Vixen in Velvet Read Online Free PDF Page A

said. “My lord, I must detain you no longer. You’ve been so kind, so chivalrous.”
    “It was my pleasure, I assure you.” He moved on to inspect her desk. “I had expected another dull afternoon of listening to Swanton being emotional.”
    He picked up one of the alarmingly sharp pencils and stuck it into the end of his index finger. It made a tiny indentation. Probably not lethal, unless one stabbed ferociously, which he felt certain she was capable of doing. He examined her meticulously sharpened pens. As he put each object back, he was aware of her breathing erratically, in little huffs.
    “Are you feeling overwarm, Miss Noirot?” he said. “Shall I open a window? Or will that only let in more of the day’s heat?”
    She made a small strangled sound and said, “If you must pry, my lord—and I realize that noblemen must do as they please—can you not at least put my belongings back in the same order in which you found them?”
    He stepped back from the desk and folded his hands behind his back. Not because he was abashed but because he was so sorely tempted to disarrange everything, including, most especially, her.
    He looked down at the pencil and the pen, then at the ledgers once more. “Er, no. That is, I could try, but it mightn’t turn out as we hope. That’s the reason Uttridge intervenes, you see. I grow bored very quickly, and things go awry.” That wasn’t entirely untrue. Once he’d fully mastered a thing, he grew bored.
    “Your dress is immaculate,” she said.
    He glanced down at himself. “Odd, isn’t it? Don’t know how I do it. Well, there’s Polcaire, of course, my valet. Couldn’t do it without him.”
    He contemplated his waistcoat for a moment. It was one of his favorites, and he was fairly sure he looked well in it. Some perspicacious genie must have whispered in his ear this day.
    No, that was Polcaire.
    Polcaire: But milord cannot wear the maroon waistcoat to this occasion.
    Lisburne: Swanton is the occasion, which means all the girls will look at him. No one cares what I look like.
    Polcaire: One never knows whom one will meet, milord.
    Which proved that Polcaire was not only a genius among valets, but an oracle, too.
    Lisburne looked up from his waistcoat at Miss Noirot.
    The palest pink washed over her cheekbones like a little tide, coming and going. It was delicious.
    “Shall I risk trying to get it all straight again?” he said. “My work may not be up to your standards—and I have a strong suspicion that you’re going to leap up from the chair, and . . .” He thought. “Stab me with the penknife?”
    He was aware of her forcing herself to be calm. It wasn’t easy to discern. Her face ought to be in a dictionary, under inscrutable . Though she was a redhead, her complexion was strangely parsimonious about blushing. Still, whatever other faults he had, he wasn’t unobservant, especially of women. In her case, he was paying hawklike attention. The way she relaxed her pose wasn’t unconscious at all. He watched her arrange her features and bring her shoulders down.
    “The thought crossed my mind,” she said. “But corpses are the very devil to get rid of, especially aristocratic ones. People notice when noblemen disappear.”
    The door having been left partly open, he became aware of the approaching footsteps an instant after he saw her posture grow more alert.
    Following a quick tap and Miss Noirot’s “Entrez,” one of the young females who’d thronged the showroom entered.
    “Oh, madame, I am so sorry to interrupt you,” the girl said, or at least, that was what he made of her excessively mangled French, before she gave up on a bad job and went on in English, “But it’s Lady Clara Fairfax and . . . another lady.”
    “Another lady?”
    Miss Noirot’s face lit, and she bounded up from the chair, momentarily forgetting the injured ankle. She winced and swore softly in French, but her eyes sparkled and her face glowed. “Send them up to the