Seven Minutes in Heaven
Page 32
“Those bloody etchings,” Alaric growled. “The duke says that in the years since I left England they’ve littered the entire country. Actually, I think the word he used was ‘defiled.’”
“The way the ladies twitter about you, not to mention collecting various portraits, does not please our father. He thinks your fame is ill-fitting our rank.”
Alaric didn’t give a damn about rank, though he’d be the first to admit that fame was a double-edged sword.
North had started tweaking the curls that hung over his ears. Bloody hell, Alaric thought, at this rate, they’d be here for an hour. “I’m looking forward to meeting Miss Tallbridge,” he prompted.
North had the trick of looking severe no matter his mood, but now his mouth eased. “Just look for the most beautiful, fashionable woman in the room.”
Who cared if North had transformed into a peacock in the years Alaric had been away? His older brother had clearly fallen in love. It wasn’t an emotion that Alaric would welcome himself, but he recognized it.
He gave North a rough, one-armed hug that risked the perfection of his brother’s neck scarf. “I’m happy for you. Now stop making love to yourself in the glass and introduce me to this lovely creature.”
Saxon threw open the great doors leading to the drawing room. The room before them glittered with all the things that Alaric most loathed: silks, wigs, diamonds, and insipid faces.
North’s gaze went directly to a lady in an overskirt bunched into no fewer than three large puffs. Other women’s arses were adorned with puffs, but Miss Tallbridge’s puffs were larger than anyone else’s. Alaric could only guess that the puffs equated in some way to fashion.
“That is she,” North said in a low voice. He sounded as if he had caught a glimpse of some royal being.
If sheer volume of attire had determined rank, Miss Tallbridge would certainly be fit for a throne. Her petticoat had more bows, her overskirt more ruffles. And she wore an entire basket of fruit on top of her head.
“The Marquess of Northbridge; Lord Alaric Wilde,” Saxon bellowed.
There was an audible gasp, as the party registered his presence. Alaric’s jaw clenched. He loved writing his books; he hated the fame that had ensued.
With no help for it, he walked into the room.
Miss Wilhelmina Everett Ffynche just happened to be facing the door when the great explorer was announced, which was lucky, because she didn’t shame herself by swinging about—as her best friend Lavinia Grey did.
Willa could hardly blame Lavinia: after all, Lord Wilde’s image had smoldered from Lavinia’s bedchamber wall for the past three years. Faced by the real man, she clapped her hand to her chest and looked as if she might faint.
For her part, Willa didn’t feel in the least bit dizzy, but then she had avoided succumbing to the widespread passion for Lord Wilde—which was easy enough if one didn’t read his books.
The man who strode into their midst, looking neither left nor right, was wearing sturdy shoes rather than the slippers worn by the other men.
He had no rings, no curls to his wig, and no polish.
Willa snapped open her fan, the better to examine this paragon of masculinity, as Lavinia liked to call him. He certainly wasn’t a paragon of fashion.
He looked as if he would have been at home in another time, the Middle Ages perhaps, when men strode about with swords on their hips. Instead he was stuck in a room full of gentlemen whose toes were rendered invisible by the floppy roses attached to their slippers.
“Oh, my,” Lavinia breathed, almost too faintly to be heard. “I think I see his scar.”
Only then did Willa notice a thin white line snaking down one cheek through skin browned by the sun in a manner that should be objectionable but somehow wasn’t.
There were many stories about how Lord Wilde got that scar, and thanks to Lavinia’s obsession with the explorer, Willa had heard them all. Her own guess had always been that he fell in the privy and knocked his head against a corner.
She leaned over and whispered in Lavinia’s ear, “Personally, I think the imminent demise of his pantaloons is more striking.” Lord Wilde’s thigh muscles were straining the wool in a manner that was remarkably eye-catching.
Indecorous, but eye-catching.
“Willa!” Lavinia scolded, nudging with her elbow. “That’s a remarkably inappropriate comment, even for you!” But she snapped open her own fan, and her eyes dropped to his pantaloons as if leaded by weights.
“I never before gave much thought to thighs,” Willa observed, “except perhaps those frog legs your mother served at her last dinner.”
Lavinia scoffed, about to answer, but her eyes grew large. “Willa, he’s coming in this direction!”
Sure enough, Lord Wilde and his brother had bowed before their father, kissed their stepmother’s hand, and turned, walking directly toward them.
Lavinia actually swayed on her feet, her breath escaping in a gasp.
“He is not coming to us,” Willa pointed out. “Pull yourself together, Lavinia! The marquess means to introduce his brother to his fiancée, of course.”
Their friend Diana Tallbridge had been standing just to Lavinia’s right. Her wig was still taller than anyone else’s in the room, and the two men were striding toward them like homing pigeons to a roost.
For the first time Willa had some understanding of why etchings of Lord Wilde were plastered to so many bedchamber walls. There was something shocking about the man.
He was so big and—and vital in a kind of primitive way.
Which would be a quite uncomfortable quality to live with, she reminded herself. She herself owned only an etching of Socrates: a thoughtful, intelligent man whose thighs were doubtless as slim as her own.
“Miss Tallbridge, may I introduce you to my brother?” the Marquess of Northbridge said. “Lord Alaric is recently returned from Russia.”
While Diana displayed her remarkable ability to balance half a green grocer’s stall on her head while curtsying, Willa discovered that Lord Alaric had sculpted cheekbones, lips that wouldn’t bring shame to an Italian courtesan, and green eyes.
Those etchings of him that could be found in every bookstore?
The etchings didn’t do him justice.
He bowed to Diana with a finesse that was quite surprising, given the breadth of his chest. His coat was distinctly strained over the shoulders. By rights, a body so defined by muscle should find it hard to bend.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Tallbridge,” Lord Alaric said, kissing Diana’s hand. “I am honored to welcome you to our family.”
Lavinia made a sound perilously close to a squeak as the marquess turned and introduced her, and then Willa, to Lord Wilde. For her part, Willa had to stop herself from stepping backward. The man was so large that she had the absurd feeling that he might be swallowing up the air around them.
At least that would explain her slight feeling of breathlessness.
In a tribute to their education, Lavinia didn’t show by so much as a flicker of an eyelash that she was meeting the man who had been her idol for years.
“Good evening, Lord Northbridge,” she said, holding out her hand for a kiss. Then she turned and said calmly, “Lord Alaric, it is a pleasure.”
Rather surprisingly, Lord Alaric didn’t acquire that slightly glazed look of admiration most men got on meeting Lavinia, but perhaps he was a slow starter.
“I understand that you are just returning from a long trip abroad, Lord Alaric,” Willa asked, as Lavinia seemed to be temporarily struck dumb, and the marquess had drawn his fiancée aside. “What do you miss when you’re away from England?”
He had been watching his brother and Diana with a slight frown, but her question drew his focus to her.
Lord Wilde’s eyes were the darkest green color Willa had ever seen on a man, lined by thick eyelashes. Unfortunately, Willa had a weakness for beautiful eyes.
Beauty was an accident of birth. But eyes? That was di
fferent. Beautiful eyes had feeling in them.
Once again she almost sighed, but caught herself. Just barely, but she managed. She squared her shoulders, and to her horror, she caught his lips twitching.
Apparently he expected ladies to sigh, if not fall at his feet.
Cad.
“I miss my family,” he said. “After that, in no particular order, mattresses without lice, brandy, welcoming servants, an excellent plate of ham and eggs in the morning. Oh, and the company of ladies, of course.”
“It must be an intoxicating experience to be so adored,” Willa said, nettled by way he ranked ladies behind a plate of ham. It wasn’t a strictly polite observation, but on the other hand, most of the females in the room were gazing hungrily at him behind his shoulder, as he surely knew.
They clearly put him before ham and eggs.
Lord Wilde’s mouth quirked into a wry smile. “Adoration is a bit strong. I think myself lucky that my readers find something to enjoy in my work.”
“I beg to differ,” Willa said, ignoring Lavinia’s horrified frown. “I enjoyed Montaigne’s essay on cannibals, but I don’t have his image on my bedchamber wall.”
“Lord Wilde,” Lavinia interjected hastily, “where do you plan to travel to next?”
“I haven’t decided.” His eyes returned to Willa. “Miss Ffynche, do you have a suggestion?”
“I am not sure where you’ve been,” Willa said. “I must apologize for my ignorance of your books. I think I’m the only person in the kingdom who is so ill-educated on the subject of Lord Wilde’s adventures.”
His heavy-lidded eyes rose slightly, the tilt of his mouth hitching up a millimeter more. “I assure you that you aren’t alone, Miss Ffynche.”
“I love your books,” Lavinia put in. “I’ve read every one.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “Do you have a particular preference for travel literature, Miss Grey?”
Lavinia shook her head. “In fact, I adore novels.”
“Do you enjoy novels as well, Miss Ffynche?” Lord Alaric asked.
“No, I’m afraid I’m not attracted to invented stories of any kind,” Willa said, not thinking about the implication of her wording, because the man’s eyes were so intent on her face that she truly was beginning to feel slightly dizzy.
“I do not invent the events I describe,” Lord Alaric said, his voice even.
“Of course not,” she said hastily. Then, unable to resist, “Although, from what Lavinia has told me, wouldn’t you agree that your adventures tend to be, shall we say, larger than life?”
“No,” Lord Alaric said, seemingly even more amused. “What are you reading at the moment, Miss Ffynche?”
“The fourth book of Naturalis Historia.” Before he could comment on her admittedly tedious taste in reading material, Willa added, “I shall put it to the side and read one of your accounts. Where would you recommend that I start? With the cannibals?”
Cannibals put an end to his amusement like a dot on the end of a sentence.
“‘Cannibals’?” he repeated, his brows drawing together.
“I told you that the cannibals appear only in the play,” Lavinia told Willa.
“Play?” The man’s body went suddenly still, like a predator lurking in deep grass.
The Marquess of Northbridge cleared his throat, making Willa jump. She hadn’t realized that he and Diana had rejoined their group. “Wilde at Heart has been playing at the theater in Drury Lane for months,” he told his brother.
Lord Wilde’s eyes narrowed. “Wilde at Heart?”
“I made a special trip to London to see it.” The marquess’s voice was threaded with laughter. “If you don’t mind the advice, Alaric, you should have skipped breakfast and got to the hinterlands in time to fight off the cannibals and save the missionary’s daughter.”
It was quite amazing how quickly warm green eyes could turn icily dangerous.
“What in the bloody hell are you talking about, North?”
About the Author
ELOISA JAMES is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature, who lives with her family in New York but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. She is the mother of two and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight. Visit her at www.eloisajames.com.
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By Eloisa James
Seven Minutes in Heaven
A Gentleman Never Tells (a novella)
My American Duchess
Four Nights with the Duke
Three Weeks with Lady X
Once Upon a Tower
As You Wish
With This Kiss (a novella in three parts)
Seduced by a Pirate (a novella)
The Ugly Duchess
The Duke is Mine
Winning the Wallflower (a novella)
A Fool Again (a novella)
When Beauty Tamed the Beast
Storming the Castle (a novella)
A Kiss at Midnight
A Duke of Her Own
This Duchess of Mine
When the Duke Returns
Duchess by Night
An Affair Before Christmas
Desperate Duchesses
Pleasure for Pleasure
The Taming of the Duke
Kiss Me, Annabel
Much Ado About You
Your Wicked Ways
A Wild Pursuit
Fool for Love
Duchess in Love
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Wilde in Love copyright © 2017 by Eloisa James, Inc.
seven minutes in heaven. Copyright © 2017 by Eloisa James, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780062389466
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062389459
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