folded arms on its padded back while he watched her. ‘I am asking you to take on an onerous acting job for three months and then I will give you the house and an annuity that will allow you to do just as you please.’
‘But—’
‘You think I am offering too high a price? I can assure you—’
‘I think you are offering a very fair price for such an outrageous request,’ she retorted robustly. ‘Gareth—look at me. Do I look like a seductress? Do I seem to you to have any wiles, any aptitude for casting out lures? I have never flirted in my life, not even mildly. How do you expect me to learn?’
‘I will teach you,’ he said and the smile he sent her was pure, wicked, promise. ‘I will teach you so well, Miss Gifford, that half the men in London will be at your feet and every lady in society will wish to scratch your eyes out.’
‘No…I could not.’ She had to be strong. It was impossible, she could never do this.
Gareth walked round and picked up her hand as it clasped the arm of her chair. His fingers were warm and his thumb brushed gently against the soft mound of flesh at the base of her thumb.
‘What colour are the roses round the door in your dream house?’ he asked her, his eyes intent and dark onher face.
‘Red,’ she murmured. And was lost.
‘How do you intend teaching me these arts of fascination?’ Jessica rescued her hand from Gareth’s grip and tried to make her voice as businesslike and brisk as possible. He sank back in his chair, recognising her capitulation and, she could only hope, not seeing the churning mix of terror and anticipation behind her question.
‘It will be easier for you once you have your new hairstyle and your new clothes, I imagine. I will send a note around to my cousin Bel and ask her to call tomorrow and take you under her wing.’
‘Will she agree?’ Jessica wondered. ‘It is a scandalous deception. She might well disapprove.’ He had not answered her question, she noted. One faculty life as a governess taught you was to recognise evasion when you saw it. Lord Standon might not be a naughty eight-year-old with a toad in his pocket, but in her opinion all males of whatever age were that boy under the skin.
‘Bel? I suspect not. She was first married to Lord Felsham, who was generally accounted to be the most boring man in the ton. When she was barely out of mourning she encountered Ashe Reynard, Viscount Dereham, who was just back from Waterloo. By all accounts it was a lively courtship. I have no idea of the details, but our highly respectable bluestocking of a cousin Miss Elinor Ravenhurst, who is a great friend of Bel’s, blushes whenever she mentions Reynard.’
‘It would be a relief if she does help us, because I do not feel we should involve Lady Maude in this.’ Jessica waited, trying her best stare to see if Gareth was going to answer her question about her lessons in flirtation.
‘I agree. Tell me, Jessica, why are you regarding me as though I have not finished my Latin exercises?’
‘I am waiting for an answer to my question about how you intend to teach me—and I fear you may be evading one.’
‘Very well. This is not something I have attempted before, believe me, but I will try. May I be frank?’
‘Ye…s,’ she responded, suspicious. His lordship was studying her closely. She felt uncomfortable meeting his gaze, but it was equally unnerving trying to find something innocuous to look at. Her immediate field of view seemed very full of large, disturbing, male. She settled upon his neckcloth and attempted to regard it tranquilly.
‘You are a very contained person, are you not?’ Startled, she nodded, the neckcloth and its intricate folds forgotten. ‘You sit very still, you occupy your own space and do not intrude into that of other people. You communicate with your voice and with the force of your argument, not with touch, or teasing or cajoling.’
‘Yes. That is appropriate to my role in life.’ That stillness and self-control had been hard-won, but necessary.
‘But not to your new one. You are to become a creature of the senses—all five of them. You want to touch silks and skin. You want to taste champagne and kisses. Your eyes will long for luxury, your ears for flattery, you will want to move within clouds of scent from lavish flowers and from exotic perfume. You will talk with your hands, with your eyes, with your laughter. Instinct will appear to dominate over thought.’
‘Appear?’ She felt breathless, her mind reeling from thoughts of silk, skin, kisses, perfume.
‘Underneath you will be thinking very hard indeed, because you will be acting, and the woman you are portraying will be thinking hard too. She is not a heedless flirt, she is a determined adventuress.’ He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. ‘Unless we can release the inner hedonist in you.’
‘I am not sure I have one,’ Jessica confessed. Hedonism required money, time and self-indulgence. The first two she could not afford, the third she dare not permit. Until now.
‘In that case we will take one sense at a time and work on it. Which shall we start with? Not taste, for you have just had your supper, and not smell, because this fire seems intent on smoking. I shall have to think about hearing a little. Sight—or touch, Jessica?’
‘You choose.’ She threw the question back as fast as if this were a ball game and the ball red hot.
‘Oh, no. You must also learn to be demanding and capricious. You will always be the one to choose, whatever the question.’
Sight sounded safest. It was probably the one he expected her to say. ‘Touch,’ she decided, her eyes meeting his defiantly.
* * *
He had been sure she would decide upon sight, an apparently safe sense, although he was having ideas about that. Inwardly Gareth gave Miss Gifford points for courage.
‘Close your eyes.’ She stiffened immediately, her fingers curling tight around the arms of the chair. ‘Do you not trust me, Jessica? We are not going to get very far with this if you do not.’
Clear green eyes looked into his. For long seconds he watched her thinking. ‘Yes,’ she decided finally, her mouth quirking into a rueful smile. ‘Although quite what I trust you to do I am not certain.’ The long lashes that contrasted so piquantly with her tightly bound hair lowered, feathering her cheeks and she waited, blind, outwardly tranquil. Except for her death grip on the leather arms.
‘Stroke the arms of the chair,’ Gareth said, keeping his voice low. A frown line appeared between her brows, then she nodded and relaxed her fingers. ‘Tell me what you feel.’
‘It is smooth, warm from where my hands have been.’ She felt further down. ‘Cool here. It feels strong. Somehow I can tell it is thick.’ He waited while she explored further. ‘It is smoother here, where hands have rubbed; I can feel the grain lower down.’
Gareth felt in his pocket and pulled out the clean linen handkerchief his valet had placed there that morning. On the table beside him was a sample of heavy silk Maude had forgotten last time she had sat in this room. He leaned over and dropped both pieces of fabric into Jessica’s lap. ‘And these?’
