Her Christmas Earl

“I don’t believe you.” The girl’s voice was impressively flat and steady.

Erskine should have guessed that the self-possessed Miss Philippa Sanders wouldn’t have hysterics when she learned she was confined with a rake. He didn’t need any light to know that disapproval weighted that direct brown gaze. For the last three days, he’d suffered that solemn, critical stare every time guests and family gathered.

Although she couldn’t see him, he shrugged. “That is, of course, your privilege.”

From the moment he’d seen her in this closet, reluctant excitement had thrummed in his veins. Although surely the small, brown-haired woman with uncompromising dark brows would strike most sane men as prim or dour.

Apparently he wasn’t sane.

Since their introduction, he’d wanted to shake this girl’s unnatural composure. Miss Sanders awoke all his worst impulses. Not since his schooldays had he wanted to pull a girl’s plait or put a mouse down her back just to stop her treating him like a member of some inferior species.

Erskine had grown up considerably from the boy who used such unproductive tactics on the pretty baker’s daughter. He’d immediately recognized that his urge to upset Miss Sanders’s calmness was similarly based in seeking her attention, if only in displeasure. And the heat swirling in his blood since she’d touched his bare chest was distinctly adult.

While he didn’t understand the fascination, he made a habit of being honest with himself. This observant little sparrow drew him in a way the fashionable and sophisticated London ladies never had. He was yet to work out why. This attraction’s inexplicable nature added to its power. In all this sprawling house, the only person who stirred a shred of interest was the woman regarding him the way she’d regard a worm in an apple.

An unusual experience for a man generally considered irresistible to the fairer sex.

He’d been right to suspect that more went on beneath her quiet exterior than she wanted the world to know. In the last five minutes, she’d displayed more spirit than she had in three days of staring him down. Perhaps he should have locked her in a cupboard the first day.

“You’ve got a key. Or you’ve clicked the lock somehow.”

She didn’t sound frightened, for which he was heartily grateful. Ins

tead she sounded like a schoolmistress scolding a lazy pupil for sloppy arithmetic.

Good God, Erskine was in a bad way. Something in that stern voice made him want to grab her and kiss her until she lost the breath to berate him. “You’re not a very trusting soul, are you?”

Her sigh conveyed endless irritation. “Lord Erskine, you needn’t persist in this foolishness. You have my word that I will never invade another man’s bedchamber.”

He bit back an invitation to invade his bedchamber any time she fancied.

When he didn’t respond, she went on, still as if speaking to someone slow on the uptake. “Pray unlock the door. No harm has been done. My sister’s honor is safe because you destroyed the letter. You obviously realized that she’d written to you on a foolish impulse.”

Actually the beauteous Amelia’s letter had been incendiary in the extreme and had offered privileges nobody but a husband had the right to claim. Erskine spared a sympathetic thought for the chit’s fiancé. Mr. Gerald Fox put his pretty beloved high on a pedestal, a pedestal from which she was likely to topple before long.

Erskine kept his voice light, although he wondered if Amelia’s younger sister had any inkling of the letter’s contents. “So all is squared away and you go your merry way, with your uncharitable assessment of me intact.”

He didn’t see her frown, but he knew she did. He’d never been so attuned to a woman. And he hadn’t even kissed her yet.

At the thought of holding her naked in his arms, hunger shuddered through him. While she didn’t dress to display her body, he knew enough about women to guess what she’d look like out of that unfashionable blue frock. She might be slender, but the bosom curving beneath those discouragingly high collars was round and firm. He’d wager that description matched the rest of her.

Perhaps winter and this tedious house party encouraged a taste for more subtle attractions. Three days in her company had convinced Erskine that Philippa Sanders was a rare beauty indeed. He was just grateful that his blockheaded companions were too distracted by the false gold of her sister to notice.

“I hardly think you care about my opinion,” she said in a repressive tone.

“I’m a sensitive soul.”

“Clearly,” she responded just as drily. “Now unlock the door.” She paused and added a sugary edge to the next word. “ Please.”

He laughed, wondering why her bossiness charmed him. He didn’t in general like managing females, but something about this small, confident woman touched the heart he’d imagined immune to tenderness. “Did that hurt?”

Another of those delightful, dismissive snorts. “You’ve had your fun, my lord.”

Not by a long shot, my dear. “Believe me, Miss Sanders, unless I can open this door, nothing can save you from the consequences of your foolishness. It seems fortune doesn’t favor the brave.”

He should be in a blind panic about what might happen if they were discovered together in such a compromising situation. Somehow, he…wasn’t.

“This isn’t funny.”