To Tempt a Scoundrel by Christi Caldwell

Author:Christi Caldwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: 0
Published: 2017-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The house guests having long ago sought their chambers and the sprawling house quiet, Alice sat in Lord and Lady Guilford’s libraries.

Sleep had proven elusive.

As such, she’d gathered her book, abandoned her chambers, and sought out a distraction that had always come from literature.

That same leather volume, however, now rested beside her, forgotten and useless.

Her knees drawn close to her chest, Alice rested her cheek atop them, and stared absently into the impressive flames that still raged in the hearth. Rhys’ parting words echoed around her mind.

Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet…

Just seventeen words from Bentham’s work… and they’d thoroughly transfixed her since Rhys murmured them in his silky baritone hours earlier. Four hours, if one wished to be truly precise. And since they’d parted, he’d retained hold of her thoughts with an unrelenting tenacity.

Alice rubbed her chin along her cotton robe.

Who was Lord Rhys Brookfield?

Conversing so freely with her on Bentham’s works one instant, and bringing her to blush with nothing more than his crooked half-grin, the next? He was equal parts scholar and equal parts charming rogue. And together, they made for an alluring gentleman who robbed a woman of sleep.

And for a brief moment when they’d been alone outside, she’d believed he was going to kiss her. The burn of his grey gaze had sent heat racing through her, driving back the winter’s chill. And she’d wanted his kiss. Yearned to know the crush of his mouth against hers.

Her betrothed had never kissed her. At first, she’d marveled at him for being unlike the rogues and rakes whispered about in Society. Henry Pratt was a gentleman in every way. Alice, however, had quickly tired of politeness. After weeks of his courtship and then their betrothal, she’d yearned for his embrace. Only, it hadn’t been a wild, burning passion that filled her; a need to feel his arms about her. Rather, it had been a frustrated curiosity to have her first kiss.

Having grown impatient, it had been Alice who’d taken matters into her own hands—both literally and figuratively. With him across from her reading poetry one visit, and her maid deliberately sent off for refreshments, Alice joined Henry on the sofa. She had looped her arms about his neck and pressed her lips to his.

Slightly damp, soft… and cold, there had been an absolute emptiness to Henry Pratt’s kiss that had left her hollow. Wishing for more. Yearning for a glimpse of the thrilling excitement written of in those romantic tales she’d read since she was a girl. All through that exchange, she’d told herself that all women surely felt the same way in a man’s arms. That the fluttering sensations and quickening of one’s heart captured on those pages of romantic novels was just that… words of fiction. And when Henry had jerked away, ending that sloppy embrace, a deep-seated shame had consumed Alice.

Not because of the wanton display that had earned a stinging rebuke from a blushing Henry, but because she’d been so very glad the embrace had been over.

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