Nothing in his life had taught him to imagine those words.
You are priceless.
“Goodness, you needn’t look so panicked.” She smiled and gave his head a little shake. “It’s no more than I tell Bixby daily.”
Right. Of course it wasn’t. She was only exacting a bit of revenge after he’d mocked her for blushing and so on, and he likely deserved it. Gabe hated that he felt disappointed. Even betrayed.
He brushed her hands aside. “You’ve made your point. I’ll do my best not to swoon.”
“Gabriel, wait.”
He continued walking. “You needn’t worry about any further declarations from my quarter. We needn’t talk at all.”
At last, they reached the village and its lone inn.
“As you can see, we’ve had a traveling mishap,” Gabe told the wide-eyed innkeeper. “We’ll take your largest suite of rooms. My sister will need an attendant to help her undress and bathe.”
He could feel the questioning look Her Ladyship gave him. Sister?
“While she rests, her attire must be laundered and pressed dry. And we want dinner, as soon as it can be managed.”
“Have your choice, sir.” The innkeeper pointed toward a slate listing the kitchen’s daily offerings in muddled chalk.
Gabe skimmed the list. Kidney pie, stewed beef, leg of mutton, braised rabbit. Meat, meat, meat, and meat. Brilliant.
“One of each,” he said. “No, two of each.”
Lady Penelope nudged him in the side. “You needn’t order any for me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Beastly man.” She sighed under her breath.
“You’re not a child. You can read the board as well as I can, and you don’t need me to make choices for you.”
She sighed again. “Not-quite-so-beastly man.”
“That’s more like it.”
“Toast and butter, please,” she told the innkeeper. “A wedge of cheese and some preserves, if you have them.”
“One more thing,” Gabe said. “I require writing paper, pen, and ink. I need to send a letter. There’s a five-year-old boy in Buckinghamshire who’ll be heartbroken that he’s not getting his ferret.”
“For heaven’s sake,” she muttered. “He was never going to have a ferret.”
The innkeeper scribbled on a greasy bit of paper. “All together with the lodging … That’ll be six shillings, eight.”
“I don’t have the coin on me,” Gabe said. “I’ll pay you when my coach and driver arrive.”
“To be sure, you will. And I’ll feed you dinner when my Parisian chef arrives.”
Gabe cursed and pushed his hand through his hair. “Take my boots as collateral.”
The innkeeper peered down at the muddy, waterlogged boots. “Look as though they’ve been through a war.”
“I paid twelve pounds for them. They’re certainly worth six shillings, eight in any condition. Just hold them until I can pay you in coin.”
“Very well. I’ll hold the boots—and the lady’s washing. She can have her laundered and pressed frock once you’ve paid.”
Fair enough.
They took the largest suite of rooms the inn had on offer. A bedchamber for Her Ladyship to bathe and have a lie-down, a sitting room where he could eat and dash off a letter, and—most importantly—an antechamber between the two.
At the door to the suite, they parted ways. The serving girls brought hot water to her room; trays of food to his. All was as it should be. Completely separate.
Once alone, Gabe tugged his shirt over his head and draped it over a chair near the fireplace to dry. Once he’d finished a much-needed wash at the basin, he sat down to his dinner.
A proper dinner. Real, actual food, rather than falsehoods on a plate. No shmidney pie or braised crabbit or whatever fool name she would invent. He picked up a knife and speared a bit of stewed beef with a satisfying jab.
He was on his second plate of steaming-hot kidney pie by the time his chewing slowed. And that’s when he heard it. The faintest sounds escaping her room, sweeping across the antechamber, and sliding under the door to him.
The sounds of bathing.
A splash.
A trickle.
A faint series of drips.
It all added up to torture. Pure, liquid torture.
He pushed his plate away, propped his elbows on the table, and buried his face in his hands with a groan. Even plugging his ears didn’t help.
When he closed his eyes, he could picture her. Naked in a shallow tub. Her feet dangling over the lip at one end, and her head reclined against the other. And all that water embracing her with heat, lapping at her nakedness, pouring over her most secret curves and furrows.
He was immediately, startlingly hard.
Gabe drummed the table with his fingers. This would be the perfect time for a rainstorm. A riot, an explosion, a choir of tuneless schoolchildren. Something, anything loud.
Nothing.
Nothing but soft, devastating, erotic sounds.
Perhaps he could trick his mind. He might convince himself the sounds weren’t from bathing. Instead, he’d imagine her to be … making soup. Unappetizing soup. Workhouse soup. Watery broth with a few scattered lumps of—
She sighed a long, languid sigh.
Curse it. Strategy ruined. No one sighed languid sighs while making soup.
Christ alive, women took ridiculously long baths. Was it possible to die of priapism? Perhaps she’d volunteered him as some doctor’s investigatory case.
Make haste, he silently willed her. Be done with it.
In his mind’s eye, he saw her dipping a sponge beneath a blanket of soap bubbles, and then pressing it against the back of her neck—just beneath the frizzled golden curls at her nape. She gave the sponge a long, firm squeeze, sending a warm cascade down her back. One mischievous rivulet strayed, trickling over her collarbone, burrowing between her breasts, and sliding down to her navel before it disappeared into a tuft of honey-colored curls.
Enough.
He pushed back in his chair and unbuttoned his trousers. He took his cock in hand,
