Once a Scoundrel by Candice Hern

Author:Candice Hern
Language: eng
Format: epub

"Lord, you are skittish. As if talking about such matters would be the least bit shocking to me. Recollect who I am, my dear."

"It's just… very personal. I'm not comfortable speaking of such private matters."

"Silly notion, between women. Between friends."

"All right. Yes." She blurted it out before she could stop herself. "He kissed me again."

"And?"

And her mind had been in an almost perpetual state of confusion ever since. Thoughts of Anthony and his kiss had interfered with her work altogether too often. Her mind wandered, her skin tingled and flushed at the memory, her stomach tied itself into knots of anxiety. She felt rather foolish, as though she were sixteen and had just been kissed for the first time.

She had so far been helpless to keep such silliness under control, and that made her nervous. It was not like her to be so undisciplined. For almost eight years she had imposed a strict restraint on her emotions, her passions, her life. She would never again be the victim of impassioned chaos.

And yet, there was something so seductive about it, about the way she'd felt after Anthony's kiss. He had been the first man in all that time to bring about those quivery, legs-turning-to-jelly feelings again.

Probably because he'd been the first man bold enough to just walk up and kiss her, as he did that first time, sneaking through a tiny chink in the armor before she even knew it was there. He'd almost stripped the armor away entirely the second time, and she had let him. Fool! It would be much too easy to succumb to those feelings again. And much too dangerous.

Which is why she'd avoided being alone with him again, always keeping Prudence or Nicholas in the room with them. He had invited her out driving several more times, and she had gone once, having run out of excuses. But she made sure he kept to the public areas and never veered off into any remote corner of the park. He was always the perfect gentleman in public, though he whispered teasing comments about getting her alone and inviting further demonstrations.

"And?" Flora asked again, dragging Edwina's thoughts back to the present. "Did you enjoy his kiss?"

Edwina sighed. "Yes, I did. But enough of that. We have much to do. Choose one of the evening-dress drawings, Flora, and let's get on with it."

"This one."

"Fine. Now we can send these to Keech for engraving. But we still have a problem to deal with. Because of increased subscriptions, we will need almost three thousand engravings to be hand colored. Imber has said his small staff can no longer handle the volume. He suggests coloring only a small portion and selling those issues for a higher price. But frankly, I'd prefer to have them all colored. It would be such a bother to keep track of which subscribers got color and which did not."

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