Free London's Last True Scoundrel by Christina Brooke Page A

gleam of dark irises was so quick, she might have missed it if her attention had not been so narrowly focused on him.
    The blackguard had been feigning sleep.
    “Lord Davenport,” she said imperiously. “You must get up. We must be away.”
    Her only answer was a soft sigh. He rolled over, muttering something as if in the midst of slumber. The covers twisted, slipping down to reveal the solid, beautifully drawn line of his back, a hint of the crevice at the top of his backside. A strategic maneuver, she thought.
    He rolled again, onto his back, the covers winding low around his hips.
    Lord, but the man was a peacock!
    Ire rose, crowding her chest. This was all a game to him, wasn’t it?
    Well, it wasn’t to her.
    With a grim set to her mouth, she picked up the ewer and marched over to the bed.
    Without hesitation or mercy, she upended the ewer over his head.
    Icy water gushed forth, splashing, soaking the pillow, all but drowning him.
    He made a sound that was half gasp, half roar, and bolted upright, the covers pooling around his waist.
    “You baggage!” he sputtered.
    “You were awake the whole time.” She slammed the ewer down on the bedside table. “You were watching me.”
    “If I’d thought you’d bloody well—,” he began, wiping water from his eyes. Suddenly he broke off as if struck by the absurd picture he must present. He began to laugh.
    “Keep your voice down,” she hissed.
    She saw too late, moved too slowly. One arm snaked out to catch her around the waist. He pulled her down with him on the bed, making her wet, too.
    The next thing she knew, he’d flipped her to her back and was looming over her, the water from his sodden hair dripping in her face.
    He brought up one hand to shove the wet tangle out of his face. The laughter died out of those dark eyes and the intent look that had so undone her on the road outside replaced it.
    With his thumb, gently, he wiped a droplet of water that had settled, cool, against her lips.
    Her breath caught. Her brain seized.
    He lowered his mouth to kiss her.
    “Stop!” She bucked and pushed at him, but it was like trying to move a solid wall.
    He halted the downward swoop, his lips hovering a mere breath away from hers. But he didn’t move away.
    Frantic, Hilary wriggled, trying to get out from beneath his big, beautiful body, desperately casting about for a reason to deny herself what she most longed for at this particular moment.
    Almack’s …
    Almack’s and all it stood for—respectability, opportunity—rose up to give her strength.
    “Get off me,” she panted. “You oaf, get off!”
    For a telling moment, he hesitated, dark eyes searching hers, as if to divine her true desire. She glared stonily up at him. He sighed and rolled away.
    Hilary sprang up. “I told you I’ll have none of your boorish advances, my lord.”
    “Sorry,” he said, not looking at all apologetic. “My memory does not function well at this hour. I forgot.”
    She curled her lip. “I suppose the response is automatic. You would have done the same to any woman who happened to be here, I daresay.”
    “Any pretty woman who happened to be here,” he corrected. “Well, why wouldn’t I? Pretty women are invariably in one’s bedchamber at this hour for precisely that reason.”
    The notion of all the other pretty women—other pretty, accommodating women—he’d enjoyed in such a manner made her unaccountably furious.
    Frostily, she said, “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear yesterday.”
    He looked up at her, not a bit repentant. “My dear Honey, if you enter a man’s bedchamber for any reason other than that his ceiling has just fallen in, you must be prepared for the consequences.”
    That arrested her righteous anger. “Ordinarily I would never do so,” she said, on the defensive. “But we need to leave, and we need to keep it a secret, and I couldn’t find Trixie to wake you.”
    “I told you what I am,” he said, ignoring her justifications. “I told