The Irresistible Miss Peppiwell(20)

“Ah. Enough fire to have you thinking seriously about her, despite the reservations you now feel.”

“I find myself intrigued by her reticence, and the hidden passion that dwells within her. She hides behind a facade of indifference, but I have glimpsed enough innate sensuality within her to hold me spellbound,” Anthony confessed.

“Might it be because she is American, with a different way of expressing herself? Americans are quite a different breed than the silly chits we’ve both been running from for almost a decade.”

He felt Sebastian’s speculative glance, and met his gaze with cool aplomb, knowing what was coming. “Go ahead and ask.”

His brother merely raised his brows. Anthony wondered if he had been mistaken in thinking Sebastian would have asked him how an innocent chit would handle his so-called depraved desires.

Heat sizzled in Anthony’s veins as he remembered Phillipa’s shivers and moans. He doubted he’d ever had any female respond to him with such abandon. She’d tried to bury it, but he had seen it in her face. Had felt it in the wetness clinging to his fingers from a fleeting caress.

He had lost three mistresses because of his passionate nature between the sheets. Apparently, no honorable female would behave the way he’d wanted them to. Though, they had opened their legs to his needs willingly enough for baubles and a roof over their heads. Despite her vehement protests, even Georgina had always writhed in ecstasy at being tied to the bed and spanked, crying for more even when he indulged in his darker sexual desires.

He shook his head in bemusement. Perhaps it was time he found a way to suppress his urgings. If his mistresses had been unable to accommodate his needs, he doubted a respectable wife would be willing to indulge them.

And yet, he thought Phillipa’s sensuality would be able to match him, if anyone could. And he suspected she would be more than willing to try.

But his bastardy was another matter. Any wife of his would have to contend with the likelihood of that public humiliation.

He walked over to the windows, giving his back to Sebastian, each thinking, no doubt, of their different demons.

Anthony despised the sword edge he was balanced on. He kept waiting for the knowledge of his parentage to roar through Society. Sebastian believed they had the social standing to withstand the repercussions. Hell, he believed they could crush it with sheer wealth and power alone. Anthony did not necessarily doubt that. His brother could be a ruthless man, formidable when crossed.

What affected Anthony most, and would savage Constance, was that the man they called father could be capable of such hatred and ugliness against them.

Anthony clenched his fists. The coward had held onto the secret, using death as a way to avoid the fallout, knowing exposing it would exact the cruelest revenge upon his wife, because of how much she loved her children. Now the evil wretch was safely in his grave—a place that Anthony dearly wished he could rip him from, so he could beat the hell out of him and send him back to it himself.





Chapter Seven


Anthony rode Thor through the crisp morning air, inhaling the fresh air into his lungs. He urged the horse faster, its muscles bunched and its gait lengthened as it thundered along the Serpentine path of Hyde Park. After his dawn meeting with Sebastian’s man of affairs in one of the seedier parts of London, he welcomed the clean orderliness of the park.

The meeting had gone remarkably well. It ended with both of them clear on the nature of the tail he wanted on Miss Peppiwell, as well as to the duration. He needed to satisfy his suspicions, and would only remove the guard when the lady revealed the nature of Orwell’s obsession.

The park stood nearly empty, with only a few riders braving the early morning cold. Anthony drew on Thor’s reins as a flash of copper gold caught his attention. A horse cantered slowly across his path, its rider clothed in vibrant blue. Not many young ladies would be out of their beds this early. Pleasure suffused him at this chance encounter with the irresistible Miss Peppiwell.

He had barely slept after Sebastian departed for Sherring Cross. Anthony’s restless hunger for her had kept him awake long into the nights. After drafting his missive to Lady Jocelyn and handing it to his butler to deliver, he’d wasted no time traveling back to London.

The sight of Phillipa made his decision to chase off his restlessness and lack of sleep with a hard ride worthwhile.

He had been toying with the idea of calling on her, but could not make up his mind without a fuller understanding of his gnawing need, and more important, where he wanted to take it.

Hidden by the branches of an oak tree, he watched her as she cantered closer. The reins dangled loosely in her hand as she sat astride the chestnut with the innate poise of an experienced rider. She rode slowly toward him, a rare smile teasing her lips.