Lady Wicked (Notorious Ladies of London #4) - Scarlett Scott Page 0,2

lush fullness of her lower lip. “I need to speak with you.”

He threw back his head and gave in to the mad urge for laughter which had been flirting with him ever since his tumble to the floor. He laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more.

When he was finished, he took a deep, calming breath, and held her gaze. “How amusing you are. Unfortunately, for you, I do not give a damn what you need.”

“Lord Shelbourne,” she began.

“Get out, Julianna,” he bit out atop anything else she would have said, all pretenses gone. “Now. Before I do something we will both regret.”

Like kiss her.

Damn it, but the old desire had remained, festering beneath the resentment like a gangrenous wound. He had known it, of course. But seeing her now—having her within reach—made the bloody yearning so much bloody worse.

“This is imperative, Shelbourne, and I have not much time.”

He snorted. “Quelle coincidence. I have not any time. For you. Goodbye, Lady Julianna.”

And good riddance.

Why had she returned? Two years gone, an entire ocean between them. And now, she was here. In his own home. Trespassing.

Hardly mattered what she wanted.

There was only one thing he wanted from her, he told himself, and he had already had it. No different than what he could get from any other woman. There was nothing special about her. His attraction to her was all down to his inconvenient, raging cock.

Getting sotted made him randy. Apparently.

Or mayhap that was just getting sotted and then having his solitude interrupted by her.

But she had not gone. The infuriating woman had thrown her shoulders back in defiance, and she was refusing to retreat. “I need you to have time for me tonight, Sidney.”

Sidney.

His name in her honey-drenched voice brought back too many unwelcome memories.

He sneered. “You do not have leave to call me by my Christian name, madam. You gave up that right when you refused to marry me.”

Stupid, drunken sot. Why had he alluded to his humiliation and her infuriating rejection? He had not meant to.

She appeared as unaffected by the bitterness in his voice as she was by his insistence she leave. The damned woman did not budge a hairbreadth.

“That is why I am here, Shelbourne.”

Her announcement confused him. He squinted at her, and for a brief, maddening moment, he saw two Lady Julianna Somersets. Christ, he had thought there could be nothing worse than one of her.

“What do you mean, that is why you are here?” he demanded, doing his damnedest not to sway or lose his balance. “Cease speaking in vagaries and stop plaguing me. Say what you want and be done with it.”

All that goddamn wine was truly having its effect upon him now.

Yes, that had to be it. His drunken state was the only plausible explanation for the words that emerged from her lovely, traitorous lips next.

“I want to marry you.”

She had done it.

Julianna had blustered her way into a meeting with Shelbourne, and she had blurted out the words that had been stuck in her throat and weighing down her heart since well before her journey across the Atlantic with Emily.

Somehow, the floor had not opened to swallow her.

She had not burst into flame.

Her humiliation had not incapacitated her.

But then Shelbourne did the one thing she had least expected. He threw back his head and laughed.

Her shame swelled to its highest tide yet. Still, above the embarrassment, she could not help but to allow her gaze to devour him. She would have preferred for the intervening years since she had seen him last to have had an adverse effect upon his stunning masculine beauty. They had not.

Even soaked to the skin from the rain battering the streets beyond his elegant townhome, and thoroughly inebriated, he made her heart pound and her breath catch. His dark-brown hair was wavy, tousled, and worn long enough to fall over his brow and hide half his ears. Longer than it had been two years before. This evening, he wore a shadow of whiskers on his angled jaw that suggested he had gone several days without his valet passing a razor over his skin.

His green eyes were light, ringed with gray. Cold now. Colder than they had ever been. But that did not matter. Nor did the manner in which his wide, sensual lips had thinned in distaste when he had first spied her. His nose was straight and strong, his cheekbones perfect slashes, and his loosened necktie revealed the most riveting swath of his neck. The jut