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was enjoying their exchange, she was also aware that it would not do for the attention of the other guests strolling in the gardens to be drawn to the fact that the eligible Mr Bastian Wilson and Miss Gertrude Faraday were at this moment completely alone together on the terrace. Her sister Daphne, Trudie’s chaperone for this week of entertainments, was no doubt sequestered somewhere private with her handsome husband. “Surely it is all a matter of mutual compatibility, Mr Wilson?” she insisted doggedly.

      “In emotions or in a sexual way?”

      Trudie drew in a sharp breath. “Surely the latter naturally follows the former, Mr Wilson?” She was stubbornly determined that her inner feelings of dismay at the scandalous intimacy of this conversation not become apparent to this haughtily superior and far more experienced gentleman.

      “You believe falling in love with someone to also be a guarantee of sexual compatibility?”

      “I have always believed that there must be a meeting of emotions and minds for such…intimacies to be successful, yes.” She nodded abruptly.

      Bastian Wilson smiled derisively. “And I assure you, Miss Faraday, that you are quite wrong.”

      Trudie’s mouth firmed. “Then I am afraid we shall have to agree to disagree, sir!”

      “Or not…” Bastian Wilson drawled.

      She sharply looked at him. “What do you mean?”

      He shrugged those broad shoulders as he turned his back on the garden to concentrate all of his narrow-eyed attention on Trudie. “Is it not obvious?”

      “Not at the present time, no,” Trudie assured frostily.

      “Then perhaps you will allow me to explain?”

      “If you feel you must.” The haughtiness of her tone hid her inner distrust of the calculating glitter she now espied in Bastian Wilson’s assessing grey eyes.

      “Oh, I believe I should very much like to do that,” Bastian Wilson spoke. “Let us start by ascertaining whether or not you are in love with me…?”

      Trudie’s eyes widened. “I hardly think my own feelings towards you, or, indeed, the lack of them,” she added dismissively, “have anything to do with the shocking content of this conversation, sir!”

      “Very nicely put.” He arched one dark and mocking brow. “But unfortunately that statement did not answer my question.”

      “I doubt I am in love with you any more than I believe you to be in love with me.” Trudie glared, knowing she could not truthfully deny her feelings for this gentleman; how could she, when he had been at the centre of her romantic fantasies for a year or more!

      His lids lowered. “In which case, according to your own ideas on the subject, it should not be possible for either of us to give the other…sexual completion?”

      Trudie gasped, almost breathless. “Mr Wilson, please!”

      Those grey eyes gleamed between those hooded lids. “I believe I should very much enjoy hearing you say those words, and in just that fashion, as I bring you to physical climax, Miss Faraday.”

      Trudie’s usual air of self-possession had completely deserted her. “You go too far, sir!”

      “Or not far enough.” He smiled. “Perhaps you would care to make a wager on the subject, Miss Faraday?” He raised those dark and challenging brows.

      Much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, Trudie knew she was completely out of her depth with this conversation. “What sort of wager did you have in mind, sir?”

      Bastian could not help but feel admiration for Gertrude Faraday’s determination to hide her inner feelings of trepidation from him, feelings that were revealed to him by the rapidly beating pulse at the base of her creamy throat and the slight trembling of those full and sensuous lips. “The two of us are to be incarcerated together at Shoreley Park for the next week, during which time I will wager that I am able to give you…sexual completion, without your being in the least bit in love with me.”

      She gasped. “I could not possibly—”

      “And for your part you will endeavour to withhold that sexual completion from a man with whom you have already stated you are not in love.” That he had shocked her with the details of his wager Bastian was left in no doubt as he saw the way Trudie’s eyes widened and her cheeks became flushed.

      Whether that shock would be deep enough to prevent the stalwart Trudie Faraday from accepting his wager now hung delicately in the balance…

      CHAPTER TWO

      Bastian had watched in unobserved amusement this past two Seasons as Miss Gertrude Faraday politely but very determinedly stepped through the minefield of Society, as she avoided accepting any offer of marriage that obviously did not meet her own expectations of such an alliance.

      Oh, she charmed and flattered, whilst at the same time giving no one single gentleman the encouragement he so obviously desired. An occurrence Bastian, intrigued enough to wish to become her lover, had decided to circumvent with the proposal of his wager.

      She now glared her displeasure at him. “For us to show such a—a public partiality for each other’s company would place us both in a compromising position, and so nullifying any wish on the part of either of us not to find ourselves at the centre of the most dreadful scandal by the end of the week.”

      “My dear Miss Faraday, I was not in any way suggesting that we publicly flaunt our lovemaking,” Bastian matter-of-factly declared.

      She blinked. “You were proposing that we—that we meet clandestinely?”

      Could Trudie really be such an innocent, Bastian wondered ruefully, as not to know that lengthy summer house parties such as this one were the perfect means by which members of Society, of both sexes, visited the bedchambers of people to whom they were not married? “We would obviously behave with the greatest of discretion in public, Miss Faraday. In order to protect your own reputation, if not my own,” he added ruefully; the only person he required any sign of approval from was Trudie herself….

      She moved with agitation. “The state of my reputation would not be of the least import, sir, if I were to one day go to my marriage bed unchaste!”

      Bastian regarded her with lazy amusement. “But you would not be unchaste, Miss Faraday.”

      “You just said—”

      “My dear, there are many…ways to make love, to achieve sexual completion, without the loss of a lady’s chastity,” he assured her with a mocking glint in his eye.

      Trudie swallowed, knowing with absolute certainty that those “ways” had nothing at all to do with the sharing of thoughts and ideals to which she had been referring earlier!

      There was no denying that Bastian Wilson was the most sought-after, and elusive, single gentleman of the ton. And the most challenging.

      Trudie had spent the past five Seasons surrounded by handsome and eligible gentlemen, receiving a dozen or more offers of marriage during that time, and yet none of those gentlemen had engendered the least interest on her part, emotionally or physically.

      Except for Bastian Wilson…

      Trudie had been captivated by him from the first evening she set eyes upon him eighteen months previously. So much so that every other gentleman of the ton had faded into obscurity. What Bastian Wilson now offered her was not the marriage which Trudie secretly so longed for, admittedly. But neither could she deny the thrill of wicked pleasure than ran the length of her spine just at the thought of a secret—and deeply sensual?—relationship with this man.

      Enough for her to seriously consider accepting his wager…?

      Once again she eyed him carefully. “I still do not see how we could possibly go about achieving such an…arrangement?”

      Bastian

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