Season For Desire by Theresa Romain

determined to be the opposite. “Perhaps someone stuck a poker in my ear, your ladyship,” Giles called. “Because I’m sure I can’t have heard you correctly. Did you really retract a threat?”
    “As it was only a threat against myself, you needn’t start frothing at the mouth with excitement, young man.” With a sniff, she turned back to Richard. “Sleigh bells would be . . . not horrible.”
    Richard placed a hand over his heart, his tanned features falling into the familiar lines of a smile. “It shall be my slogan from this moment forward,” he said. “‘Richard Rutherford: His decorating decisions are not horrible.’”
    “If you plan to set up shop in Ludgate Hill, Father, you’ll need a more persuasive slogan than that.”
    Lady Irving snapped her fingers in Giles’s direction. “Young Rutherford—yes, you, with that vulgar Irish hair of yours. If you want to chatter, you might as well make yourself useful by hanging up some more garland. But no fa-la-la-ing while you do it, or I’ll see to it you break your neck.”
     
     
    By the time Audrina located an ancient bottle of ink and a few quills in the pigeonhole of a writing desk, the drawing room had rearranged itself. The tea table was abandoned, the puzzle box winking like a forgotten gift. Lord and Lady Dudley had eased themselves onto a velvet-covered settee that, like every other piece of furniture in the room, bore the claw marks of canine enthusiasm.
    And Giles Rutherford stood atop a dark-upholstered side chair before the fireplace, hanging a bit of garland over the hands of a stone relief sculpture of an angel who already had a fistful of mistletoe to go with her smug smile.
    “Move the garland to the left,” said Lady Irving. “No, that’s too far. Back to the right again.”
    “He mustn’t cover up the mistletoe,” said Richard.
    “Go find yourself a sleigh bell to play with, Rutherford,” barked Lady Irving. “I’ll handle this.”
    “I’m going to fetch the dogs back from the stable,” decided Lady Dudley, rising with some effort.
    From his perch on the chair, Giles Rutherford grinned down at the clamor. A dimple carved itself into his right cheek, giving the hard lines of his face a soft place for the eyes to linger.
    Since he wasn’t looking anywhere near Audrina’s corner of the room, there was no harm in letting her eyes linger. And wander. And . . . and wonder. How did one get him to smile like that? He would have to admire a person first, she supposed; something he would never feel for Audrina after seeing her at her most shaken and low.
    When he stretched to loop the evergreen garland over the hand of the angel, his plain wool coat hitched up—revealing that, though his gray trousers were loose-fitting in the leg, they hugged the taut curve of his arse closely.
    Proper English ladies would no more look at a man in that way than they would visit the kitchens to learn how bread was made. Yet men looked at women in that way all the time. Evaluating them. Deciding whether they were worthy of desire.
    Was she?
    Llewellyn wanted only the money Audrina represented; her father only cared whether she reflected well on him. Here in Yorkshire, she was alone and pallid in the color of half mourning. Her fists were full of stained quills and a black vial of ink. Her hands were dirty.
    Maybe this was why every gluttonous gaze at Giles Rutherford came twinned with wariness. Because he had been self-possessed when she was drugged and sick and folded into a ball in a strange corridor. Because her father was helping him find a treasure he didn’t even believe in, when Audrina would be satisfied simply to have her life returned to normal.
    And, just a little, she resented him for not looking ridiculous atop that small wood-framed chair, his large boots almost covering the dark seat cushion. The drooping sprig of mistletoe fell from the angel’s hand, jostled by garland, and Giles picked it up from the mantel with careful