could only mean one thing.

Her.

She wasn’t satisfied with invading his mind and imprinting her scent upon him, but now she intended to infiltrate his inner sanctum as well. He would ignore her, he decided, flipping past the Thornsby Hall letter to the next. She was his temporary wife, he reminded himself. Their union wasn’t meant to last. It was a falsehood. A ruse. They needn’t play at being husband and wife. He wasn’t required to invite her into his study. And he bloody well ought to stop spending every night in her chamber. He would, just as soon as he could bring himself to look at her without needing to tear aside her fripperies and fill her with his cock.

That didn’t seem likely any time soon.

The knock came again, followed by her voice. “I’ve been wondering all week and have yet to reach an answer. What follows a one-sixteenth, Your Grace?”

The woman was mad.

He should continue ignoring her. Turn her away. Begin to erect a sensible distance between them. But he was grinning, and that meant he was just as mad as she.

Fit for the lunatic asylum, the both of them.

“You may enter,” he called out, and it wasn’t solely with resignation. No indeed, there was also a most unwanted note of anticipation underlying his words.

The door opened, and she swept inside, a vision in a pink-and-red-striped frock with lace underskirts peeking through. Her hair was styled differently today, worn in a loose twist atop her head with curls framing her face. She looked like a goddess he’d seen in a picture at the Grosvenor Gallery once: luscious, romantic, purely feminine.

The air fled from his lungs as he stood in deference and bowed. How was it possible that she was even more beautiful, more vibrant and magnetic, than she’d ever been? How was it possible that he wanted her more than ever?

She offered him a formal curtsy as well, but her full lips quirked into a confident smile. “Sebastian.”

“One thirty-second,” he answered, skirting his desk and going to her. Suddenly, he couldn’t be in the same chamber as she without having her in his arms.

He tried to remind himself that he was a spy with a duty to the Crown, but that argument had grown increasingly muffled as he’d gotten to know Daisy better. She made him recall what he’d forgotten over the last dozen years: that beneath the fa?ade he was forced to present to the world, he was also just a man. His training had prepared him for torture and death, had taught him how to defend himself with or without weapons, to kill with his bare hands, to read a man’s face, to anticipate his enemy’s every action. But none of his training had prepared him for the onslaught of one small, daring woman.

The warm tones of her gown enhanced the moss of her eyes as he approached her, and he won a laugh from her that settled somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “Good heavens, that is quite a small fraction. Would one even pronounce the ‘Y’?”

“I can’t be certain.” He caught her waist and pulled her against him, savoring the already familiar crush of her breasts into his chest. “But one could rectify the matter by referring to one’s husband by his given name.”

“Oh?” She raised a brow in feigned innocence and batted her long lashes. “And what is that? My memory is appalling, I’m afraid, and I’ve forgotten.”

“Perhaps I can stir it for you, buttercup.” He gave in to temptation and lowered his mouth to hers. How naturally they fit together. How easy it was to slide his hand into the soft confines of her neat coiffure, cup her perfectly shaped head, and angle her just as he wanted her. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, demanding entrance, and she opened for him without hesitation, her tongue tangling with his.