Seven Secrets of Seduction by Anne Mallory

to keep her going.
    She traced the gilded lettering and turned the page.

Chapter 4
    Secret #3: Pull forth or use the unexpected. Create havoc and relish in the chaos. Put her off guard even if she is on guard at the same time.
    The Seven Secrets of Seduction
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    H er cheeks were still blazing hours later, the book tucked under first one dress, then two, then hidden as deep within the bowels of her cracked armoire as it was possible to go.
    And still she could hear it softly crooning. Inviting her to uncover it once more and discover what else lay within.
    No monk had created that illumination. Not something that contained such vivid descriptions and pictures. She hadn’t even realized some of those things were possible.
    Come. Open me.
    Perhaps if she were to stand the armoire on top of it, it would muffle the call.
    Did a woman really…really do that type of thing to a man? And he in return? Was that what The SevenSecrets of Seduction had truly meant by kneeling to pay one’s tribute? She’d always thought it was a veiled reference to worshipping beauty or nature or some such thing.
    Not an allusion to how one might physically pay tribute. The image of it rose in her mind, the viscount’s dark eyes looking down at her in concupiscence. She hadn’t even known what the word “concupiscence” meant , had never even seen the word, until the illumination had shown her.
    To imagine the ardent desire searing from his eyes. At her.
    She shot off her bed, tripping on her flimsy rug and catching the edge of her dented oak dressing table just in time to save herself from a face-first landing on the frigid boards.
    She laughed nervously. She’d almost ended up on her knees anyway. But without the flesh-and-blood devil looming above her.
    Her bare feet shuffled on the rug bunched beneath and finally found purchase on the cold-split boards, tucking her toes under to grip better. For once the cold did nothing to sap the heat from her skin.
    She quickly tucked her feet into her sturdy work slippers and threw on the heavy, unattractive night robe she’d long ago borrowed from her father. She’d never cared before that it was so bulky and, well, ugly. It functioned well, it was warm, and in the dead of a cold London night, that was all that mattered.
    Until one saw women in diaphanous gowns, split down the middle, enticing their prey on the other side of the page.
    She tied the strap of her robe with suddenly clumsy fingers. The ink-stained, chapped edges of them grippedthe heavy layered cotton and pulled. What was wrong with her?
    She quickly walked down to the kitchen to pour herself some milk and tea. A nighttime indulgence she was feeling in need of at the moment. A light sifted from underneath the door of the attached work office down the narrow hall. Her uncle was still awake then.
    She’d seen payment for “library restructuring” on the ledgers, so the viscount had been serious when he’d said that her uncle had already approved her help, or, well, someone’s help at least, but she hadn’t been able to speak to her uncle yet as he’d been out late at a tradesman’s meeting.
    His office door was closed. Should she seek him out? There was something about asking him that would make it all the more real instead of a continued illusion. Perhaps he would even stop her from going the next day, having not agreed to the plan after all—a scheme devised by the viscount instead.
    Why she was questioning whether she should ask her uncle was the real question.
    She wandered over slowly and paused outside the door. She could hear the scritch of her uncle’s pen. It would take but a knock on the door and a quick word to take care of the entire question. He might say that he planned to send Peter. He might stop her from going. Forbid her from it.
    And if he didn’t, if he was just the absentminded man she had grown quite fond of in the past two years, then she