How to Live Indecently by Bronwyn Scott Read Free Book Online

action she’d taken had revealed her to him little piece by little piece.
    “You’re thinking too hard.” Daphne smoothed her hand over his brow, rubbing away the creases. “Did your mother ever tell you if you frown too much your face will stay that way? It’s true, you know. There’s this lady in my village, Mrs. Thrumbottom, and her face is in a perpetual frown even when she laughs, which isn’t very often. But still, I don’t think I’ve seen her smile in twenty-two years.”
    Jamie laughed. “Maybe it’s her name. If I was Mrs. Thrumbottom , I’d frown too.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. This was cozy, intimate. Talking softly in the darkness put all his other encounters to shame. Usually by now, he’d be out the door and off to his club. But with Daphne, he wanted nothing more than to lie beside her in this dark room and talk until he could take her again. Already his body was rousing, something he must put a stop to as much he’d prefer the contrary. It would be disastrous if they fell asleep. Not even Riordan’s creative abilities would be able to cover for that lapse.
    With an enormous amount of willpower, Jamie rolled out of bed with a groan. The room was chilly after the warmth of Daphne’s body.
    Daphne moaned in disappointment. “What are you doing? Come back to bed, Jamie.” He could hear the drowsiness in her voice. His concern had not been misplaced.
    He groped for the pocket watch he carried in his waistcoat and held it up to the lamp. “It’s half past one.” Even awake, the hours of their night were slipping away. She was his for only two hours more. Jamie gathered up his clothes and began to dress, aware that Daphne had propped herself up on an elbow to watch.
    “It’s hard to believe supper is just finishing at the ball. Do you think they had oysters?”
    “Shh, don’t think on it,” Jamie scolded. “That’s a world away, a lifetime away from us.” He paused. Was she having regrets? Had the impetuosity of their adventure suddenly settled on her? “Do you want to go back?”
    She shook her head. “No, never. Why would I want glittering ballrooms and endless dance partners when all I could want is in this one room?” She was serious and her declaration moved him deeply. Jamie could not recall the last time a woman had seen him solely as a man and not the viscount, the earl’s heir. Maybe that was why there’d been so many of them. He’d been looking for the right one, the one who would see him as a man first, an earl second.
    Of course, he had to remind himself, he’d manufactured this response from her with his condition about last names. She didn’t know enough to see him otherwise, he’d seen to it.
    “Stop right there,” came Daphne’s soft command. Jamie halted in the middle of tucking his shirt into his waistband. “I want to remember you just the way you are now.”
    “In dishabille?”
    “Most definitely.” She smiled. “This is what painters should paint in their portraits. Half-dressed, your hair mussed, your face content.” Jamie choked back a laugh envisioning such an image in place of the stodgy formal portrait of him with Folkestone Hall in the background hanging in the estate’s portrait gallery.
    “Content? Wasn’t I content before?” How could she know such a thing about him? She hadn’t known him at all before tonight and yet she’d guessed at the one thing that had tormented him since his return to town.
    “You weren’t content on the veranda. You were full of bristling energy, frustrated with it even though you were trying to hide it. I thought, ‘There’s someone who feels the way I do—trapped, alone and feeling selfish for complaining about their lot in life because it’s much more than many people get.’”
    “Is that why you came with me?” Jamie shrugged into his coat and began picking up her discarded garments.
    “In part, but mostly I came because of your smile.”
    Jamie dropped the pile of clothes on