His voice had taken on a particular depth, reaching into Hester’s body and creating low and private stirrings—and she was certain he knew exactly what he was about.
“I could ride Rowan for an hour?” Fee started laying cards face down in tidy rows. Then she paused. “What favors would you ask of me?”
“Now that is a challenge.” Spathfoy considered Hester while he spoke. “What could a lovely young lady offer that I might seek to gain through a wager rather than simply by asking?”
Hester picked her book back up. “You can talk about wagering all afternoon, my lord, or you can go quietly to your fate. Fiona is wicked smart at the matching game. She has a gift for it.”
“You’ve a passion for the game, Niece? Your grandmother enjoys cards as well, though there are few who will play against her when she’s on her game.”
He took part of the remaining deck and set about finishing the rows Fiona had started. Hester concluded the verbal skirmish was over, but it put the past two days in a different light. She recalled Spathfoy holding her chair at breakfast, leaning down just a little too far to wish her good morning while she adjusted her skirts.
Oh, the scent of him, first thing in the day…
And the utter wonder of awakening in her own bed, only to realize Spathfoy had carried her there as she’d slept, covered her up, then laid her nightgown and wrapper across the foot of her bed.
He’d handled her clothing.
He’d handled her.
And when they were at table, she could not reach for the salt without his hand brushing hers, though he never by word or expression gave it away as anything other than inadvertence.
He was flirting with her. His approach was so subtle, so utterly Tiberius Flynn, she hadn’t recognized it.
She turned a page. “When you beat him, Fee, you mustn’t ask anything too terribly difficult of him. Your uncle isn’t used to being humbled by young ladies and their passions.”
Hester was still congratulating herself on that salvo when Fiona went down to defeat, having a mere eight matches to the earl’s eighteen.
Tye finished brushing his teeth and glowered at himself in the mirror. For two damned days, he’d acquitted himself like a perfect gentleman. Such behavior ought not to have been a burden, because he was a perfect gentleman—most of the time.
And yet… nothing. No overtures from the lady other than a little repartee, which had hardly encouraged Tye to bolder flirtation. And his plan—the plan his father would have to accommodate if the man’s grandchildren were to know their grandpapa—required that Hester contribute more than some tart rejoinders.
Tye was going to have to storm her citadel. His time was running out, and while there were lines he would not cross, he was going to maneuver his heaviest artillery into the fray. If she expected him to bat his eyes at her or beg for a touch of her hand, Hester Daniels was sadly mistaken.
He jerked the belt of his robe closed, decided the moment did not call for any footwear—and particularly not any goddamned gray wool socks—and glanced at himself in the mirror.
For God’s sake, he looked as if he were going to war.
He didn’t stop to repair his appearance but stalked off to Hester’s closed bedroom door.
To knock or not to knock? To hell with it. He knocked twice, then put his hand on the knob.
“Come in.”
He swung the door wide as the lady bid him enter. She reclined on a chaise by the fire, her hair unbound, her nightclothes modestly covering her from her neck to her infernally sturdy gray wool socks.
“Good evening, my lord.” She did not look surprised to see him, but he was surprised by all that hair. In the firelight, it gleamed like new pennies and old gold, made him want to get his hands on it and bury his nose in it.
“Good evening, Miss Hester.” And now what? His brilliant plan was proving lamentably thin on details.
“Perhaps you’d close the door, my lord? You’re letting in quite a draft.”
He closed the door, though a part of him wanted to protest that propriety demanded it be kept open.
“I am no bloody good at this.” He glanced around the room, hoping some other idiot fellow had made that announcement.
“At what?” She rose from her chaise, belting her robe with snug efficiency and crossing the room to stand before him. “Your hair is damp.”
“Everything is damp in this damned rain.”
“Come.” She took him by the hand and tugged him closer to the fire. “We can enumerate all the things you’re not good at, and perhaps a few of the endeavors at which you excel.”
There was innuendo in her words—she excelled at innuendo, turning innocent remarks over cards into smoldering flirtation. He let her tow him to the carpet, where she sat on the end of the chaise, behind and above him when he lowered himself to the floor.
“Tell me what you’re no bloody good at.” He felt her fingers at his nape, teasing the curling ends of his hair from the collar of his night robe.
“Subtlety, for one.” No, that was not accurate. Nor even honest. “I am not familiar with what is expected when a man is in pursuit of a lady.”
Her fingers stilled, and he heard her rustling around behind him. He was tempted to keep his eyes on her at all times, in case she’d taken a notion to shed her clothes and climb on the bed.
Which thought had even his cock making stupid, hopeful pronouncements.
“Are you a virgin, my lord?” She put the question casually as she resumed her seat, but she’d scooted, so she sat on her chaise with one leg on either side of him.
“You asked that merely to shock me, Hester Daniels. I will not dignify it with an answer.”
“If you are”—her voice came so near his ear he could feel her breath on his neck—“then one shudders to think of how skilled you will be when you’re no longer such an innocent.”
He felt something—her lips, her nose—graze his ear, and then a brush was being drawn through his hair. It was the oddest sensation. He brushed his hair several times a day, but to be sitting lower than Hester while she tended him this way… Some of the tension eased out of his shoulders.
“What is the sigh about, my lord?”
“I do not excel at pursuit in the romantic sense.”
The rhythm of the brush did not falter. “You’re no bloody good at it?”
“Apparently not. Are you interested in becoming my marchioness, Hester?”
She hesitated, then resumed grooming him. “If you’re asking whether I’m trying to trap you into marriage, my lord, you can take your bloody romantic incompetence, leave, and not come back.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her chin on his crown. “I would miss you though. Honesty compels me to admit that much.”
Her words implied there were things she wouldn’t admit, which was encouraging.
“That wasn’t exactly my question.” He laid his cheek on her forearm. “How is it you’re soft everywhere? Even here.” He nuzzled the crook of her elbow, which bore a concentration of lavender scent.
“I took a bath in hopes you’d come visit, Tiberius. Did you take a bath in anticipation of making a call?”
“Of course not.” Except he had. And to ensure a dignified interval between the last of their evening meal and his next interlude with her.
“I’ve noticed something about the nights here in Scotland.” The damned woman ran her tongue around the outside of his ear. This sent all manner of peculiar shivers down his spine, each of which landed with an erotic tingle in his groin.