“The muffin last night—if it had been handed round once, I think it would have been enough.”
Jane Austen, Emma
Briar opened the closet door and carefully slipped the canceled subscriptions back into the files, silently shushing the crinkly pieces of paper. She didn’t want to get caught. Using the agency’s resources to further her own pursuits wasn’t completely aboveboard. Although, since sneaking a list of client names to Nicholas for his cousin would eventually have a positive effect on the agency, she refused to feel too guilty.
As for her other indiscretion—kissing a rake in her patroness’s music room last night—well, she tried not to think about it.
But honestly, not thinking about something as startling as that kiss, would have been like not paying attention to a rain shower that suddenly turned into a storm of chocolate, the streets covered in whipped froth.
There simply was no way to ignore it, or to forget how he’d reacted.
Clearly, Briar had been an abominable flop at kissing. Nevertheless, giving up was not in her nature. After all, she hadn’t been able to hit the target with her first arrow. Like anything else, she supposed that kissing required practice.
Kissing practice with Nicholas . . . hmm. The instant the thought entered her mind, her face grew hot, her lips tingling—
And that was how Ainsley found her, standing half in and half out of the closet and pressed against the glazed trim to cool her cheeks.
“An odd place to daydream,” Ainsley said, lifting her brow, a glimmer of amusement in her brown eyes.
Briar straightened, shoulders back. “I wasn’t. I was merely . . .” But nothing came to her. Her mind went blank. Oh, how she wished she had Jacinda’s knack for making up falsehoods on the spot. Bother. “What is that in your hand, another canceled subscription?”
“No. Or, at least, not this time.” Ainsley abstained from further comment or mention of how many they’d received in the past two days. Instead, she handed over the missive.
Seeing that it was from Temperance, Briar opened it at once. “I’ve been invited to tea today.”
Perfect! While she was there, she could hand the list to Nicholas instead of sending it by post.
However, Ainsley had another idea. “I don’t know if I like the idea of your going. I heard from Uncle Ernest that Lord Edgemont has returned to town. It was one thing for you to visit your friend at his lordship’s townhouse while he was away, but now . . .”
“Surely you don’t believe he intends to ravish me in front of his aunt and cousins? Unless you think that is implied in the missive. Here, let me read it again.” Briar huffed, making a show of turning the page frontways and backways. “No. Just as I suspected, I’ve only been invited for tea, not debauchery.”
“It was only a concern for your well—” Ainsley stopped abruptly, her lips thinning as she expelled a frustrated breath through her nostrils. “Since he is the Duchess of Holliford’s godson, I suppose the association was inevitable. Though, in the past, Her Grace has made little mention of their relationship due to his reputation, which is enough for me to warn you to be on your guard.”
She truly wanted to preach to her sister about trust and having faith that Briar would never fall for the charms of a renowned rake. But . . . having already kissed him, the foundation of her pulpit wasn’t terribly sturdy. So instead, she offered a hasty nod.
“Very well, then,” Ainsley said with a begrudging frown tucked into the corners of her mouth. “Jacinda is taking the carriage to Mayfair. So if you want to go, you’d best make haste.”
* * *
That afternoon, Daniel stormed into Nicholas’s study, a blue silk banyan knotted around his waist and a half-crumpled letter in his fist.
“A summons, cousin? You sent me a summons when you could have simply walked to my chamber instead?” He slammed the paper down onto the desk, his mussed brown hair falling over his brow, making him look the part of the tragic hero.
Nicholas rose from the wingback chair in no mood for Daniel’s continued melancholy. Leaning forward, he pressed his fingertips to the dark walnut surface, towering over his cousin by half a head. “The last time I knocked on your door, your valet informed me that you were still abed. At a quarter of one in the afternoon. You must begin to join the rest of the family and stop behaving as if your life has ended.”
“Genevieve married another man. My life has ended!” Daniel sank onto the nearest chair, his arms draping limply over the rests. “You don’t know what it’s like to have your world completely upended.”
He didn’t? Nicholas recalled once having his life torn completely to shreds in a single moment but, apparently, his cousin did not. All the better for him, he supposed.
Oblivious to the bitter memories he’d conjured, Daniel continued to wallow, sighing at length. “You just don’t feel things as deeply as I do. So, you can never imagine what it’s like to wake up every day with part of your soul missing.”
Nicholas gritted his teeth, biting down on the response that Miss Smithson—Genevieve—had only been using Daniel from the very beginning. But that knowledge would do his cousin little good. He simply needed to move on and find a woman worthy of him. “Nevertheless, it has been a year and—”
“No,” Daniel interrupted, staring blankly at the ceiling. “It has only been seven months and four days since she left.”
Nicholas growled. After months—though it had seemed like years—of letting his cousin brood in the country, it was painfully clear that a laissez-faire approach to Daniel’s ongoing misery hadn’t worked. Today the incessant wallowing was doing more than weighing Nicholas down with guilt, it was grating on his last nerve.
Though, if he were honest with himself, he’d been in a foul temper since he’d left the Duchess of Holliford’s residence last night. He’d spent the evening pacing the halls of his townhouse, unsettled, riled, and irritated beyond measure at little Miss Briar Bourne.
She should have told him she’d never been kissed. But because she hadn’t, what he’d intended to be an amusement—a mere diversion—had gone awry from the start.
He’d known it the instant her mouth descended on his and a keen jolt riffled through him, as if he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. Every breath of air had left his body. Every nerve ending tingled. Every hair stood on end. And he’d had the inexplicable sense that he was wholly out of his depth. Him—a man who possessed more carnal knowledge about women in his little finger than most men experienced in their lives.
So he’d done what any sane man would have done. He’d railed at her for neglecting to reveal this secret, fully prepared to end their agreement and make do without her assistance.
Then he’d made the mistake of looking at her lips and—damn it all—he’d wanted more. He’d felt a tense current vibrating through him as if he were a lightning rod craving the next thunderstorm. In fact, he still felt that way today, charged with static as if he’d shuffled across the rug in his stockinged feet a thousand times since last night.
Like a fool, he’d even asked Teense to invite Briar to join them for tea today, wanting her to meet Daniel and begin the process of finding him a wife.
Irritatingly, ever since Briar’s acceptance had arrived this morning, he’d become a damnable clock-watcher, waiting for the bells to chime four.
“You’re coming to tea today,” he said tersely and shoved a hand through the air toward the door. “Go. Get cleaned up. Your sister has invited a friend.”
“I’ll take tea in my rooms.”
Nicholas speared his cousin with a dark glare. “That is your choice, of course. But if you don’t come to tea today and partake in this one small dose of society, then I will host a ball in your honor next week, and tie you to a column in the center of the ballroom so that you cannot escape.”
Daniel sat up and stared agape at him as if he were seeing a stranger. Then, with a moan of despair, he stood and trudged out of the study.
Nicholas made a mental note to have plenty of rope on hand by next week.
Then, before returning to his ledgers, he caught himself glancing at the clock. Again.