Free The Merry Widow by KOKO BROWN Page B

huffed. “She’s been waiting for you nigh two hours now.”
    Unsure of what to do, he hesitated on the stoop. She obviously had him mixed up with another someone her employer was expecting. The woman stepped aside and motioned for him to enter. “Are you coming in, or are you going to continue twiddling your thumbs on the doorstep?”
    Even though he felt uneasy about entering the widow’s home under false pretenses, Reggie knew this would probably be the only time he would be granted an unprejudiced audience with the stalwart Mrs. Jones.
    “Your hat and your gloves, sir.”
    Reggie waited patiently by the door while she placed his effects next to an Egyptian vase on a nearby sideboard.
    “Rather fine garments for a man in your line of work,” she sniffed.
    “Excuse me?”
    But she ignored him as she walked towards the stairs. Without any by-your-leave, she climbed them ahead of him. Reminding himself one more time why he was there, Reggie caught up with her before she cleared the first landing.
    “My lady is awaiting you in her private parlor, so you will not be disturbed,” she declared while leading him down a narrow passageway. He quickly surmised that Mrs. Jones favored the slender, elegant lines of the Regency period, for the furniture they passed matched the demilune table downstairs in the front foyer. Although thirty or forty years out of date, the decor perfectly suited what he had heard of the owner’s no-nonsense style.
    “And make sure you apologize for your tardiness,” the housekeeper directed as if scolding a child. She finally stopped at a set of double doors and knocked softly.
    “Come in!” called a feminine voice on the other side.
    Reggie braced himself as the servant twisted the brass handle fixtures and gave the doors a healthy push inward.
    “Mrs. Jones, your gentleman caller is here,” the housekeeper announced with the gravity she might use if he were a doctor making a house call.
    “Go on. You can go in. She won’t bite.” The housekeeper stepped out of the way.
    Reggie was no stranger to a woman’s private chambers, having been the invited guest on many occasions, but somehow he now found himself wavering on the threshold. Then he saw Mrs. Jones sitting on a couch of sage green chintz, pretending to read a book. He knew she was only pretending because she flipped through the pages of the worn volume as if it were the most recent issue of Queen .
    As he entered the room, his boot heels clicked on the mahogany floors, drawing her attention. She turned her head in his direction and immediately laid the book aside. As he closed the distance between them, she stood to greet him, a polite smile playing on her unusually full lips.
    So the rumors were true, he thought. Phillipa Jones was not the raving beauty so in vogue today, which favored delicate blondes with milky white-skin so fragile they looked like they might break at the slightest provocation. Instead, she was uncommonly tall, possessed of a smooth olive complexion allegedly inherited from an East Indian ancestor, and her ebony mane rippled over one shoulder to her knees. With this and her voluptuous figure accented by a lavender dressing gown, she was far from unremarkable.
    When he finally came to stand next to her, she held out her hands in greeting. Reflexively, he enveloped them in his own and then brought them to his lips. As he pressed his mouth to her slightly trembling fingers, he glanced up and was instantly jarred by the unusual color of her eyes. From across the room he had guessed them to be light in color, possibly blue. But he was mistaken. They were a startling shade of violet, similar to the fields of pansies he played in as a child in Lincolnshire.
    At that moment, Reggie wondered if the proper Mrs. Jones, so unyielding in business, would be agreeable to him laying her back in a bed of such flowers and hiking up her skirts as he burrowed his head between her creamy thighs and feasted on her sex until the