Chapter 5

L ying on the lumpy, but warm mattress in his room at The St. George’s Inn, Latimer scowled at the ancient ceiling overhead.

He had spent enough nights sleeping on England’s grimiest, coldest, cobblestones. Hell, he’d spent even more nights without getting a single nod of sleep.

In his early years, all of his nights had been spent with one eye open to keep from getting a knife in the belly or worse.

As a man who’d made it out alive, he’d lived for his business.

This night, neither business nor the threat of danger kept him from sleep.

Rather, thoughts of the spirited, infuriating, and very delectable, Mrs. Lovelace occupied every blasted corner of his mind. It took a good deal to impress him, but after his initial fury at being displaced by a nob—who’d turned out to be a noblewoman—Latimer had found himself filled with a reluctant admiration.

She fought with a skill most men didn’t have and possessed a quick and colorful tongue that even in the throes of his anger, he’d fought to keep from smiling over.

With her doe-like eyes and pillowy lips made for all manner of wicked delights, he let himself imagine all the things she could do to him with that lush mouth.

She’d be as unrestrained in bed as she’d been in a fight. She’d take a man’s length, ballocks deep inside her throat.

“Bloody hell,” he said on a sharp exhale, through his teeth.

In matters of sex, he’d always possessed a lusty appetite. Never, however, had he been a slave to his hungering.

Latimer closed his eyes and finally surrendered to the thought of them. He allowed himself to imagine sweet Mrs. Lovelace, who’d trembled in his arms, and the things he’d like to do to her, and with her.

Against the dim lighting, the ridiculously modest nightshift she’d worn to sleep left little to the imagination. Her breasts weren’t the overly enormous ones he generally favored, but there’d been something just as—maybe even more—entrancing about her flesh, ample enough to fill his palms. It was like those gentle swells were meant for just Latimer’s hands.

The slowly dying fire cast the perfect amount of light over her; enough to reveal dark pink areolas and the stiff, brighter pink peaks at the center.

A fresh swell of blood rushed to his cock.

She’d wanted him, too. She’d quivered in his arms as he’d held her. Her thirsting moans of desire weren’t the sort that could be faked. They repeated in his mind.

Aye, given the way she’d gone toe to toe with Latimer, a stranger in her rooms, she’d be a fiery tigress in bed.

There’d been a clear eagerness in each moan that eased past her lips and in the way she’d rubbed herself against him, like a cat trying to climb inside its master’s skin.

His breathing grew ragged. Eventually, her ladylike outrage won out—outrage that’d put to an all-too-quick end of his plans for he and lonely Mrs. Lovelace. But it was too late. The lady’s eager body had revealed her truths.

She’d been responsive to even Latimer’s slightest touch.

Would that same enthusiasm be welcomed by her pompous husband?

Or did the lady feel compelled to suppress her innermost longings, which accounted for her response to being in Latimer’s arms?

Which only served to remind him, that just a short while ago, she’d lain on this very mattress and with these same sheets and blankets draped over her delectable body.

Now, he lay here alone, lusting for the lovely, Mrs. Lovelace, whose first name he’d never know. She now slept in the arms of some fine toff; a real-life gentleman, stupid enough to take separate rooms from his glorious wife.

At that unwelcome reminder, Latimer gritted his teeth.

It was too late. Unwelcome thoughts slithered forward of the pale-haired beauty slipping into staid Mr. Lovelace’s rooms. Was she even now riding the proper fellow? Her breasts dangling at his mouth, while he milked them, in a way, Latimer knew she’d love.

That unpleasant thought stirred a primal response inside him—something that felt damn near like jealousy.

Jealousy?

He choked.

If so, the only reason was because the other man was reaping the rewards of Latimer’s efforts.

Cursing long and roundly into the night, Latimer abandoned any effort at sleep. He climbed to his feet and headed for the bottle of claret that’d been left behind by Mrs. Lovelace.

Ignoring the glass that’d touched her lips, he made a grab instead for the entire damned bottle.

Tipping it back, Latimer drank. And drank.

Neither as strong, dark, or dry, as he favored when it came to spirits, it’d do.

With a grimace, he dragged the back of his hand over his mouth.

Latimer snorted. “The bloody irony,” he said, absently taking in each spot where they’d tussled.

He gave his head a wry shake. It should so happen a tart-mouthed, fearless, lady such as Mrs. Lovelace would leave him sideways.

He gave his head a wry shake. Not only that, but with Latimer stopped for the night on his journey to discuss and finalize a union between himself and the Duchess of Argyll.

Thoughts of the duchess managed to completely kill the remnants of his lust for Mrs. Lovelace.

He made to take another swig from the half-empty bottle, and stopped, with it halfway to his lips.

Mrs. Lovelace.

A frown formed on his lips.

Not Lady Lovelace, but rather Mrs .

As Latimer stared, his unblinking gaze fixed on the doorway, his body went absolutely still.

Part of his exchange with Mrs. Lovelace repeated in his mind.

“…I was out there, rescuing the young lad Mr. Lovelace sent out in search of your carriage, and who didn’t have the decency to inform the boy of your arrival…”

A little line furrowed Mrs. Lovelace’s gentle brow. “Mr. Lovelace?”

“Yes, the same,” he sneered. “Mr. Lovelace who even with a shortage of rooms that leaves other strangers in a storm without, wouldn’t make the sacrifice of having to spend a night with his shrewish wife.”

Mrs. Lovelace gasped. “How dare you?…I am no shrew….”

Latimer slammed his bottle down so hard some of the remaining liquor sloshed over the side.

Cursing all the while, Latimer jammed his feet inside his boots and headed from the room and downstairs to the taproom, already knowing what he’d find when he got there.

Sure enough, the minute he reached the taproom, his suppositions proved accurate. A solitary patron occupied a table in the previously bustling, now silent bar.

He narrowed his eyes.

Seated beside the fire, was none other than the spunky, chit who’d put up an impressive fight.

With her head buried in a book, and her valise at her feet, she remained oblivious to Latimer’s standing there.

Latimer scowled.

Fucking hell.

Repressing his irritation, Latimer folded his arms at his chest and called out to the lady. “I take it Mr. Lovelace is a snorer?”

Gasping, the lady looked up quickly.

Whatever she’d been reading slipped from her fingers and fell with a slight thwack upon the otherwise empty tabletop.

His entire approach, Mrs. Lovelace gawked at him and continued doing so even after he arrived at her table.

“Well?” he drawled.

The lady blinked the longest fringe of honey-blonde lashes he’d ever caught eyes on. “Mr. Latimer?”

Latimer hooked his foot on the underside of the chair opposite her. Without waiting for an invitation, he availed himself of a seat. “Do tell me: Is Mr. Lovelace a snorer?”

Mrs. Lovelace’s swan-like, neck moved from the force of her swallow.

At her silence, Latimer arched an eyebrow.

The bold chit’s timidity vanished.

Bristling, she brought her shoulders back. “I do not and will not discuss such intimate details about Mr. Lovelace with you, Mr. Latimer.”

Ah, Mr. Lovelace. Dear, respectable, soundly sleeping in the very last room in the hall, Mr. Lovelace.

Somehow Latimer managed to keep from snorting in her face.

Rosy color filled her heart-shaped cheeks, but she wouldn’t be bated.

Flat out ignoring him, Mrs. Lovelace, grabbed the book he’d earlier startled her into dropping and snapped it open.

Latimer tried a different approach.

With the lady’s head buried behind the smallish leather volume, he helped himself to her tankard. Then, tipping the heels of his chair back, he cradled the lady’s drink between his hands.

Burrowed as she was behind that book, he’d wager his entire proceeds coming from Forbidden Pleasures, she no more read whatever words were written there than Latimer himself did.

His suspicions were confirmed a moment later.

Mrs. Lovelace, like a turtle poking its head from its shell, stretched her lovely neck until her eyes appeared at the top fringe of that copy in her hands, and her gaze collided with Latimer’s.

Grinning, he held her stare. Then, lifting the lady’s tankard of ale to his lips, he took a long swallow.

At the unexpectedness of the contents, he promptly choked.

The minx lowered her book. “Never tell me milk is too strong for you, Mr. Latimer?” she asked pertly.

Latimer set her glass down hard. “I was expecting something stronger ,” he muttered.

“Such as what, Mr. Latimer?” She batted her extraordinarily long, silken, eyelashes. “ Lemonade , perhaps?”

All the lady’s attempts at guileless innocence were ruined by the devilish amusement that danced in the sparkling blues of her eyes.

The wicked little chit. She couldn’t have hidden her feelings had she slapped a blindfold on.

Without taking his gaze from hers, he grabbed the tankard, and took another long, swallow of her milk.

When he’d finished, he swiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth.

“Hmm,” the lady mused. “You’d thrown such a fit when you believed I stole from you and yet here you sit, stealing a woman’s milk.”

Righting his chair so it sat on all fours, Latimer dropped his elbows on the table and set the tankard down between them. “Ah, and here I thought we were sharin’ tonight, darlin’?”

“Sharing?” Mrs . Lovelace leaned in and rested her arms in a like position as Latimer’s. “Is that what you’d call kicking me out of my rooms.”

This time, he couldn’t muster any of his earlier anger and annoyance. “My rooms.” He dropped his voice several decibels. “Though,” he said suggestively, “I’d be all too happy to share my bed with you, Mrs . Love—”

She gasped. “You sir, are no gentleman.”

Latimer laughed. “Now, on that, we can agree, darlin’. I’m not a ‘sir’, either, as that would imply I’m a gentleman. Don’t let my fine garments and speech fool you.”

The anticipated horror at finding herself besieged by a lowly commoner never came but instead a peculiar softening of the lady’s features.

She moved her gaze over his harder ones in a way that unnerved the hell out of Latimer.

Me? Unnerved? By this cheeky, young, miss?

Mrs. Lovelace motioned to her mouth. In so doing, inviting Latimer to feast his eyes upon that pillowy-soft flesh.

Bloody hell, how he wanted to teach her how to use that mouth on him. Her lips would get even puffier as she stretched wide to take all of his cock, and—

“Your upper lip,” she murmured.

Her murmuring interrupted his dangerously lustful imagining.

His upper lip?

“You have some white here, from my tankard of milk,” she instructed, making another general circular sweep of her mouth.

Then, with a mischievous grin, she picked up her book and resumed reading.

Startled, Latimer snatched a handkerchief from his jacket and wiped at the remnants.

“To the left,” she said.

Silently cursing, he scrubbed—

“Your other left, Mr. Latimer,” she added.

His neck heated. “You didn’t specify.”

“Yes, well, you didn’t ask me to, Mr. Latimer.”

The minx sounded so bloody entertained at his expense, Latimer didn’t know whether to be amused, impressed, or turn her over his blasted knee.

That latter thought caused his cock to harden, not for the first, second, or even third time this night, because of this spirited minx.

Latimer let her pretend her show of reading. “What are you reading, Mrs . Lovelace?”

With the slight emphasis he placed on that form of address, the lady’s hands trembled. “At this moment?”

She never came out from behind her hiding spot.

Coward.

“Aye.”

“Nothing, Mr. Latimer.” This time, she lowered her book. “Because I’m talking to you.”

Oh, the saucy chit. He’d hand it to the vixen, she’d quite the skill for prevaricating.

He’d not however let anyone, certainly not a slip of a bad liar, get the better of him. “I take it by the way you’ve made this empty corner of the taproom your own, that you and the respectable Mr. Lovelace had a row?”

The triumphant glimmer in her eyes dimmed.

He hid a smile.

Not so mouthy now.

Mrs. Lovelace gave a toss of her head. “Never. We never fight. Mr. Lovelace is most attentive and loving.”

“So loving and attentive as to leave his wife alone in the taproom, while he sleeps. And , given the fact he’s more than comfortable leaving his beloved wife in some other man’s company, I take it he is far from jealous?”

She gasped. “How dare—?”

Only, Latimer wasn’t even close to done with her. “Does Mr. Lovelace happen to have a first name?”

That gave her pause. “Of course he does.”

“ And ?” he prodded when she still didn’t elaborate.

Latimer could practically see the wheels turning in her mind. Immensely enjoying himself now, he stared at her, while she took entirely too much time inventing the name of some fictitious Mr. Lovelace.”

“Earl,” she blurted.

“Earl?” he echoed, amused. “As in, he is an Earl. Or his name is Ea—”

Another rosy blush filled her cheeks. “His name!” Catching Latimer’s knowing grin, she took a noticeable breath and spoke again, this time, and more even tones. “His name is Earl.”

“Mr. Earl Lovelace, then?”

Nodding, she nibbled at her lower lip.

And damned with that, subtle, but seductive move, she didn’t secure the upper hand—and get him even harder.

Again, Latimer lowered his elbows on the table and leaned close.

This time, he went in for the kill.

“What is it, darlin’?” he asked in hushed tones, ones meant to needle. “Is Mr. Lovelace the selfish sort who wouldn’t share his rooms with his beloved wife?”

He should’ve known she’d not falter so easily.

“Mr. Latimer,” she said on a huff. “As one who’d been so determined to reclaim his rooms, I’d trust you’d far rather be there in the accommodations you fought me over than sitting here, drinking my milk, and keeping me from my reading.”

Actually, she’d be dead wrong, ten times to Sunday on that supposition.

Latimer found himself enjoying their repartee more than he’d enjoyed anything in, hell, longer than he could recall.

He looked with new interest upon that coveted item she held so close to her breast. What kind of tales did Mrs. Lovelace find herself reading? Given the attributes she designed a clearly fictitious husband, loving, caring, devoted, respectable gentlemen, Latimer ventured she was a romantic and favored works romantic in nature.

“What an interesting volume,” he remarked. Nor did his words emerge not as any part of banter between them, but rather born of an actual curiosity. “One that doesn’t even have a title or the name of an author etched upon the cover or spine.”

Latimer found himself reaching for the object in question.

Flushing, Mrs. Lovelace quickly drew the book in, protectively close.

She glared.

“Ah, I see. You, the lovely Mrs. Lovelace, unlike your esteemed husband, do have a problem sharing.”

“Only with bothersome, mettlesome, grating fellows too arrogant to know when their company is unwanted.” She spoke between tightly gritted teeth.

“Me?” he asked, this time with the most false stunned surprise meant to shine through.

“Yes, Mr. Latimer! You !”

“Speaking of unwanted company,” he needled. “May I venture a guess?”

She sighed. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Upon discovering his delectable wife landed herself alone with a real man, Mr. Lovelace, cast you out?”

If the lady’s cheeks grew any redder and hotter, she was going to catch fire and swallow Latimer up in that conflagration.

He suppressed a grin. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

“That is it, isn’t it?” he continued when she didn’t take the bait. “The stodgy fellow would have been able to tell from the flush on your body, when you came to him in your night shift, that it wasn’t any fire responsible for that becoming color you wore.”

With every imagined vision he painted with his own words in his own mind, his voice grew harsher. His cock grew harder and harder.

And the golden-haired beauty before him, her breath, too, grew increasingly shallow.

God, he wanted her.

“Aye, darlin’,” he said huskily, “he would have known with just a single glance you enjoyed that one short moment spent in my arms more than you’d ever spent in his—”

In the end, it was those outrageous words that got the rise he sought out of her.

His mystery woman soared to her feet with a speed that sent her chair flying backward and just missed tumbling into the still roaring fires. “Would you stop!”

Her cry echoed throughout the silent inn. As soon as it did, her panic-stricken eyes, darted frantically throughout the room.

But no one appeared. She and Latimer remained alone, while the whole world slept.

The lady stared at him through worried eyes. For there could be no doubting this regal, composed-until-this-moment, proud young woman was, in fact, a lady.

As she dampened her plump lips in that telltale way he’d learned fast denoted her unease, he went absolutely motionless.

Latimer studied the beguiling chit not with a gaze clouded by desire, but in a new light.

He froze.

What if those lips he’d spent the better part of the night thinking about, obsessing over, were in fact the innocent ones belonging to a lily-white lady.

Fuck.

Latimer flew to his feet quick and rounded the table.

Recoiling, the golden beauty backed up until the wall hit her back.

He grunted. “Here,” he said, and righted her chair.

All the while, the lady eyed him with deservedly wary eyes.

After he had returned to his seat, she hovered there, silent, and still carefully watching him.

Go, darlin’. Leave.

With the regal grace of a queen, she seated herself.

He should have known better than to hope or expect this defiant chit to do anything Lachlan wanted.

Latimer spoke quietly. “There is no Mr. Lovelace.”

“There was,” she said, so indignant were Latimer any another man than the cynical one that he was, he would have believed her. “However, he is no longer with us.” He eyed her dubiously.

“Are you expecting me to believe you are a widow?”

Please, be a young widow, he silently implored.

The lady hesitated. “No,” she said, sheepish. “I was referring to my late grandfather.”

Bloody fuck, she was a virgin. At that, Latimer had been locked away alone with a lady and attempted to seduce her.

No wonder she’d been shocked and indignant after their almost embrace. She was as unsullied as a fresh born dove. If he were a man of her station, he’d have felt a proper modicum of shame. Shame, that a fellow like he, street born and street raised, couldn’t feel or for that matter have picked out of a bloody burlap sack.

Cursing into the quiet, Latimer dragged his palms over his face.

Good Christ, this would be bad for any eventual business. No one could ever find out. No titled men didn’t have any problems tossing down their fortunes at a man like Latimer’s gaming tables, but they would always, absolutely draw the line at letting one like him touch one of theirs.

Latimer let his hands drop to the table and found the beguiling miss staring back at him with those big eyes. Those big, blue pools that’d previously intrigued him, now scared the everlasting hell out of him.

“You got a name?” he asked, gruffly.

She nodded.

Latimer gave her a look. “That is… one of your own ?”

Her cheeks pinkened. “It is Lovelace. Not Mrs. but Miss. Miss Livian Lovelace,” she murmured so damned trusting, for the first time in her presence, he found his feet twitching with the need to get the hell away from her.

Latimer glanced about eying the stairways offering his escape. He made to take it, before he remembered. The woman whom he’d kicked out of his chambers and sent her packing alone to the tap room, was some guile-eyed miss.

“What of you?” she asked softly, snatching him from the edge of panic.

“What of me?” he rejoined frantically looking for absolutely anyone to come and collect her; hell, he’d even take the pain in the arse, Mr. Felchlin.

“What of you? Do you have a name?”

“I gave you my name,” he muttered distractedly.

“Yes, Mr. Latimer. That is just one name.”

What the hell was she jabbering about? “ And ?”

“Unless, Latimer is your Christian name?” the chit mused. “Which given how it sounds, very well may be, in which case, do you have a last name? Or, maybe Latimer is your surname in which case what is your given name?”

It took him a minute to untangle all that. Just as he did, she opened her mouth to add another thought.

For God’s sake.

“Lachlan,” he snapped; he would have happily given up one of his lungs, to shut her up. “Lachlan Latimer.”

“Lachlan Latimer,” she murmured. “Lachlan Latimer,” she repeated several times, as though she wished to taste the feel of it on her tongue and the sound of it from her lips.

And goddamned, if another healthy rush of blood filled his cock and left him hard at the sound of her repeating his name over and over.

“That seems familiar to me,” she mused, tapping a finger against her lips in sweet, seductive, contemplation.

“I doubt that, darlin’.” One fine as her, wouldn’t know a damn about him or his career. “Don’t you have a family? Someone to claim you?”

“Of course, I have a family,” she said simply, with a godforsaken innocence. “ Everyone has a family, Lachlan.”

He didn’t.…

More importantly… “Where the hell is yours?” Latimer made no attempt to mask his annoyance or anger; a fact which the lady, given her serene demeanor, either failed to hear or care about.

“They are home,” she murmured.

“Home?”

She nodded.

“Where are your servants?”

“Well, two of them you met.”

Latimer stared incredulously. “The foul-mouthed lads?”

She frowned. “I prefer to think of them as the loyal, clever, and courageous, boys. But, yes.”

“And?” he demanded when she didn’t add anything more than that.

“Well, my sister,” she tripped over her words. “She is in the carriage ahead of mine with the other driver.”

While she prattled, his head spun.

“Fortunately, she managed to continue her journey. I did not fare as well in my travels.”

“Unfortunately for me,” he said under his breath.

“The storm made the road impassible—a branch.”

He puzzled his brow.

“That is, a branch made the road impassible. That is what my driver called it, but after inspecting the fallen debris, I concluded the branch was just that in name only. As it fell a yew tree, so ancient, the limb itself could rival that of an impressive oak some five hundred years old.”

Latimer stared at the rambling lady in growing horror.

“Yes!” she nodded, mistaking his horrified reaction for her telling of that tree and not the bloody realization of just how innocent the lady was. “It was enormous.” The lady stretched her long, graceful arms on either side of her and attempted to display the estimated length.

He scoffed.

The garrulous chit wrinkled her nose. “No, it was far bigger,” she said, glancing about, and then swiveling in her chair, she sized up the hearth. “It was nearly two times the length of this one.”

Fuck! How had he failed to see it the whole while the lady was as innocent as the day, she’d entered the world. It’d been there the whole time.

The whole, bloody, time.

Maybe, you simply wanted to fuck her so bad, you let yourself ignore details you didn’t want to see, the devil in his mind jeered. Well, when it came to this effervescent beauty, he had his head about him now. Latimer was done thinking with his cock.

“And where are your bloody servants?” he clipped out, ending whatever it was she’d been saying about her journey to The St. George’s Inn.

She cocked her head. “In their rooms.”

“Their rooms?” he echoed, knowing he sounded like a bloody lackwit.

“The stables were entirely too cold. As such, I had a room made available for my driver, which the boys will have known to share with Mr. Dryver, as I advised—”

“You—” At his raised voice, she shot her blonde eyebrows up.

His temper rising, he managed to lower his tone. “You gave your room to servants?” he managed to calmly ask.

“Well, they already had it, Lachlan.” She wrinkled her nose. “It wasn’t mine to take.”

With that bombshell, he drew back in his seat.

Here, he’d stood over her bed and made all manner of accusations, calling her a self-centered, unfeeling, pompous lady. Only to learn that after he’d thrown her out to join some imagined husband, she’d come down to an empty tap room to sit alone… Until what? The next bloody morning?

Latimer spoke with a calm he didn’t feel. “And what if some cad came down and you sat here?”

An image slipped in, of some drunken bastard finding Livian here, of that faceless, nameless, shite, snatching her to her feet, bending her over the table.

“What if, the same way, I entered your rooms, and ripped the covers off you—” It was too much.

He inhaled sharp breaths through his nose.

Livian rested soft, gentle, fingers upon his larger, life-hardened hand.

He stared, fixed, on the top of hers.

“Lachlan?” Livian asked softly. “Are you all right?”

How bloody trusting she was. She’d place her palm atop the hands of a scarred stranger who’d invaded her rooms and who, before this point, spoke crudely to her.

“Am I all right?”

She wasn’t his business. She wasn’t his problem period; the only business, and the absolute only thing he cared about was revenge against his partners and the empire he’d build.

Armed with that reminder, he spoke bluntly. “What if you had found yourself confronted as you were with me, Miss Lovelace?” Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t get out all the horrifying possibilities, even if it would have scared her to her senses.

“Given you proved a gentleman and we’re now sitting here conversing?” Livian smiled. “I believe I would be all right.”

Her eyes sparkled.

Hell, he’d never known eyes could sparkle and certainly he’d never known they could be this pure.

Fuck .