One Good Earl Deserves a Lover

Her big blue eyes were trained on him again. “Do you know why he hasn’t attempted to seduce me?”

“No.” Again, sainthood seemed the only logical answer.

“You needn’t feel that you must protect me from the truth.”

“I don’t.” Except he did. He didn’t want her to know the truth of his own thoughts. Their sordid nature.

“It’s because I am odd.” And then she looked up at him with those enormous blue eyes, and said, “I can’t help it.”

God help him, he wanted to kiss her senseless, odd or not. He wanted to kiss her senseless because she was odd.

“Pippa—” he said, knowing he shouldn’t speak.

She cut him off. “Don’t tell me it’s not true. I know it is. I’m strange.”

“You are.”

Her brows knit together. “Well, you don’t have to tell me it is true either.”

He couldn’t help it. He smiled. “It is not a bad thing.”

She looked at him as though it was he—and not she—who was mad. “Of course it is.”

“No. It’s not.”

“You’re a good man.”

He was nothing of the sort. And there were several key parts of his body that wanted to prove that to her. One of them in particular.

“It’s fine that he is not interested in seducing me,” she said, “but it cannot go on forever.”

“Perhaps he is trying to be a gentleman.”

She did not believe it. “That hasn’t stopped Tottenham.”

A thread of fire shot through him. “Tottenham has attempted to seduce you?” He’d murder him, next prime minister or not.

She looked at him as though he’d sprouted a second head. “No. Why would Tottenham seduce me?”

“You said it.”

“No. I said he’d tried to seduce Olivia.”

She hadn’t said any such thing, but he let it go.

“Not tried to,” she pressed on, “did. Has done.” She closed her eyes. “I’m the only Marbury daughter who has not been seduced.”

He could rectify this tragic wrong.

Except he couldn’t.

She looked up at him. “Can you believe it?”

He did not know what to say. So he said nothing.

“You can, I see.” She took a deep breath. “This is why I required your help from the beginning, Mr. Cross. I need you to show me how to do it.”

Yes.

He swallowed back the word. Surely he was misunderstanding. “How to do what?”

She sighed, frustrated. “How to attract him.”

“Whom?”

“Are you even listening? Castleton!” She turned away, heading for the nearest table, where a roulette wheel stood quiet in its thick oak seat. She spoke to the wheel. “I didn’t know that he should be attempting to seduce me now. Before our wedding. I didn’t know that was a part of it.”

“It’s not. He shouldn’t be doing any such thing.”

“Well, you’ve clearly never been engaged because it seems that this is precisely the kind of thing that happens between to-be-married couples. I thought I had two weeks. Apparently, I don’t.”

There was a roar in his ears that made it difficult to understand her, but when she turned to face him again, shoulders back, as though she were about to do battle, he knew he was done for. “My research must begin immediately.”

He was being punished. That was the only explanation.

“I need someone”—she paused, then reframed the statement—“I need you to teach me how to be normal.”

What a travesty that would be.

“Normal.”

“Yes. Normal.” She lifted her hands helplessly. “I realize now that my original request—for the experience of ruination?” she asked as though he might have somehow forgotten the request in question. As though he might ever forget it. He nodded, nonetheless. “Well, I realize now that it is not at all a strange request.”

“It’s not?”

She smiled. “No. Indeed. In fact, it seems that there are plenty of women in London who fully experience those things that I am interested in before their wedding night—including my sisters. That bit is between us, I hope?”

Finally, a question to which he knew the reply. “Of course.”

She was already moving on. “You see, I thought I would require a certain amount of knowledge on the night in question because Lord Castleton might not have the knowledge himself. But now, I realize . . . well . . . I require it because it’s ordinary.”

“It’s ordinary.”

She tilted her head and considered him curiously. “You do a great deal of repeating me, Mr. Cross.”

Because listening to her was like learning a second language. Arabic. Or Hindi.

She was still talking. “It’s ordinary. After all, if Olivia has it, and Lord Tottenham is quite the gentleman, well then, many must have it, don’t you think?”

“It.”

“Knowledge of the inner workings of the marital . . .” She hesitated. “Process.”

He took a long breath and let it out. “I’m still not certain why you need a prostitute to teach you such . . . workings.”

“It’s no different, really. I continue to require a research partner. Only, it seems now I require research on normalcy. I need to know how it is that ordinary females behave. I need help. Rather urgently. Since you refused, Miss Tasser will do.”

She was killing him. Slowly. Painfully.