Free A Gentleman Never Tells by Eloisa James

you , because she’s your mother. And you will recognize her.”
    â€œThat’s true,” he had said, looking relieved. “Do you think there is an ant heaven, and do you think that mother ants recognize their babies? And what about the bad place?”
    Lizzie had frowned, so he had said a bit impatiently, “The place you go if you don’t go to heaven. Do you think when ants get into the butter, the way they did yesterday, they go to a bad place?”
    Lizzie may not have liked Adrian very much, but she didn’t want him to be in a bad place, so she said a hasty prayer for his soul.
    Now, in bed, she started wondering how she felt about endangering her own soul by allowing herself to be seduced.
    She finally decided that she wasn’t too worried about heaven. She had attended church regularly with her mother, and thereafter with Adrian’s mother. Left to her own devices, she would rather not listen to yet another man dictate what kind of woman she was supposed to be, no matter whether he was wearing black robes or no.
    That didn’t mean that she was ready to embark on an affaire that would turn her into Shady Sadie, either.
    In fact, the more she thought about it, the more dubious the idea seemed to be. For one thing, Mr. Berwick had told her that he wasn’t enjoying female company because he had an impressionable young niece.
    Yet he immediately tried to seduce her in the drawing room, with two young girls not far away. Either he was fibbing about not having a mistress, or he was recklessly imprudent.
    Either way, she would do well to avoid him.
    At the same time, she had to admit that there was something about Oliver Berwick’s blue eyes and broad chest that she found alluring.
    Alluring wasn’t a strong enough word.
    When he looked at her intently, she began thinking inappropriate things about what it would feel like to touch him. Or if he touched her.
    She was absolutely certain that if she ever saw him naked, she wouldn’t feel the instinctive revulsion that she felt on first sight of Adrian’s unclothed body.
    And she was also pretty sure that Oliver’s private part, for want of a better word, wouldn’t look like a white snail without its shell, curled and soft.
    As her husband’s had.
    The very thought of that proved a shock to the system. Oliver Berwick was not good for her. He made her consider improper subjects.
    It was one thing to decide that she wouldn’t marry again. It was another to contemplate an illicit rendezvous with a man so practiced in his approaches and compliments.
    Having made up her mind, she finally went to sleep. In an effort to avoid temptation, she kept to her room through breakfast and luncheon the following day.
    But for the first time in her recent memory, she didn’t feel peaceful, even though she was tucked away with an excellent novel to read.
    Instead, she kept putting her book down and puttering around the room. She even looked through her Parisian gowns and chose one to wear in the evening.
    Rather surprisingly, her sister didn’t try to coax her out. Every once in a while she heard the noises of maids, but the big house was oddly silent.
    It made her feel, fancifully enough, like Cat’s dormouse, confined to the butler’s pantry and left behind when her mistress pranced off to married life.
    Late in the afternoon, she heard laughter and found herself tossing aside her book and running to her window.
    Tramping across the grass, looking messed and rather sunburned, came Mr. Berwick with his niece Hattie and her step-­niece Sarah. He was carrying a pail, and it looked to Lizzie as if they’d been fishing.
    She loved fishing.
    Correction: she used to love fishing. Adrian would never have approved; shooting was the only such activity he deemed not labor . Labor was not for Adrian, nor for any gentleman.
    Oliver didn’t seem to have learned that rule.
    As she watched, he threw back his head