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foot of his bed. “Your beauty,
I mean. Makes it difficult for a lady to refuse you.”
    “You aren’t thinking to refuse me, are you?” he asked in
surprise.
    “You sound as if it were an impossibility, as likely as pigs
flying or fairies alighting from your woods,” she replied, sipping her drink as
she slowly made her way to stand before him once more. “Has no woman ever
refused your advances?”
    “Of course I’ve been refused,” he answered with a frown.
    “When?” She drained half of the glass.
    “When?”
    “When was the last time a woman refused to take a tumble
with you, my lord?” She was teasing him, taunting him with her laughing eyes
and sly smile over the rim of the glass.
    “Doris Makepeace refused to so much as kiss me.”
    “Doris Makepeace is now Lady Statham and has been for nearly
a decade,” she said, placing her hand on his chest. “Surely you’ve been left
wanting at one time or another in the last ten years.”
    “Of course,” he agreed, racking his brain to remember the
name of the pretty girl who’d soundly slapped him for attempting to take
liberties in a dark garden. “Miranda Hopkins, no Hopson.”
    “How old were you?” She pushed at his chest and Henry took
the hint, dropping into the chair behind him.
    “I was just down from university,” he admitted.
    “So what, eight years ago?” She drained her glass and placed
it on the table.
    “About that.”
    “Sure and you were little more than a boy,” she drawled,
tapping one finger on the bottom of his glass until he dutifully took a sip of
the potent brew. “Have you been rejected, even one time, since Lady Churchill
took you to her bed and shouted your talents from the rooftops?”
    “You know about Lady Churchill?”
    “All of London knows the lady took you to her bed and kept
you there for nigh on a month, my lord,” she replied before turning to sashay
across the room.
    She stopped in the center of the carpet and slowly turned to
face him. “Am I to understand that there has been no one, not a single lady or
tavern wench, who has rebuffed your advances?”
    “I do not generally…” he began before losing his train of
thought altogether when her pale fingers plucked at the lace fichu tucked into
her bodice.
    “You do not generally what, my lord?” Her voice was low and
sinfully sensuous.
    “Why are we discussing this?”
    “Shall I stop?”
    “Stop questioning me? Yes.”
    “Stop stripping myself bare before you.”
    Henry’s mouth fell open before he snapped it shut again.
    One pale hand dropped to her breast and she cupped the small
curve, her thumb dragging over her nipple, and Henry realized he could see her
nipples, both of them, like little hard candies beneath her gown.
    “Tit…” she whispered, twirling her thumb over the bud. “For
tat, my lord.”
    Hell, if she wanted to hear of each and every one of his
amorous adventures, he would tell her. He was painfully hard beneath his robe,
his breath tight in his chest.
    “Have another sip of whiskey,” she encouraged, bringing her
nimble fingers to the fichu once more. “You do not generally what, my lord?”
    “Henry,” he corrected before bringing the tumbler up and
draining the contents.
    Liquid fire seared his throat, burning a path down his chest
to settle in his belly, there to mix with the lust that had his abdomen taut
and his balls aching.
    Georgiana whipped the scrap of lace from between her breasts
and unwound it from her neck. She held her hand out before her and met his
eyes. “You do not generally what, my lord?”
    “I do not generally make advances.”
    She blinked in confusion as the lace drifted to the floor.
“You do not make advances? You have not seduced the scores of women who sing
your praises?”
    Rubbing one hand around his heated neck, he watched her
warily, curious to learn what she would make of the admission.
    She seemed to give herself a little shake, her eyes focusing
on him with an intensity that both