London's Last True Scoundrel by Christina Brooke Page B

was so large that it all but swallowed hers. The effect was electrifying; she felt it all the way down her spine.
    She started, pulled away.
    “I—I’d better see to dinner.” Her tone was all fluttery and breathless. Ugh. She could have kicked herself for sounding like such a dunce.
    He gave her a smile so full of amused understanding that she regretted her former vow to remain civil to him.
    With a scowl, she hurried away to the kitchens.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    By virtue of judicious dousing with cold water, Davenport sobered up the brothers deVere enough to sit down to dine with their sister and guest.
    Honey had been astonished at Tom and Benedict’s easy acceptance of Davenport after he’d trounced them. For his part, Davenport soon saw that her brothers weren’t quite as bad as their earlier behavior might have suggested. Once they were a few degrees more sober, they admitted the impropriety of their behavior.
    It was clear, however, that they did not intend to change their ways for their sister and would find any means they could to be rid of her.
    That finally decided Davenport, had he needed persuasion in the matter, to abide by Honey’s wishes and keep their departure on the morrow secret.
    By the time Honey had retired to bed, the deVere brothers were well on their way to oblivion once more. They wouldn’t wake before noon, he’d wager. By then, he and Honey would be long gone.
    The surly manservant had shown Davenport to his room with bad grace, informing him that if he wanted something in the night not to bother calling, for there was no one but the mistress to hear him in this wing. With a belligerent stare at the broken bellpull as if daring it to resurrect itself, Hodgins stomped out, slamming the door behind him.
    Davenport looked around. If the bedchamber they’d chosen for him was the best they had, he shuddered to think of the state the rest of the house must be in.
    Plaster had cracked and fallen away in some places; curtains and hangings that once might have been green were moth-eaten and faded to the color of sludge. Dust lay thick on every surface, gathering in the grooves of the intricate, heavy carving on the bedposts. The canopy above his head bore so many holes it resembled a cobweb.
    He lay on the most uncomfortable mattress he’d ever had the displeasure to encounter—and that was saying something for a man who’d been dumped in a barn the night before.
    It didn’t help that he couldn’t stop thinking about Honey and the one promise he’d refused to make. He didn’t believe in cloaking his wicked intentions in virtue. She had to know he’d do everything he could to seduce her on the way to Town.
    She’d informed him loftily that her maid would travel with her, for propriety’s sake. If the maid in question was the redoubtable Trixie, he foresaw few problems there.
    His body pulsed in anticipation. Honey, with her toplofty manner and her tightly wound virtue. She was a challenge, and the uncertainty of success merely added spice to the chase.
    Fantasies of a rocking carriage and a pliant Honey danced through his head.
    He smiled into the darkness. Who needed sleep?
    There was a loud, splitting crack.
    Then the world fell in on top of him.
    *   *   *
    Hilary couldn’t sleep. She’d tried warm milk, counting sheep, reciting the litany of social rules she’d instructed her students to repeat by rote.
    Drat the man! Nothing worked when she could see his smiling face, those sensual lips telling her he would most definitely not promise to keep his hands off her person on the way to London.
    She recalled, all too vividly, the feel of those lips on hers, the warmth and hardness of him as his arm encircled her frozen body on that horse.
    What would it have been like to be married to such a man?
    Hilary shuddered to think of it. She’d wager he was a constant subject of gossip among the ton. With that cheerfully roving eye, he’d cut a swath through the ladies of London,