Wager with a Siren (All's Fair in Love and Racing Book 3) by Sofie Darling

Author:Sofie Darling [Darling, Sofie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Published: 2024-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Julian wasn’t sure which he found most attractive about Tessa.

Her fearlessness…

Her arrogance…

Her utter indifference to the opinion of the many…

Her attractive qualities competed for best as she stood planted before him. Her eyes shone bright, her cheeks flushed, her rather bounteous bosom heaving and making a minor spectacle of itself for all the gathered to see and, frankly, admire.

Here was a woman who didn’t give a toss about these gentlemen clamoring around, waggling their eyebrows and pulling comic faces like schoolboys. The look in her steady eyes said they could stuff their nonsense straight up their collective bum.

It should have annoyed him. After all, there were rules, and the rules stated that ladies keep away from the card room. Of course, some ladies insisted on being exceptions to that rule. Widows…married ladies…All ladies of a certain character—untamable in the eyes of society.

Tessa was neither married nor a widow, but she might well be untamable.

And it was that last quality that he found most attractive.

That made him want to claim her.

That made him want to leg it to the Thames and jump into the river and let it wash away the wild impulses the woman inspired within him.

“May I be of assistance to you, Lady Tessa?” he asked, smiling amiably and playing the marquess the gentlemen in this room expected.

She didn’t waver. “You and I have a debt to settle, my lord.”

She wasn’t in for a penny.

She was in for a pound.

His body registered the double entendre before his mind caught up to it, but that split of a second was all his cock needed to fill to half-staff.

His smile broadened, even as his eyes narrowed. “The debt has been forgiven.” The words emerged more tightly than he would’ve liked, and she would’ve detected as much.

The gossipy buzz of the room quieted to a low murmur, curious ears attuned to the entertainment being provided by the Marquess of Ormonde and Lady Tessa Calthorp, and all Julian could think was he’d brought this upon himself.

He’d underestimated Tessa.

Of course, she would follow him into the card room and create a scene.

Her gaze steady and cool, she gave a slow shake of the head. “The possibility of debt forgiveness wasn’t laid out in the original terms.”

She wasn’t letting him off the hook.

His amiability didn’t slip a hair. “Consider it a gift, then.”

He was all magnanimous marquess. How could she possibly refuse in the face of such lordly generosity?

Yet he knew without a doubt, she would.

And that certainty sent such a hard throb of anticipation spiking through him, he nearly lost his breath.

“Perhaps,” she said, “this discussion would be better settled in private.”

A few beats of stunned silence loped past before a voice three sheets to the wind rang out, “Oh, it’s off to the naughty chair with you, Ormonde!” And the room broke free of its tension and into riots of relieved laughter, guffaws, and whistles.

However, Julian and Tessa remained unmoved, their eyes only breaking contact when she pivoted and began striding away, the gentlemen happily clearing a path for this woman on a mission, if only to be rid of her.

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