and she raised her head and smiled in the direction of his voice.
‘Very well.’ She dropped the silk into her lap and concentrated on touching the linen. ‘Expensive, very fine Irish linen. I imagine one could see through it. But a strong, masculine feel.’ Her fingers found the white-ork monogram in the corner and rubbed gently. ‘Excellent work.’
‘And the other?’ He found he could not take his eyes off her face.
‘The silk? Beautiful. A dress weight, expensive again. I imagine it is coloured, although I have no idea why.’ She ran it through her fingers and sighed. ‘It is alive.’
‘Which would you prefer to wear?’ Gareth asked. Jessica frowned. She was thinking too much still, not feeling. ‘Next to your skin?’ he added outrageously, intent on shocking an instinctive reaction out of her.
Jessica gave a little gasp at his effrontery, but answered, as he had hoped, without reflection. ‘The silk. Utterly impractical, but like bathing in warm oil. See how it slides and slithers.’ Eyes still closed, she held it out to him and he took it, warm from her hands, and let it slip through his fingers. It was no longer possible, for some reason, to sit still. Gareth got to his feet, standing in front of the chair so close their toes nearly touched.
‘Will you stand up, Jessica?’
Obedient, she did as he asked. ‘You are standing very near.’ It was a matter-of-fact observation but he could sense the reserve behind it.
‘How can you tell?’
‘Your voice. And I can feel your—’ She swallowed, making the chaste muslin fichu veiling her throat move. ‘Your heat.’
Heat? Gareth felt suddenly as though he was burning up, the colour in his cheeks as high as that on Jessica’s. He dragged air down into his lungs and kept his voice steady. ‘Touch me.’ It might have been steady—he could do nothing about the huskiness.
‘What!’ Her eyes flew open and she took a half-step back until the edge of the chair hit the back of her knees.
‘Jessica, I am not asking you to make love to me…’
‘Good!’ She looked deliciously flustered.
‘But the new you is going to touch men all the time,’ Gareth explained, in haste before one of Miss Gifford’s clenched hands found his ear. ‘It will be part of your charm, one of your weapons. The slightest, fleeting touches. A caress with your fingertips on a sleeve, a flick to remove an imaginary piece of lint from a lapel, a handshake held just a fraction too long. You must be completely relaxed touching a man.’
‘I see.’ She narrowed her eyes at him, still suspicious. ‘I think.’
‘You think too much Jessica, just feel.’
‘Hmm.’ She put her head on one side, reminding him irresistibly of an inquisitive robin who has just spotted a worm. ‘Like this?’ She reached up and brushed her fingertips across his lapel, her movement wafting a faint scent of Castile soap and warm woman to his nostrils.
‘Yes. Just like that. Now, find some other ways.’
There was a glint of mischief in her eyes now and she caught her lower lip in her teeth for a moment. The heat flooded Gareth again, this time sharply focused in his groin. If his reaction to an inexpert touch from Miss Gifford, dressed like a governess, was this, what effect was she going to have in her new guise?
‘I need to find excuses to touch, and they should be so brief that the man concerned will not know if they are an accident, an impulse—or a message. An invitation, even.’ She nodded to herself, then, smiling, raised her hand and brought it up to pat her fichu into order, managing as she did so to brush the back of her fingers against his. The tingle reached right up his arm. ‘Like that?’
‘Perfect, Jessica.’
‘But I need to hold your eyes as I do it, I think, to make you even more unsure of my intentions. You must not know whether I meant to touch you or not.’ The limpid green gaze held nothing but the faintest question and then she was smiling again, a polite social smile.
‘Excellent,’ Gareth managed, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. True, he had spent a decidedly fraught twenty-four hours, but that was no excuse for feeling like a randy eighteen-year-old simply because he was toe to toe with a buttoned-up governess.
‘Oh!’ She was peering up at him now. ‘My lord, I do believe there is a money spider in your hair.’ Jessica stood on tiptoe, reached and flicked lightly at the side of his head, her fingers just skimming his temple before they ruffled into his hair. This time the tingle went straight down to the base of his spine with predictable results. ‘There.’ She held up slender fingers for him to see the tiny red dot that was swinging from them. ‘What luck for me.’
There was a faint ink mark on her forefinger. It would need work with a pumice stone—seductresses did not have ink blots. Jessica blew softly and the red dot landed on his lapel and vanished into his neck cloth. This one does… ‘You gave it back.’
‘We can share it—I expect we are going to need all the luck we can get to pull this off.’
‘You have not changed your mind?’
The half-hidden seductress vanished to be replaced with the governess, her expression severe. ‘I said I would do it—I do not go back on my word.’
‘No.’ Gareth studied her straight back, raised chin, determined expression. ‘I can see that.’
‘My lord. Her Ser…’ There was a muffled exchange from the hall. ‘I beg your pardon, Lady Sebastian Ravenhurst and Lady Dereham are here. I explained that you were at breakfast, my lord, but—’
‘Show them in, Jordan, bring more cups.’ Resigned to yet another turbulent breakfast Gareth pushed back his chair and got to his feet as his cousin Bel and her sister-in-law Eva, Grand Duchess of Maubourg, swept into the room in a flurry of flounces. At the other end of the table Jessica stood too, schooling her knees not to knock together. These two elegant, assured, sophisticated matrons would take one look at her and laugh Gareth’s plan to scorn.
‘Gareth, we came at once, Maude said things have reached a crisis.’
‘Thank you, Bel.’
So that would be his cousin, Lady Dereham. A tall brunette, she kissed him on the cheek, and stood aside to make room for an equally tall, rather more statuesque brunette whose deportment could have been used as a model of perfection. The Grand Duchess.
‘Gareth, you poor man. Lord Pangbourne appears to have become quite irrational, even allowing for Maude’s tendency for the dramatic.’ Her English accent was perfect, her gaze direct. ‘Your message was cryptic, but we will do our very best to help.’
‘Then allow me to introduce Miss Gifford, who has agreed to play the critical role in this scheme.’ Both ladies turned and Jessica sank down into her best court curtsy. She knew how to do it in theory, but she had never had to do it in practice. It was murder on the thigh muscles, she discovered, rising with relief as the Grand Duchess stepped forward and caught her hand in her own kid-encased one.
‘Your Serene Highness…’
‘Lady
