One fist curled at his side, squeezing against the strange mix of angry lust rising up in him. “Good God, if you were a man I would call you out for such an insult.”

“And if I were a man, I’d be quite happy to oblige you,” she shot back. She began to pace again. “You must dance with her, and show her that you are quite earnest in your esteem. That will impress her.”

Why was she so bloody insistent? George forgot his anger a moment—he had turned Miss Hargrove’s head...hadn’t he? He tried to recall the events precisely now. He remembered the woman’s smile—quite lovely, it was. Not as lovely as this impertinent excuse for a proper English debutante, but still. Miss Hargrove had giggled and smiled and had eyed him coyly. Hadn’t she? No, Miss Cabot was wrong. George was confident he’d done as she’d asked. “No,” he said. “I don’t know what brings you to believe that you are the arbiter of seduction, madam, but I did as I promised.”

She sighed as if he were the mad one in this room. “All right, then. What did you say to her?”

George lowered his head. “Now you are making me quite cross.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You want to know what I said?” he asked, and shifted closer, startling her as he cupped her chin and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I said that I found her lovely.” He lifted her face to his. “And that I admired her,” he added, allowing his gaze to skim Miss Cabot’s figure. He shifted even closer, lowered his head so that his mouth was just a fraction of an inch from hers. “And that I was quite envious of Sommerfield.”

Miss Cabot’s eyes fluttered. “And?”

“And? I asked her to stand up, but she very demurely declined,” he said, his gaze on plump, wet lips that looked as if they were begging to be kissed again.

“There, you see?” she said softly, her eyes falling to his mouth, her suddenly shallow breath stirring him.

“Are you surprised? I am a man of a certain reputation, and she is a blushing fiancée. She declined for the sake of propriety.”

“She is not a blushing fiancée, she is seasoned and shrewd.”

Naive, he thought, and moved his hand to the side of Miss Cabot’s slender neck, feeling the warmth of her skin radiate through his palm. The feminine form never ceased to astound him—so soft, so fragile, with the power to incite wars among men. “She didn’t seem terribly seasoned to me. She seemed flummoxed....” He paused to breathe in her arousing scent. “Not unlike how you seemed earlier this week in this very room.”

Miss Cabot turned her head slightly, away from his mouth. “I beg your pardon, I was not flummoxed.”

“Tsk, tsk, Miss Cabot. It won’t do to dissemble now.”

She frowned, but she did not deny it. “You must speak to her again,” she insisted. “Invite her again to stand up with you.”

George sighed. He slipped his hand behind her back and pulled her into his chest. For once, she didn’t say anything, just gazed up at him with clear blue eyes. He frowned down at her, brushed his knuckles against her temple. “I think I should kiss you again. Only quite thoroughly this time. And against all my better judgments.”

“I forbid it,” she murmured. And yet she did not move.

“You are too trusting, Miss Cabot. You should never forbid a man and yet allow him to hold you like this if you have a care for your virtue.” Least of all, him. “You don’t yet understand the mind of a man. When a woman is this close, he...”

He couldn’t finish; he gazed into her eyes as myriad ideas raced through his mind of what he would do to a woman like her.

“He what?” she asked.

He couldn’t say what was suddenly raging through him: that a man could not be satisfied until he’d been inside her. But for the first time since meeting Honor Cabot, George saw her innocence. It was there, buried under the mantle of privilege and sophistication, and it made him feel strangely protective of her.

Lord, no, not that. He was a high-stepping horse, trained to never look away from his path. Bloody innocence! Whether it was an instinctive need to distance himself from such protective thoughts or his growing, maddening desire, George didn’t know—but he said, “He does this,” and put his mouth on hers, kissing her.

He did not expect Honor Cabot to kiss him back. She sank into him, her back curving as she melted against him. She ran her hands up his arms, put them around his neck and angled her head slightly as she opened her mouth beneath his. George felt almost weak in the knees as he took full advantage of it, his tongue tangling with hers. He drew her tighter into his body to feel her soft curves pressed against the hard length of him. He slid his hand down her back, to her derriere, his fingers sinking into the soft flesh of her hip. He kissed her until he began to feel that primal thrumming, the call of his body to move against her, to be inside her.

He lifted his head, and with two hands to her shoulders, he set her back. Miss Cabot very gracefully ran her thumb across her bottom lip and smiled sheepishly at him.

“There, do you see?” he said sternly. “You should not have trusted me.”

“But I do trust you.”

He braced one hand against his waist, determined to talk some sense into her. “If you were mine—”

“But I’m not.”

“But if you were, I would teach you that you cannot be so careless with your virtue. Or anyone else’s virtue, for that matter! What you are doing is beyond comprehension.”

She folded her arms. “I didn’t ask you to defend my virtue,” she said silkily.

“Don’t push me, Cabot,” he warned her, his gaze taking in her face, her hair.

“Do you think that men are the only ones allowed to desire?”

That certainly sparked his interest. George arched a dark brow. “Do you desire me, love?” he asked silkily, and reached for her hip once more, abruptly pulling her forward so she might feel just how much he desired her.

In all his years, he had never met a woman who could not be intimidated, if only a little. But Miss Cabot looked him in the eye and said, with a coy little smile, “You profess to know women, Easton. What do you think?”

He chuckled low. “I think you’ve not the least idea what you want, lass,” he said, and lowered his head to hers again to trace a line across the seam of her lips with his tongue.

Honor gasped at the sensation, but George had only just begun. He lifted his hand to her jaw and angled her head, nipped at her bottom lip. “Is this what you want?” he asked, crushing her pelvis to his as he slipped his tongue into her mouth.

She made a little sound in the back of her throat. Her hands found his shoulders, and for a moment, he thought that she might push him away, but she merely opened her mouth beneath his as she slid her hands down his arms, then up again, so that she might tangle her fingers in his hair. He brushed his hand against her breast, cupping it, squeezing it, his fingers finding the turgid tip through the fabric of her gown. He was hurtling headlong down that slope of physical desire, of emotional entanglement, and with a growl deep in his throat, he picked her up with one arm about her waist and twisted about, putting her down on her back on the settee.

Honor gasped again; her breath lifting her chest. George traced a wet path to her bosom, his tongue finding the valley between her breasts, his hand pressing against her flesh, kneading her, tantalizing her. He lifted one breast free of the confines of her gown, and Honor made a sound—of protest? Of delight? Whatever it might have been, George caught it with his mouth as he kissed her again, before moving to her breast and taking it into his mouth.

She suddenly fell back on a very long sigh and sank her fingers into his hair. George suckled her, his eyes closed to the storm brewing inside him, to the sparks that were igniting and filling him with rivulets of fire. He tasted her fragrant flesh, felt the hardened nipple in the crease of his tongue. He was hard, the pulse of desire thrumming in him, the image of his body sinking deep into hers as he lifted the other breast from her bodice.

But there was something else in him, too. The faint clatter of hooves, the high-stepping horse marching steadily forward, looking neither right nor left. As much he wanted to undress her, to spread her legs and deflower her, to feel the wet warmth of her desire, he could not. He could not ruin one debutante or entice another. This was not the sort of man he was, no matter what people said, and it took all the strength he had to push himself up and away from her, to move his lips from her breast. He braced himself with both hands on either side of her, gazing down at this young woman with the shining blue eyes.

“Never,” he said angrily, “never trust a man in that circumstance.” He pushed himself up off the settee, then caught her hand, pulling her up.

Honor Cabot looked slightly chastised. She took a moment to arrange herself into her gown and looked contritely at him, on the verge of saying something when the door suddenly opened.

She whirled about, shaking out her skirts and pulling her long hair around to cover the flush of her bosom.

A woman stepped into the room. George recognized her instantly—she was an older, graying version of Honor.

“Mamma!” Miss Cabot exclaimed, and quickly put some distance between herself and George. “Ah...may I introduce you to meet Mr. George Easton?”

God help him but he was still hard, still wanting Lady Beckington’s daughter. Fortunately, the countess seemed unaware and looked blankly at George. “My lady,” he said, bowing low.

She looked at him curiously, as if she were trying to place him. “Ah, yes,” she said, nodding. “Of course. You’ve come about the horses, haven’t you?”