Sinfully Yours (Hellions of High Street 2)

“I have been thinking,” announced Anna.

“Mmmm?” Devlin opened one eye, just enough to make out the quicksilver play of moonlight and shadows dancing across the plaster ceiling. “No thinking, remember?” He was still savoring the delightful languor suffusing his limbs. “It’s against the Rake’s Rules of Midnight Lovemaking.”

She shifted on the velvet.

“Page eight in the handbook,” he added drowsily.

“Davenport—”

“Devlin,” he corrected, adding a smile despite the fact that her reversion to his title stirred a small frisson of unease.

“Very well then, Devlin,” said Anna.

Something i

n her voice brought him wide awake.

She rolled over to face him and propped herself up on one elbow. “It may be against the rules, but nonetheless, something important has occurred to me and I should like to discuss it with you.”

He had an inkling of what it was. And while he had already made up his mind on what to do, he was hoping to linger just a little while longer in the blissful haze of sweet oblivion.

“May we talk about it later?” he asked.

“I would rather do it now.”

Devlin had come to recognize that tone. It indicated that the earth might tremble and monuments might crumble, but her mind, once resolved on a course of action, would let nothing stand in its way.

“You,” he said, heaving a martyred sigh, “can be exceedingly stubborn.”

“Like you, I concede that I have more than a few faults,” said Anna sweetly. “Stubbornness is one of them.”

The show of toughness belied the vision before his eyes. With her unpinned hair tumbled over her lovely shoulders and the rumpled fabric tucked loosely around her slender body, she looked exceedingly vulnerable.

A teasing comment died on his lips. Instead, he hitched himself up against the wall.

“Very well. But instead of beating around the bushes, why don’t we simply cut to the chase and avoid any awkwardness about the subject. I fully intend to marry you. Though I hope you will spare me the spectacle of a fancy wedding at St. George’s of Hanover Square.”

“Marry?” Shock slowly spread over her face. “Ye gods, Devlin, you don’t want to marry me.”

“After this…” He gestured at the glimmers of their moonlit nakedness peeking through the black velvet, “honor demands it.”

“Be damned with honor!” exclaimed Anna. She frowned. “Besides, you don’t have any.”

“That may be true, but I do have a shred of common decency left. And common decency demands that I marry you.”

“Because I’m ruined?”

Damn.

Either way he answered the question would land him in a very deep and unpleasant hole.

Taking his silence as surrender, Anna quickly went on. “So, you may put the notion out of your head.”

“Because I’m an unprincipled scoundrel?”

That took a little of the wind out of her sails. “I—I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it. The Devil Davenport has the morals of a snake, so of course he can put the notion—as you so charmingly call it—out of his head.”