Valentine's Vow (Avenging Lords 3)
Miss Kendall’s dark eyes devoured him as she moistened her lips. He almost caved beneath the look of longing he witnessed there.
“You certainly don’t kiss like a gentleman,” she said, struggling to catch her breath.
“When one loosens the strings of restraint, gallant gentlemen are often the most sinful.”
He felt like a stag in rutting season. He wanted to tilt his head back, roar and bark, clash antlers with any other male who had designs on mating with this female.
“You certainly have great depth of passion, my lord.”
“And as a woman brimming with worldly experience, I’m sure you know that is not the barrel of your pocket pistol pressing into your abdomen.”
Miss Kendall’s eyes widened in shock, but one shake of the head and she soon recovered. A smile touched her lips, and Valentine knew she had thought of a witty retort.
“Thank you for informing me,” she said. “Now I am in no danger of whipping it out to blow dust from the barrel.”
Chapter Eight
“I know we consider our meetings all-lady affairs,” Honora said, gesturing for them to help themselves to the finger sandwiches laid out in the centre of the round table in her sitting room, “but my son has a particular interest in the topic today, and I hope you don’t mind if he makes a brief appearance.”
Ava’s stomach skipped up to her throat.
How could she sit across from the viscount without blushing?
Memories of the heated kiss she shared with Lord Valentine last night still burned in her mind. Never had she been so consumed with fanciful thoughts or romantic inclinations. And yet her fingers itched to caress his bare chest. Her lips longed to ravage his expert mouth. Indeed, when he insisted on escorting her home, and they lingered on the corner of Mount Street, there was a moment when he stared at her mouth and she imagined he might kiss her again.
“I have known Lucius since he was a boy,” Mrs Madeley said, bestowing the other ladies seated around the table with her usual nothing-fazes-me grin. Today, she wore the same drab blue dress and artisan cap she always wore when discussing topics of a literary nature. “I have never found him to be one of those condescending gentlemen who constantly criticise. Perhaps we may even teach him something.”
Lady Cartwright’s red ringlets—which everyone knew to be a wig for the matron was approaching sixty—bobbed beneath her white cap as she nodded. “I think it will be the perfect test,” she said whilst piling her plate high with sandwiches. “If we can speak openly in front of a viscount, then it might give those reserved ladies amongst us a little more confidence.”
All heads turned to the hunched figure of Matilda Faversham. With a heart-shaped face and porcelain skin, Society might consider the lady a beauty if she did not tremble every time she spoke.
“Well?” Honora asked. “Are you in agreement, Matilda?”
Miss Faversham opened her mouth and snapped it shut.
Ava sat next to the girl and so tapped her affectionately on the arm. “It will do you a power of good, as Lady Cartwright said.”
Miss Faversham’s eyes brightened with a look of admiration. “Very well. If you think it is all right, Miss Kendall, Lord Valentine m-may attend the meeting.”
Honora breathed a relieved sigh. “Excellent. Once we’ve eaten, we shall join him in the drawing room.”
Heat rose to Ava’s cheeks. “Lord Valentine is already here?”
“Yes, he spent the night.”
“The night?” Ava’s pulse raced.
After a leisurely morning in bed, was he dressing in the room above them? She pictured him in nothing but a pair of breeches slung low on the hips. In her mind’s eye, she saw mussed golden hair, a rakish lock hanging over his brow. She saw the ripple of muscles in his abdomen as he shrugged into his shirt.
“Though I am not sure he got any sleep. Jenkins found him in the drawing room at three in the morning, cradling a glass of brandy.”
The drawing room gave one a perfect view of Ava’s house. After the incident on the way home from the pawnbroker’s shop, Valentine had seemed agitated. Did he fear the rogue had followed them home? Had he kept watch on her house all night?
“Men.” Lady Cartwright chuckled. “We use sleep to forget about our problems, and they are quite the opposite.”
There was some truth to the lady’s statement. Sleep had been the only thing to ease the strange ache that commanded Ava’s body whenever she thought about the handsome lord. Sleep banished the heartache that accompanied thoughts of her missing ring, too.
Matilda cleared her throat, but it was a moment before she spoke. “M-my father once drank a whole decanter of brandy upon receiving the bill from my mother’s milliner. She does so love her hats.”