The Trouble With Honor (The Cabot Sisters #1)

For a moment, she looked as if she were about to shout, which would not have surprised him in the least, given the bats floating about her pretty head. But she pressed her lips together, folded her arms, and said, “You need not concern yourself with my motives, sir. And do not doubt that I will honor my word,” she said confidently. “Just as soon as you honor yours. I understand that you believe you have charmed the stockings right off of Miss Hargrove, but clearly you have failed to do it. I will not hand over the money promised merely because your esteem for yourself has clouded your vision of the truth.”


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.