Maggie’s color heightened again, moving up over the lush rounding of her breasts, flooding along her neck, seeping into her face. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Good God, Reeve,” Duncan hissed, “even for you, that was a plebeian thing to say!”

“I presume you bought it?” Reeve asked of Maggie’s escort. The last thing in the world he cared about was Duncan’s opinion of his manners.

Maggie finally found her voice. “This gown is the very height of fashion,” she whispered angrily, and there was a storm brewing in her thundercloud eyes. “It came all the way from Paris!”

“Just the thing for a governess to wear,” Reeve retorted dryly. “What are you teaching your students, Miss Chamberlin? Wild abandon?”

Duncan looked both pained and annoyed, while Maggie seemed ready to explode with fury. Reeve loved baiting her, and despite his feelings about her dress, he had to fight to keep himself from grinning.

“Passion becomes you,” he added.

Maggie’s reaction was anything but disappointing. Her beautiful breasts heaved up and down, threatening to burst free of the scant band of silk that restrained them, and her eyes flashed with pewter lightning. At her side, one hand flexed as though she’d like nothing better than to slap Reeve with all the power she possessed. Of course, she was pretending to be a lady, so she didn’t dare do anything rash, and Reeve enjoyed her helplessness, temporary and uncharacteristic though it was.

Duncan had apparently decided to pretend that Reeve wasn’t there. He pulled Maggie toward the reception line forming just inside the main parlor and said out of one side of his mouth, “Remember to address the governor as ’Your Lordship’ and curtsy.”

“I will not curtsy!” Maggie vowed in a scathing whisper, and Reeve smiled to himself as he stepped into the reception line behind the two of them. Usually he avoided such tedious exercises in formality, but this was going to be too good to miss.

True to her word, Maggie did not curtsy to either the governor or his wife, though she did incline her head slightly. Reeve held his breath for a moment, sure that she’d fall out of her dress in front of God and everybody, but the sparkly blue silk retained its tenuous grasp on her bosom.

At dinner, served in the largest of several dining rooms, Reeve contrived to be seated directly across from Maggie and her much annoyed partner, Duncan. If anything interesting happened, he wanted to be on hand.