He put his thumb to her lips, shushing her. “That’s absurd. You are not replaceable.”
“I’m not?” The words were muffled by his thumb.
“Hell, no.” His thumb slid over her lips, and his gaze seemed to hover there, too. His voice dropped to a low, impatient growl that simmered in her knees. “I swear to you, Clio. Somehow, I’m going to make you see—”
Footsteps clattered from the direction of the corridor. Oh, drat.
At once, Rafe stepped back, releasing her.
No. No!
Somehow, I’m going to make you see . . .
What, precisely? What was he going to make her see? His point of view? The error of her ways? His collection of seashells and sealing wax?
Now she’d lie awake all night, wondering.
And thinking of his arm lashed about her waist. His touch on her lips.
“Good heavens.” Daphne’s high, unmistakable voice rang down the corridor. “What was that unholy racket?”
“Just the portcullis.” Clio fluttered one hand in the direction of the gate. “Lord Rafe wanted a demonstration.”
“Yes. And Miss Whitmore was good enough to oblige me. Despite how eager she is to begin on the wedding preparations.” He gave her a pointed look. “For the remainder of the week.”
Clio had no choice now. She would suffer through a few days of wedding plans. What else was there to do? She couldn’t announce she’d broken the engagement unless the dissolution papers were signed. And the days had to be passed in one fashion or another.
In fact, as she succumbed to the inexorable pull of the drawing room, Clio began to worry this task wouldn’t take a full week. Surely a simple country wedding could be planned in a day or two.
How difficult could it be?
Chapter Five
I’ve drawn up a list of seventeen tasks. And a schedule.”
Rafe would say one thing for Phoebe Whitmore. She was startlingly efficient. She presented this list at breakfast the next morning before he’d even touched his coffee.
How old was the girl now? Sixteen or so? If Rafe had drawn up a list of tasks at Phoebe’s age, he could only imagine it would have looked thusly:
1. Skip lessons.
2. Chase girls.
3. Any excuse for a fistfight.
4. Is that a squirrel?
End of list.
As he sat down to the table, a servant placed a bowl containing three speckled eggs beside his plate. “For your coffee, my lord.”
He tugged his ear, bemused. Clio didn’t miss anything, did she? He didn’t know how to take it, that she’d been thinking of him that morning. Doing him this small kindness. He’d woken thinking of her, too.
But his thoughts were anything but nice.
In his imagination, she was flushed and breathless with laughter, and they’d been . . . racing, in a fashion.
A horizontal fashion.
His blood stirred, just at the memory.
Damn it. Ten miles, he had run that morning. Ten miles through the misty Kentish countryside should have left him too sapped of energy to contemplate carnality.
He wasn’t quite sapped enough.
No, he could do with a touch more sapping.
Daphne snatched the list from her sister. “We’ll need to send to London for many of these items on the list. Sample gowns for fitting. Bunting and ribbons for the décor. For the invitations, fine paper and ink.”
Clio looked up. “I have ink.”
“You don’t have the right ink. But while we’re waiting on supplies, there are some things we can tackle.”
“Toast?”
Daphne kept her gaze on her list. “No, no. The toasts and speeches can wait. Though we should start testing the punch recipe.”
“I meant this kind.” With a smile, Clio passed a plate of white and brown toast points.
“Oh.” Daphne took a point of white and immediately leveled it at Rafe, like a buttered weapon. “But come to think of it, my lord, you should start writing a draft.”
“A draft of what?”
“The toast. You are the best man.”
Then she turned away, giving some direction to her husband, who was moving down the sideboard and loading two plates as he went.
Not this again. Rafe had no intention of performing any best-man duties at his brother’s wedding. They’d scarcely spoken in a decade, and Rafe didn’t expect they’d be mixing much in years to come, either. The only thing more uncomfortable and inappropriate than harboring lust for his brother’s intended bride would be harboring lust for his brother’s wife.
No, he was only here to make certain the wedding took place. Then he’d hand over the marquessate duties and get back to his life. His career. His title.
His women.
Not that there’d been many women of late. No doubt that was part of his sapping problem.
“Today, we’ll meet with the vicar to start planning the ceremony,” Daphne announced. “After that, the menus.”
“Must we do all that today?” Clio asked. “You’ve only just arrived, and I never had the chance to show you about. I’d love for you to see the castle grounds.”
Cambourne glanced to the window, dismayed. “It looks like rain. And these are new boots.”
“We don’t have time for these things,” Daphne said. “There are seventeen items on Phoebe’s list. Seventeen.”
“Are you sure there aren’t sixteen, my lady?” a new voice inquired. “Or perhaps it’s eighteen.” Bruiser leaned over her shoulder, examining the list with the aid of his quizzing glass.
If that quizzing glass survived the week without meeting the heel of Rafe’s boot, it would be a miracle.
“Seventeen,” he pronounced at length. “I ought to never have doubted you, Miss Phoebe. Where would we be without your sterling accomplishment in counting?”
“What about flowers?” Clio asked. “Are flowers one of the seventeen items?”
“But of course they are.”
“Then we can compromise. We’ll all take a stroll in the castle gardens, and I can decide which blooms I like for the bouquet.”
Rafe supposed flowers were as good a start as anything.
As they made their way toward the summer garden, Cambourne approached him. The man dug an elbow into Rafe’s side in a manner that Rafe guessed was meant to be chummy.
He didn’t want to be chums.
“Say, Brandon. I was a few years behind your brother at Eton. But I don’t recall crossing paths with you there.”