“The bedroom candles, if you please, Elsmore. I’ll not be using the parlor tonight.”

A man intent on observing propriety would pass her the candle, bow, and wish her sound slumbers. Rex thought back over the day, when Eleanora had slept so trustingly against his side in the coach. She’d come to dinner with the barest minimum of a fuss.

She’d patted his hand.

She’d toed off her house slippers in his presence.

She’d taken his arm as she’d traversed the steps.

Now, she was inviting him into her bedroom on the most mundane of pretexts.

“Eleanora, are you flirting with me?” Please say yes. Please, please, please.

“If you must ask, then the venture isn’t being very competently executed, is it?”

“Why?”

She stepped closer, took the candle from him, and put her arms around him. “Because I’m an idiot. I’d like to kiss you.”

“I’d like to kiss you too.” The words of a fellow-idiot, but Rex meant them from the bottom of his heart.

*  *  *

Ellie had not always been honest with Elsmore, but she’d told him the truth about the progress of the audit: The end was approaching, and the findings looked to be fairly predictable. The people closest to the duke, most familiar with him and most secure in his affections, were the least conscientious about keeping his books and the most likely to dip their fingers into his pockets.

With a little oversight, some changes of procedure and changes of staff, his personal accounts would withstand prenuptial scrutiny from any quarter. Ellie had misgivings about matters at his bank, but auditing Dorset and Becker would be a massive undertaking that could put her loyalties in conflict.

Her common sense and a mad impulse to share more than a kiss with Elsmore were already waging a war.

“An interlude can’t mean anything,” she said.

Elsmore took her by the hand and led her not to the bedroom, but to the sofa. “I’m to be a lady’s passing fancy? How novel.” He had the grace to sound both amused and chagrined.

“You are a director of an institution that competes with my employer. I should not allow you even passing fancy status.” How her family would crow, to see her ethics wavering for the sake of pleasure.

“Eleanora, no less person than His Grace of Walden has given his blessing to your review of my personal books. If you wanted to ruin me, my bank, and my family, you have the means. I’m willing to take that risk. Can’t you trust me to be even a fleeting indulgence?”

He was making a sort of sense, but Ellie could not follow his logic when distracted by the pleasure of watching his mouth.

“I am about to be horrendously foolish,” she said. Also daring and, for once, even a little selfish.