Lord Holbrook didn’t give her the chance to decide. “I could make you feel even more things that Veazey has never made you feel, as well. If you’ll let me.” His words were hardly more than a whisper, but that didn’t stop them from ringing in hear ears as loudly as the fireworks exploding overhead at Vauxhall.

Glancing up at the carnal gleam in his eyes, she stood, smoothing her hands over her skirts while her heart thudded a wild, incoherent beat in her chest. “If you’ll excuse me-”

His hand on her elbow stopped her before she could escape. Audrey’s breath stilled.

“ You want to know what they’re talking about?” he asked quietly.

When she looked at him, for once, he seemed sincere and not intent on leaving her unnerved. She nodded curtly.

Lord Holbrook smiled. “Sit. I’ll tell you.”

“ How do you know?” Audrey asked before she could think better of it.

With a single eyebrow lifted mockingly, he leaned forward, gently tugging on her elbow until she sat again, and said, “Emotions. Reactions. I notice them. I pay attention. After many years of this, I’ve come to be adept at making sense of them.”

She frowned. But what could it hurt to humor him? “Very well. Go on. What are they talking about?”

“ Sex,” he murmured.

For that matter, he might not have said it at all, but just breathed it. The word washed over Audrey’s skin and sent shivers of goose flesh coursing over her arms and all the way down to her toes. She shot her gaze up to look at him with a slight gasp, wide-eyed and scandalized, yet also entirely too fascinated for a proper lady.

“ Yes,” he continued, ignoring her half-hearted appeal to feminine sensibilities. “Sex. Coitus. Sport. Fornication. Mating-”

“ That’s quite enough, my lord,” Audrey bit off, interrupting him before her blush was hot enough to melt iron.

“ I apologize,” he drawled without an ounce of sincerity in his tone. “If you’re so ill at ease discussing such things, it is no wonder you’ve not been party to the other ladies’ conversations.” He lowered his voice and turned from her, muttering beneath his breath, “Heaven knows Veazey must be beyond frustrated with such a squeamish wife. I suppose I am misplacing my efforts, yet again.”