Delectably Undone! Read Online Free PDF Page B

one swift blow and left.
    Evelyn picked up the pencil and scribbled a note at the bottom.
    He was waiting by the outer door when she emerged, and his breath hitched. It wasn’t the gown. That was gray, ill-fitting and buttoned to the throat.
    It was her hair. Released from the imprisoning knot, it was pinned up more loosely, curling around her face as it always had, so that his fingers itched to slide in and tumble the fiery mass around her shoulders, spread it over crisp white linen as he—
    He clamped down on his unruly thoughts, glancing at the note to remind himself of the promise he had written there. To himself as much as Lionel. His word, irrevocably given.
    “You’ll need a cloak,” he said, picking up his own evening cloak and moving to the door to open it for her.
    She shook her head. “No need.”
    “Don’t be an idiot. It’s cold out. Fetch your cloak,” he said, swinging his to his shoulders and feeling for the clasp.
    She swallowed. “I don’t have one.”
    His fingers stilled on the fastening. Her cheeks were fiery.
    “Why not?”
    Her jaw tightened. “Because I sold it, if you must know!”
    His stomach clenched. Things had been that bad? He held back the words that leaped to his tongue. He had bought the paintings. The money was in the bank, albeit Lionel’s account. They would be all right now.
    “No matter,” he said. “Use mine.” Swinging the cloak from his shoulders again, he went to her and settled it around her, drawing it close. A mistake. The fragrance of cinnamon and apple curled through him again. Sweet. Spicy. Intoxicating.
    With a mental curse he stepped back from her quickened breathing and the temptation of the drifting curls.
    “Come. You must be hungry.” God knew he was. He held the door for her and tried not to breathe as she passed.
    Halfway down the creaky stairs she stopped.
    “Oh!” Her hand went to her mouth. “I might have left a candle burning. In…in the back room. Wait here. I’d better check.” And she hurried back up the stairs.
    He waited at the bottom. Moments later she reappeared.
    “Had you?” he asked.
    She looked blank. “Had I what?”
    “Left a candle burning.”
    In the gloom of the yard he could have sworn she was blushing.
    “No, I hadn’t.” Then, her voice a little high, she said, “We will not be very late, will we?”
    “No. Not late,” he replied. And wished it were otherwise—that he could keep her out shockingly late, scandalously late. That he could take her home to his bed and spend the whole night ravishing her and being ravished in return….

    She forgot all her worries. Forgot everything except that she was with him again, and that they were Loveday and Evelyn, not the aristocrat and the painter’s sister. She remembered things, too. Such as his undignified enjoyment of hot, roasted nuts bought straight from the vendor’s brazier.
    And if her heart skipped a beat to find that he remembered things, what did it matter? Did it matter that he bought her eels down by Westminster Bridge, and stole several bites as he had always done? Or that he wiped her fingers afterward with his handkerchief, as he had done long ago, laughing at her protests?
    She floated through the evening enfolded in his cloak and scent, a fragile bubble of joy surrounding her. She knew it could not last, that when he took her home she must let the evening’s delight pass from her, and not try to cling. That would extinguish even the memory of joy. But she would not think of it now.

    She had relaxed. And he had never enjoyed an evening more. The ball he had planned to attend later was far from his mind. And as for the dinner he was supposed to be enjoying right now at his aunt’s house, while meeting the lovely and wealthy Miss Angaston…well, Aunt Caroline was going to tear strips off him, but the bites of jellied eel Evelyn stole from Loveday were far more to his taste. He shared the roasted nuts with her, too, popping them into her mouth one by