The Seduction of an Earl by Linda Rae Sande Page B

interested in modernizing, so there is much to do,” he remarked, avoiding a vegetable cart that had suddenly been pushed into the street. Although Hyde Park would not be crowded this time of the morning, the streets leading to it were teaming with carriages and carts and all manner of equipage and horses.
    “What else has to be done?” Hannah wondered, her face turning up to regard the earl’s profile. He was a truly handsome man, she thought. And not at all like the gentlemen she’d met at last Season’s balls. Gisborn was bronzed from the sun, his torso and shoulders shaped as if he performed manual labor. She wondered what he looked like without a shirt, wondered what it would be like to stroke skin that stretched over hardened muscle, to see him over the top of her as he moved to claim her virtue, to feel him enter her, thrust into her, bring her to ecstasy like Elizabeth described in such vivid detail.
    Henry shrugged and gave her a quick glance. “It is more a case of what doesn’t need to be done,” he answered finally. “I have some new cast iron plows on order. But I am thinking there must be a way to make one that will do the work of three or more, if I can just figure a way to mount the plows and have them pulled behind several draft horses. Then it would be possible for one man to plow ten or more acres a day.”
    She was thinking that being plowed once a day would suit her just fine if it was everything Elizabeth described. Cocking her head to one side, Hannah tried to imagine what Henry was describing. “Wouldn’t you have to be seated above the plows then? So you could drive the horses?”
    A costermonger selling oranges suddenly darted onto Oxford Street, forcing Henry to rein in the horse. The sudden jerk in the phaeton caused Hannah to shift dangerously on the bench. There was a moment when she seemed suspended in mid-air and might have been forced completely off the high perch. But Henry had his arm around her back in an instant, his hand pressed against the side of her waist and pulling her towards him. She let out a squeak of surprise and grabbed onto his thigh. And then blushed a bright pink as she quickly pulled her hand away to instead take purchase on the bench front.
    “I’ve got you,” Henry said calmly, although it took everything in his power to keep the horse reined in and her body on the bench seat. “Are you alright?” he asked then, fighting the urge to yell at the costermonger for his negligence.
    Hannah held her breath, the sensation of his arm and hand sending a startling jolt of something through her body just then. “I am fine. Truly. I ... I apologize. I should have been holding on,” she murmured.
    “No apology is necessary, my lady,” Henry countered, not removing his arm. “Especially since you have given me a rather brilliant idea.” This last was said in a quiet voice, as if he was suddenly deep in thought.
    Wondering what she had said or done to give him a brilliant idea, Hannah glanced in his direction and rather hoped the brilliant idea was something that could be done in a bed. She supposed she should ask him to remove his arm, but she found she rather liked it right where it was. When he suddenly turned to look at her, Hannah felt her face heating up again.
    “I believe I can make a plow that will do three furrows at a time,” Henry said, as if he was still deep in thought and having an epiphany at the same time. “Two shire horses and a seat on top of the yoke that houses the plows. And there would be the yoke for the horses ...” His eyebrows cocked as a grin settled on his face. And then he seemed to realize his arm was still around Hannah. “Oh, pardon me,” he said as he quickly removed it. He changed hands on the reins and then moved to take Hannah’s gloved hand and place it on the arm that had been around her back. “Just in case,” he said as he noticed Hannah’s questioning look.
    Hannah grinned, trying hard to put out of her mind the