This Rake of Mine Read Free Page B

planted on her hips, her elbows jutting out.
    Now he was getting annoyed. She needn't look so put out. It wasn't like he'd actually kissed her. But that was a spinster for you. Only a lady who had avoided matrimony as long as she obviously had could hold such a look of outrage.
    "I know who you are," she was saying as she bent to the task of retrieving her fallen belongings. "You should be well and gone by now."
    So much for a polite welcome and an offer of tea and biscuits.
    Still, it wounded him that this lady, whom he'd never met, regarded him with such open disdain.
    Maybe it was the fact that he had always been partial to redheads, but maybe it was the fact that she also had a look of sharp-eyed intelligence about her.
    As he went to work picking up Arabella's belongings, her strained silence drove him to distraction. It was as if he could hear the crackle in her straight spine and ramrod shoulders.
    He decided to try again.
    "Hard to believe one chit requires so many hats and gowns," he said, hoping to ease the tension. "Perhaps a few less trips to the dressmakers and more lessons in decorum might have been in order." As he stacked up his niece's hatboxes, he thought he saw a slight flash in her eyes, as if she shared his unspoken opinion that Lady Arabella Tremont possessed more gowns than sense.
    "By the way," he said, taking her hint of a smile as a crack in her spinster's armor, "I didn't catch your name."
    She glanced over at him, her arched brow in perfect imitation of Miss Emery's glare. Even as she stared at him, he thought there was a sense of a brewing tempest between them, as if she were on pins and needles over such a simple thing as an introduction.
    Finally, she took a deep breath and offered the barest of introductions. "Miss Porter."
    By Jove, it was as if even that much were a great imposition.
    "Are you a teacher here?" he asked, hoping to engage the lady in even the merest hint of conversation. It had been a long time since a lady had even spoken to him.
    He received a curt nod in reply. So much for a polite exchange, he mused. Bending over to retrieve an upside-down valise, he asked, "And what do you teach?"
    "Decorum," came the clipped reply.
    Jack cringed. So much for his earlier remark about Arabella's need for additional lessons.
    Oh, yes, he'd made a muddle of all of this. He'd rather intimately tangled with (and if he was honest, contemplated kissing) a spinster who specialized in training young ladies to avoid such situations. And he'd insulted her capacity as a teacher.
    He could hear his brother now, casting it down upon him that he wasn't capable of venturing into any society without allowing his sinful nature to overtake the good sense he'd been given.
    Of course, Jack's more wicked senses would have said that the real sin was having a lady with Miss Porter's curves and tempting red hair trapped in this spinster's museum, especially now that she was bent over to catch up a ball of yarn and he had an excellent view of her rounded behind and a hint of her curved ankles…
    Oh, yes, it had been too long since he'd been in a lady's company, for even the mere sight of her ankles sent his imagination running wild.
    In the height of his rakish days, he might have been tempted to pull her into his arms and tell her that he found her hair divine, her breasts tempting, and her lips perfect for kissing. Then rather than let the lady protest, he'd prove his point by devouring those lips, stroking her breasts, and holding her so close he'd leave her with an intimate knowledge of the power a beautiful woman could wield over a man as imperfect as he.
    Stealing another glance at the prim and proper teacher, he had to imagine that if he undertook such a declaration, she'd go into a state of apoplexy that would be her undoing.
    And his.
    Demmit, it would take another ten, nay, fifteen years, to live down such a ruinous scene.
    She was in the midst of picking up the last of her belongings, tucking them into