And her laugh—it was the last thing he had expected from her. He was in a difficult situation—not quite master but regarded as such until Henry’s majority. For a servant, even a governess, to laugh as she had was entirely unpredictable.

He shouldn’t think too much about how that unexpected laughter had settled in his gut.

The image of Miss Hodges sitting on the rock rose again in his mind. The sun would have warmed the rock beneath her hands, and she would have looked down at the clear water. She would laugh at the boys’ antics, he had no doubt, perhaps even kick water in their direction if they ventured too close. Her stockings would be folded into her shoes to keep them from blowing away in the breeze.

Good Lord, he could almost see it. The stockings protected in the nearby shoes, her naked feet dangling in the water, her skirts raised to keep them from getting wet, exposing her trim ankles. The clear water would do nothing to hide either her feet or her ankles, and Stephen found himself staring unabashedly at something that wasn’t even there. He gazed at the empty water, imagining exactly what Miss Hodges’s ankles would look like. They would be slim, they would be bonny, they would—

Thankfully, a passing cart made enough noise to break him out of this ridiculously schoolboy moment. Inhaling deeply through his nose, Stephen left the swimming area and made his way back for a closer look at the ruins.


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Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Excerpt from Stealing Home copyright © 2013 by Candice Wakoff.

Excerpt from Playing the Field copyright © 2013 by Candice Wakoff.

Excerpt from The Governess Club: Claire copyright © 2013 by Heather Johnson.

Excerpt from Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Dead copyright © 2013 by Lena Diaz.

Excerpt from The Governess Club: Bonnie copyright © 2013 by Heather Johnson.

THROWING HEAT. Copyright © 2013 by Candice Wakoff. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition OCTOBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062271488

Print Edition ISBN: 9780062271495

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