His mouth was coming closer and closer to hers and she tilted her head back, eyelashes fluttering as she readied herself for the kiss.
"Get your damn hands off my ward."
Cynthia gasped as Mr. Brandon was wrenched away, the stentorian tones of her guardian cutting through whatever pleasure she'd felt a moment before. Dread and excitement clashed in her stomach, curdling like a bad mixture of milk and hot water, as she opened her eyes to see the Earl bodily hauling Mr. Brandon out of the aisle.
"Unless you want a dawn appointment with me, you will not approach her again and I will not hear a word about this from anyone," the Earl hissed, just barely loud enough for her to hear. Oh goodness... a duel?!
Before she could react, Mr. Brandon stumbled away, babbling reassurances in a frightened manner that made her sigh. Whatever attractiveness he'd had, he'd just completely lost. How disappointing.
Then the Earl turned back to her, his hazel eyes dark and hard.
"Ah..." she said with a weak smile, trying to think quickly. With the Countess it wasn't nearly so hard to come up with something to say. "Good afternoon, my Lord."
Well apparently that wasn't the right thing to say at all. Growling under his breath, the Earl reached out and grabbed her arm, hauling her back towards the front of the store. Cynthia dug in her heels, not particularly wanting to be a spectacle.
"My Lord," she hissed, pulling at his fingers on her upper arm, "you're going to attract attention!"
******
The reminder stopped Wesley in his tracks. No, he hadn't just demanded that the scoundrel that had just been about to kiss her - in the middle of a bookstore! - would keep quiet, only to alert everyone himself. In sleepy Bath, bodily dragging his ward down the middle of the street would do more than cause comment, it could cause scandal as people speculated over why he might be doing such a thing. And then his mother really would have vapors.
Growling, he slowed his pace, taking her hand and firmly wrapping it around his arm before covering it with his own so that she couldn’t get away. While such a stance might seem a bit overly familiar, considering that she was his ward and not a lady he was wooing, it would cause far less comment than his previous hold. To his intense annoyance, she not only gave him a brilliant smile of approval, she then transferred that smile to the owner of the bookstore.
“Thank you Mr. Worthing, I’ll see you another day,” she said with a cheery little wave.
Wesley forebear to tell her that she absolutely would not be seeing the smarmy man another day; he doubted that his mother would be agreeable to coming to this dusty hole in the wall and neither would he. Especially with a man like that, who eyed Cynthia far too speculatively as he responded in kind.
As they walked down the street, Wesley’s temper wound tighter and tighter with every step. The chit didn’t act as if she’d been caught doing something wrong, unlike the blaggard he’d caught her with, she was just as cheerful and chattery as ever. It was enough to drive a man to drink. He stepped quickly, mindful of not making a scene, but knowing that the sooner he got her to the house the better.
Cynthia nodded to and greeted several people, although Wesley kept her moving, giving them nothing but a quick nod. He’d probably get an earful later from his mother about his short demeanor, but he wasn’t going to allow Cynthia to slow him. The second they got back to the house he was going to give her as red a bottom as ever.
Kissing a man! In a bookstore! Where anyone could have come across them!
Growing grimmer by the minute, he darkly wondered how often she met men in bookstores – and elsewhere. What she might be doing with them. Although Edwin’s letter had indicated that so far she hadn’t completely ruined herself (according to what she’d told Nell) as she was being careful not to end up with an unwanted pregnancy, but that didn’t mean she could act however she wanted as long as she didn’t cross that line. If anyone other than himself had seen her and that rogue, it would have been all over town in minutes. And then his mother’s reputation and social standing would have been affected as well.
At least, that's what he attributed his dark rage to. It definitely couldn't have anything to do with the fact that she'd been about to kiss another man, had her pink lips turned up to accept his, her body leaning towards him... after all, Wesley was planning on marrying her off to some poor sod who would get to sample her delights on a daily basis. Why would he feel anything akin to jealousy just because she was about to kiss another man?
Growling under his breath, Wesley picked up his pace again as they drew closer to the street where his mother's house was. The sooner he could get her inside and vent his feelings on her upturned arse, the better.
******
The look on the Earl's face was not at all helping matters, Cynthia thought with some exasperation. She'd been doing her best to avoid attention by acting normally, but he'd looked as grim as the reaper while he'd been "escorting" her home.
Truth be told, she might have been overplaying her hand a little. After all, it hadn't been strictly necessary to greet every single person that she saw on the street. But it was strangely fun to tweak at the Earl's nerves, especially when he was in a temper. She was feeling rather breathless as how easily he manhandled her, the strength she could feel in his arm.
And she had wanted another spanking after all. If this didn't earn her one from him, then what would? She couldn't have planned it better if she'd tried.
Although his silence and glares made her feel more nervous than she would have expected; she covered up that anxiety with a cheerful bravado that seemed to grate on him. Which, in turn, amused her, and she was quite sure that he could tell she was amused and that it incensed him even further.
Her bottom tingled underneath the swishing skirts of her day dress and she could feel the wetness gathering between her legs. The Earl might be a bit of a prig and a stuffed shirt, at least where she was concerned, but there was just something so delicious about a truly masterful man. None of her other suitors had ever affected her quite like he did, which was really too bad because she couldn't seem to influence him the way she did them.
Then again, perhaps it was that inability to sway him that she found so attractive. It wasn't often that she came across a man such as him, one who was wholly desirable and yet seemed completely indifferent to her, one that managed to both intimidate and attract her, and one whom was completely oblivious to her manipulations. Even when she poked at him, metaphorically speaking, he didn't stop in his track, he just bulled right through and continued towards his own goal.
As soon as he got her in the house, he picked up his pace again, dragging her towards his study.
Sheer perversity ma
de her dig in her heels this time. "My lord, can't you slow down?"