Free Her Beguiling Butler by Cerise DeLand

to appear beside you.”
    “Superb. I look forward to the transformation.” She giggled in anticipation and planted a light kiss on his lips. “From Finnley, my butler, to Wallace, my lover.”
    She snuggled into his embrace and he clamped his eyes shut.
    What in hell had he just agreed to ?
    To become her lover for one night? How ridiculous that notion was! If he took her, kissed her, caressed her naked skin and sank inside her, how could he walk away?
    And yet if she ever learned how he had deceived her, she would toss him out on his ear. Revile him.
    Then her one night of rapture would not be recalled with any fond delight.
    And he? What would he do when the only woman he had ever loved took his name in vain and cursed his existence as the liar he was?
    He had no solution.
    He could not remain in her employ—and he dare not leave her to an unknown villain.
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
    She settled under the fur throw in the hired coach and avoided looking at Finnley. He sat across from her, huddled in a corner, as far from her as he could get. He’d crossed his long legs, beautifully clad as they were in very good looking fawn breeches. Both his waistcoat, a handsome ivory and sapphire brocade, and his coat, a superbly cut navy superfine wool, reaffirmed her conclusion of his excellent taste. He’d even done a superb job of a complex knot in his cravat. She could close her eyes and relish the looks of him, the dashing cut of his coal-black hair, mussed as it was with his occasional displays of frustration.
    Well, too bad. She was confounded as well. Today’s display of his excellent choice of tailor only serviced her suspicion that the dedicated and trustworthy Mister Wallace Finnley came from a background far nobler than he had yet revealed to her. Certainly, from his education, even from his speech, she ascertained that he had had a decent education in rhetoric, decorum, business of running a household—and a group of servants.
    What else was there?
    She would learn.
    “I daresay, good sir, it is the devil’s own day out there. The snow is deep as ever. And you will freeze if you do not come huddle with me under this carriage blanket.”
    He shot her a longing look of those fierce blue eyes that warmed her to the quick.
    She bit her lip, for he certainly meant to freeze her but he’d had quite the opposite effect. Throwing aside the corner of the fur piece, she lifted her chin at him. “Stop this nonsense and come get warm.”
    He grumbled. But he came.
    She took his hands. Even in his well-fitting leather gloves, his hands were cold. She tucked them under the blanket in his lap and snuggled close to him.
    He jumped.
    She jumped closer.
    Oh, my.
    What had she touched?
    A more personal part of his body?
    She wanted to chuckle.
    But didn’t.
    Retracting her fingers from his person, she fished for his hand instead. She had grasped another part of his anatomy which was not so much cold as hard. Very.
    Inside, she smiled and wondered how large he might be. Bigger than Ranford? She coughed to stifle her snort. Ranford had been big enough to cause her some discomfort, although it was not his size that accosted her senses but his lack of interest.
    She shifted, the memory of her husband’s perfunctory service to his husbandly duties a dark blotch on his character. Virgin that she’d been when she went to him on her wedding night, she’d assumed his speed at the task was his prudence for her inexperience. But night after night, his habits brought her more and more questions about the nature of coupling. When she’d asked him if she was lacking in performance, if she must do something, anything, he had laughed at her. Laughed.
    That’s when she’d decided he was more of a cad than a mate. Less of a gentleman than anyone thought. Including her father. And perhaps even his reputed mistress. Soon after she had sought out through her Aunt a few risqué books about the art of marital bliss. Hortense had pretended shock,