Free Enemy of Mine by Red L. Jameson Page B

spontaneous man ever. He was tactically planning how to make love to her. Who did that? Well, obviously he did. But he’d always been a thinker, a planner. His army engineers had loved him for it. But he couldn’t plan how to seduce her. Or could he? Didn’t this act need spontaneity? Mayhap he could talk to Paul about how to do it.
    God, he was a mess.
    Just as his self-discriminating internal rant dipped into a downward spiral, he felt Erva’s thumb caress the inside of his own wrist. Oh, that did feel good. His stomach contracted, and his cock was all the more pleased with the turn of events. Perhaps seducing the lady might not be too difficult after all.
    As the Howe brothers left with bows and kisses for Erva’s free hand, Miss Winny and her little friends stampeded to Erva.
    “Lady Ferguson,” Miss Winny said with too wide, too proud a smile. “That was absolutely lovely. We loved your little song, didn’t we, girls?”
    The two almost identical women behind Miss Winny nodded.
    “It was so sad, yet, well, lovely. We’d love to learn it from you.”
    “Oh,” Erva said, her surprise apparent.
    “We’d love to have tea with you, whenever you are free.” Miss Winny turned to Will, her smile turned cruel. “Of course we’d love all your women there, both Miss Emma and Miss Lydia.”
    Oh God, Will thought. Mayhap Erva hadn’t heard the stories.
    Erva’s spine straightened, and she pulled her hand from his, even took a step away from him. It hurt, the separation, and obviously Erva had, indeed, heard the rumors about his supposed mistresses. How could he tell her they weren’t true?
    The gossip, unfortunately, wasn’t his to tell, though he craved to explain it away.
    So much for seducing the lady.
     

 
     
    Chapter 8
     
    I f Erva could have screamed, she would have. Well, this was her insane trip, and she just might in front of all these people. She’d almost fallen for that sweet yet highly charged handholding. God, that had been...her body still smoldered with the flames Will had ignited. He’d swept across her pulse in a knowing way. Too knowing! The man was infamous for having multiple lovers, like Miss Emma and Miss Lydia.
    Obviously, he cared about the two women too, for they were in his will. After Will died, which would happen in just a few days, the two women would move to England. Although Paul somehow inherited most of the money, he gave Will’s manor to the women, where they lived the rest of their lives together becoming a rather artistic duo England would rave about one day.
    When Erva first read of their account, it had seemed too farcical. Here were two normal-appearing women who turned into best friends because they both were mistresses of the man behind her? How...odd. But history was full of oddities. No, that wasn’t quite right. History was full of humans, being human.
    She still couldn’t believe she’d just met the Howe brothers. They were revolutionaries in their own right. General William had dramatically changed in-line formation while on the field, while Admiral Richard had changed communications between ships of the line. Both were instrumental in the next century’s transformation of warfare and technology. Further, as she had assumed, she’d liked them. They were reserved at first. But they’d opened to her. Well, of course they would. They were her hallucinations after all.
    She liked Richard the most, as she’d known she would. From his letters and testimony from others, she thought the man had an unbelievably high IQ, but he wouldn’t be known as being intelligent. His speech was convoluted and, more often than not, unclear. It was in his letters she’d found a clue as to why he spoke the way he did. Although past historians wrote him off as a pompous ass because of his windy, vague speeches in Parliament, she’d discovered something else. His letter “p” he’d often write upside down. Sometimes the number “3” was written backwards. Because he’d