Tessa Dare - The Wallflower Wager

Oh, you traitorous bird.

He flinched and ducked as the parrot swept overhead. “What the devil was that?”

“I can explain.”

I just don’t particularly want to.

“It’s a parrot,” she said. “My parrot.”

“Right. And who are you, again?”

“I . . . erm . . .” Her hands couldn’t decide where to be. They merely displayed the panicked desire to be anywhere else.

Water dripped from some hard, slick part of his body, counting out the beats of her mortification.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

“I’m Lady Penelope Campion.”

Lady Penelope Campion.

The Lady Penelope Campion?

Gabe tilted his head to one side, shaking the last bit of bathwater from his ear. He could not have heard her correctly. Surely she meant to say she was a servant in the house of Lady Penelope Campion.

“You can’t be Lady Penelope.”

“I can’t?”

“No. Lady Penelope is a spinster who lives alone with dozens of cats.”

“Not dozens ,” she said. “A touch over one dozen at the moment, but that’s only because it’s springtime. Kitten season, you know.”

No, he didn’t know. None of this made any sense whatsoever.

Lady Penelope Campion was the main reason he’d acquired this property. New-money families would pay outrageous amounts to live next door to a lady, even if said lady was an unappealing spinster.

How on earth was this woman a spinster? She was an earl’s daughter, surely possessed of a large dowry. If none of the title-hungry, debt-ridden layabouts in Mayfair had seen fit to propose marriage, simple logic dictated there must be something remarkably off-putting about her. An unbearably grating voice, perhaps. A snaggletooth, or poor personal hygiene.

But she displayed none of those features. She was young and pretty, with no detectable odor. Her teeth were a string of pearls, and she had a voice like sunshine. There was nothing off-putting about her whatsoever. She was . . . on-putting, in every way.

Good God, he was going to sell this house for a bloody fortune.

Assuming the lady wasn’t ruined, of course.

At her level of society, being ruined didn’t take much. Strictly as a random example, she could be ruined by being found alone and scarcely clothed in the bedchamber of the aristocracy’s most detested, and currently most naked, villain.

“You need to leave,” he said. “At once.”

“I can’t. Not before retrieving—”

“Wait here. I’m going to dress, and then I’ll see you home. Discreetly.”

“But—”

“No argument,” he growled.

Gabe had clawed and climbed his way out of the gutters, using the ruined aristocrats of London as stepping-stones along his way. But he hadn’t forgotten where he came from. He’d learned how to talk and walk among people who would think themselves his betters. But that lowborn street urchin still lived within him—including the rough cutpurse voice that had genteel ladies clutching their reticules. When he chose to use that voice, it seldom went unheeded.

Lady Penelope Campion wasn’t paying attention at all.

Her gaze was focused on something behind him, over his shoulder. He instinctively began to turn his head.

“Stop,” she said with perfect calm. “Don’t move.”

He heard a strange flutter, and in the next moment it happened.

A bird landed on his shoulder. A parrot, she’d said? The creature’s toes prickled along his skin. His muscle twitched with the urge to shrug it off.

“No, don’t,” she said. “I’ll come for her.”

Usually, Gabe would balk at taking orders from a lady—or from anyone else. However, this was a decidedly unusual situation.

“Pretty girl,” the bird squawked.

Gabe set his jaw. Do you think I haven’t noticed that, you cursed pigeon with pretensions?

She crept toward him, padding noiselessly over the carpet, step by silent step. And as she came, sweet words fell from her lips like drops of raw honey.

“That’s it, darling,” she murmured.

The fine hairs on the back of his neck lifted.

“Stay . . . right . . . there.”

The hairs on his arms lifted, too.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Just like that.”

Now she had the hairs on his calves involved. Damn it, he had too many hairs. By the end of this they would all be standing at attention.

Along with other parts of him.

“Don’t stir,” she said.

He couldn’t speak for the parrot, but Gabe was doing some stirring. One part of him had a mind of its own, especially when it came to beautiful women in translucent chemises. He hadn’t lain with a woman in some time, but his body hadn’t forgotten how.

He couldn’t help himself. He stole a glance at her face. Just a half-second’s view. Not long enough to pore over every detail of her features. In fact, he didn’t get any further than her lips. Lips as lush as petals, painted in soft, tender pink.

She was so close now. Near enough that when he breathed, he inhaled a lungful of her scent. She smelled delicious. A faint hunger rose in his chest.

“I know you’re feeling lost. And not a little frightened. You miss her terribly, don’t you? But I’m here, darling. I’m here.”

Her words sent a strange ache spreading from his teeth to his toes. A painful awareness of all his hollow, empty places.

“Come home with me,” she whispered. “And we’ll sort out the rest together.”

He couldn’t take any more of this. “For God’s sake, get the damned thing off me.”

At last, she collected the feathered beast. “There we are.” Cradling it in her arms, she carried the parrot to its birdcage and tucked it within.

Gabe exhaled with relief.

“She’d settle more if I covered her cage,” his beautiful intruder said. “I don’t suppose you have a towel?”

He glanced at the linen slung about his hips. “How badly do you want it?”

Her cheeks flushed. “Never mind. I’ll be going.”

“I’m going to walk you.”

“Truly, you needn’t do that. It’s only next door. No more than twenty paces down the street.”

“That’s twenty paces too many.”

Gabe might not operate by polite society’s rules, but he understood them sufficiently to know this situation violated at least seventeen of them. And anything that damaged her reputation would decrease the profit he stood to collect on this house.

Until he sold this property, her worth was intertwined with his.

“You’re no doubt accustomed to having your way, Your Ladyship. But I’ve ruined enough lords, baronets, knights, and gentlemen to fill the whole of Bloom Square.” He arched an eyebrow. “Believe me when I say, you’ve met your match.”

Penny watched in silence as the Gabriel Duke turned and stalked to his dressing room.

Then she melted into a quivering pool on the floor.

Heavens.

He’d left the door ajar. As his towel dropped to the floor, she caught a glimpse of taut, muscled backside before tearing her gaze away.

Oh Lord oh Lord oh Lord.

Once she’d latched and relatched Delilah’s cage for good measure, Penny stood and attempted to piece herself back together.

She glanced at her dressing gown. The faded toile print was years behind the fashion, and the ends of the sash were hopelessly frayed—the casualty of many a playful kitten’s swipe. And her hair . . . Oh, she could only imagine the state of her hair after this adventure.

She peered into the dressing-table mirror. Worse than she’d feared. Her plait made Delilah’s ruffled crest look sleek. Penny quickly unknotted the bit of muslin around her braid and combed her hair with her fingers before rebraiding it and tying off the end.