A Warriner To Seduce Her. Virginia Heath

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СКАЧАТЬ I find your frankness refreshing. Like you I am from the north—deepest, darkest, dankest Nottinghamshire to be exact—my name is Jake Warriner and I loathe Almack’s, too.’

      She leaned closer again, her pretty face tilted to one side and her palm heating his through the thin fabric of her evening gloves. Awareness. Chemistry. Mutual attraction. Jake knew the signs too well to mistake them for anything else. He had the urge to kiss her. An urge which had nothing to do with Crispin Rowley and everything to do with his bewitching niece. ‘Is it obvious I loathe it, Mr Warriner, only I have been trying exceedingly hard to appear as if I don’t?’

      ‘To me it is obvious, but then again, just like you I am loitering in the alcove and avoiding the sad crush. It hardly makes me a genius to have seen a kindred spirit.’

      She gracefully disentangled his grip from hers. ‘When you put it like that, I suppose it doesn’t. Why do you loathe it?’

      An easy question to answer with complete honesty for once. ‘This place, the stifling, petty rules and the callous way an elite few decide who is worthy to be allowed in, grates on me. I hate the power those few have over the others. If they take to you, you are guaranteed the best invitations of the Season. If they don’t, well...’ He left the implication to settle. ‘It all strikes me as grossly unfair.’

      ‘Those poor sparrows will be devastated by the cut. Some might never get over it.’

      ‘But I get the feeling you won’t be devastated?’ Jake had a talent for reading people. Each tiny nuance and expression told more truth than lips usually did and Miss Blunt did not look impressed with being here.

      She sighed and shrugged again, something she did a great deal and which made his eyes want to wander down to where her neckline met flesh. Soft, perfumed, pert, female flesh. Jake resisted—but only just. ‘Is it terrible that I hope they thoroughly disapprove of me, then I will be spared the effort of coming here again? Or of receiving the best invitations of the Season. I fear my uncle has lined up a whole host of entertainments for me to attend, none of which I suspect I shall find entertaining in the slightest.’

      ‘Not every soirée is as dull and constrained as Almack’s.’

      ‘Perhaps. But being paraded around town like meat on the butcher’s board is not what I had in mind when I agreed to this visit.’

      ‘It’s just a visit, then?’ Clearly Miss Blunt was not aware of the fact Uncle Crispin was intent on marrying her off.

      ‘Yes. A month. Then I shall return to Cumbria where I belong. Perhaps two at the most, although after tonight I sincerely doubt I’ll manage two. It has been less than a week and I already find London society suffocating. I find I am fiercely wedded to my freedom, you see, while here it is stifled. At home, I can walk outdoors where and when I please, say what I think, do what I want.’ Clearly Fennimore’s intelligence was lacking, as Miss Blunt was even less of a convent miss than she was an eager debutante. ‘Here I have chaperons and all these rules I have to adhere to.’

      ‘Such as?’

      ‘Where to start? How to dress, how to walk. The correct way to curtsy to a duchess, which is I now know quite different from the way one curtsies to a countess or a queen. Who I should speak to, who I shouldn’t, how to behave when dancing.’ Another put-upon sigh. ‘I was promised I would have an adventure and so far it has been anything but. However, at least I was dragged here by my family and had no idea it would be this awful. What’s your excuse? Seeing that you loathe the place.’

      ‘I, too, was dragged here, in a manner of speaking.’ To do his duty, a duty he was now very much looking forward to doing. He gave in to the urge to touch her again and scandalously allowed his thumb to caress the centre of her palm where it rested among the folds of her skirt. Her eyes dropped to the spot. Stared. When her lush lips parted slightly he raised her gloved hand almost to his lips. He gazed up at her with the hooded eyes women always found appealing, knowing the deep blue soulful depths were his best feature. ‘Although now I am very pleased I was. Else I never would have met such a rare bird of paradise in this tiresome cage full of sparrows.’

      If he said so himself, Jake was rather pleased with the symbolism even if the words themselves were a tad triter than he would have liked. But a seduction was a seduction and there was no point in beating around the bush. The rakish smile he bestowed upon her was second nature. It suggested he had a poetic heart beneath the cynical irony she found so amusing. He had certainly amused her enough that she had happily confided in him. A total stranger. In his vast wealth of experience, the sensible ladies adored both a man who made them smile and one with romantic sensibilities who listened to them. A deadly combination which had served him well since the day he had turned sixteen. Being used to forthright and charmless northern men, she would doubtless find his easy, open manner disarming.

      Her eyes locked with his.

      Narrowed.

      And before he could kiss her hand, she snatched it away.

      ‘Are you flirting with me, Mr Warriner?’

      ‘I would certainly like to, Miss Blunt.’ His voice was low and silky, the practised tone in a timbre he knew to be his most seductive. ‘Do you mind?’

      ‘I most certainly do.’ Both gloved hands came to rest imperiously on her hips, giving her more of the appearance of a schoolmistress than an intriguing temptress. ‘I have remained lost these past thirty minutes to avoid such nonsense.’

      ‘Ah—in the main here at Almack’s it is reliably all nonsense, but that is because the gentlemen over at the auction block are all shamelessly on the market for a wife. It is contrived and insincere. Here in the alcove—like you—I was content to hide and had no plans to flirt with anyone until fate introduced us.’ Had he not been here at Lord Fennimore’s bequest and had she not been Miss Blunt, the woman he had been sent here to seduce, he still would have wanted to flirt with her without the interference of fate. There was something about her which called to him. ‘Do you believe in fate, Miss Blunt?’

      ‘Good lord! Did you really just say that?’ Her brows furrowed. ‘Do I look as green as grass, Mr Warriner?’ She was positively glaring down her nose at him in bemused outrage. And if he was not mistaken it was tinged with real outrage rather than the feigned outrage he usually encountered when he turned on the charm. Her green eyes hardened; her honey brow furrowed slightly. Tiny, physical nuances that could not be faked. There was no hint of interest on her face—only disbelief. Making him feel like a fool for flirting. That made him uncomfortable because it was so...so...unheard of. He always flirted as a matter of course and had never once felt foolish in doing so. But Miss Blunt-by-Name-and-Nature seemed to see right through him to the hard kernel of insincerity buried deep in his chest which he had never noticed before. Now that he had—well, frankly, he felt queasy. At a loss for charming words for once, Jake simply stared at her and she began to giggle at his shocked expression.

      ‘Do such hackneyed and slapdash endearments garner you much success with the ladies, Mr Warriner?’

      ‘While the prose might have been slapdash, the sentiment was not.’ He could save this. He was a master in the art of seduction. A maestro. ‘But usually I am not so overawed by the beauty of my companion that my tongue becomes twisted.’ Once again the rote phrases sounded hollow and unoriginal, making Jake want to wince at his own crassness. What the devil was wrong with him? ‘In the few short minutes I have spent in your company, Miss Blunt, you have made a great impression on me and—’

      ‘Oh, goodness.’ She snorted and covered the offending СКАЧАТЬ