cold body went hot at the words, the sound of her name on his lips, the tickle of his breath at her ear. It was a most inappropriate comment made at a most inappropriate time in a most inappropriate place. Not surprising considering how the evening had gone. It fit perfectly with everything else that had occurred: she’d been wagered and lost in a card game by the one man her mother had trusted to look out for her, her plans for freedom from the count were now entirely undermined and her fate was in the hands of a stranger. What else could go wrong? What else was there to go wrong?
The room was sumptuous. Perhaps it was safe to assume that the worst had happened. Perhaps her luck was starting to change. His rooms were of the finest quality: furniture upholstered in silk, long curtains with luxurious folds draped the windows like a woman’s ball gown where the rooms looked out over the canal. From here, there was a view of the chamber beyond with its enormous bed strewn with pillows. Even at a distance, that room exuded decadence, a not-so-subtle reminder that what had started this night might still very well finish it. Sex was a powerful weapon when used correctly. Gianna hoped she knew enough to wield it. She shivered and drew the blanket tighter around her.
‘Let’s get you into a bath. Come with me.’ He led her into the bedroom and through a door into the most incredible room she’d ever seen, a room entirely given over to the function of bathing. There was a porcelain tub rooted to the floor. He bent over the handles and turned them, water flowed. Steam rose.
‘Oh.’ She gasped. She’d heard of such features before, but they were non-existent at the count’s house. This was positively divine. The Englishman moved about, laying out plush white towels and a thick bar of milled soap, so intricately carved she almost didn’t want to use it and destroy its perfection.
His hands were at the back of her gown before she realised it. ‘Let’s get you out of this. What a mess.’
There was no sense protesting. She couldn’t possibly take it off by herself. Gianna let his fingers work the long row of tiny pearl buttons at her back. His touch was swift, professional and yet beneath that layer of competence, there was a sensually compelling undertone that suggested his hands would feel good on her skin. Surely that boded well for the next level of her plan?
‘It took my maid twenty minutes to do up the buttons. You’ve done this before.’ Gianna tried for levity, anything to keep her mind off the fact that she was alone in a hotel room with a man she didn’t know and she was there for the express purpose of being bedded by him. Never mind he’d tried to let her go. She’d refused. He would think that refusal was an acceptance of another sort...
He laughed, finishing the last of the buttons low on her spine. ‘Let’s just say you aren’t the first woman I’ve undressed, wet or otherwise.’
She supposed she’d deserved that with her leading question. The gown fell open. She could feel his gaze on her back, a sensation that was provocatively possessive and not without its own thrill. ‘Stand still,’ he murmured at her ear. ‘I’ll have to use my knife.’
His knife? That galvanised her into action. Gianna spun away from him, clutching her dress to her, her eyes rapidly scanning the room for a possible weapon, all sense of flirting, of wanting to lure him with sugar evaporating in the wake of self-preservation. ‘There is no need for knives, I assure you.’ She tried her best calming tones, the tones she used to reason with the count when he was irrational—which was nearly always. Surely she could handle one Englishman.
Gianna snatched up a ewer, brandishing it in self-defence as she edged towards the door. A knife flashed in his hand from some secret place on his person and she knew she was right to have gone on the defensive. Good lord, he’d been armed all along! What sort of man carried a weapon to a party? She’d traded drowning in the canal for being stabbed by a madman in hotel room, who was laughing.
The Englishman held out his arms in a gesture of peace, apparently having found great humour in the situation. ‘Put down the ewer, Gianna. The knife is for the laces. They’re in knots. I’m afraid there’s no saving them. Now, turn around and let me at them. Your bath is ready and you’re shaking.’
Hot embarrassment crept up her cheeks. She’d completely overreacted. But what else was she to think? It was easier to turn around than to let him see her blush. She’d let herself look foolish. ‘You find this funny?’ she scolded. She felt the slice of a sure blade through the sodden laces of her corset, felt the tight garment slide away, felt her body breathe, set free.
His hands closed over the caps of her shoulders, warm and firm against her chilled skin. ‘I think it’s funny that you believe I would go to all the trouble of dragging you out of the canal just to stab you a half hour later in my room.’ His fingers flexed gently against her skin, his mouth close to her ear. ‘What holds no humour for me is why a beautiful woman would have reason to think a man would do that.’
His body was just inches from hers. She could feel the heat of him through his wet clothes, feel the strength of him—it was there in the low rumble of his words, in the remembrance of the arm that had brought her to the water’s surface. This was a very different man than the count. She’d known it at the palazzo, but had not fully understood what it meant until now.
Where the count thrived on cruelty and force, this man did not. However, that mere discrepancy did not make him a saint. She had to be careful not to ascribe heroic attributes to him just because he’d dragged her out of the canal and hadn’t ravished her yet. He was still a gambler and he was a still a rogue—a rogue who was growing more appealing by the moment.
A shiver of a different sort swept through Gianna. She knew danger when she encountered it and it was standing right behind her. It wasn’t the knife in his hand that made him dangerous, it was his manners, his temptations.
He stepped back, releasing her. ‘Take your bath.’
Gianna turned to face him. He’d saved her tonight. He’d looked after her. How long had it been since anyone had done that? He was a complete stranger, someone who didn’t have to do any of those things and yet he had. She didn’t even know his name. She stretched a hand out. ‘You have my thanks, ah...?’ She waited for him to fill in the space left by her words.
A small smile twitched on his lips as he took her hand. ‘Are you asking me my name? It’s Nolan Gray.’
‘I’m trying to thank you, Mr Gray.’ She couldn’t resist a smile of her own, something warm unfurling in her stomach. She imagined he rather regularly had that effect on women. Once more she counselled caution. She didn’t want to like him. She just needed him to get through the next four weeks.
* * *
He just had to get through the night. He had a naked woman in his tub and no idea what to do with her, a most novel situation to be sure. Usually he knew exactly what to do with a naked woman in the tub, out of the tub, on the bed, off the bed, against the wall, out on the balcony with the moon overhead. He had to stop, this was starting to sound like an erotic prepositional exercise or bad poetry. Too bad his tutors had not aspired to such creative lengths—he might have done better in school.
Nolan stripped out of his clothes at last, glad to be rid of the damp and stench of the canal. He towelled dry his hair and slipped into his banyan, feeling warmer, cleaner already, but that raised another point of concern. What was she going to wear? Her gown was beyond use, wet and ruined. It was past midnight. There were no shops open and he didn’t know
