She was facing him, and they were squeezed into the small space available, her back to the bed. She was almost where he wanted her. In his arms. In his bed. Had she just looked at him with awareness that he was a man, not just her old friend? He was used to assessing situations and making quick decisions, but now, in the midst of the most important situation of his life, his brain seemed like a soggy pudding. “Can you hear anything?” Laura’s soft question pulled him out of the pit and he concentrated. “Only a faint murmur.” “Me, too.” So hard not to press his body against hers, hard to look anywhere except at her breasts, swelling softly beneath her dull, high-necked gown. Impossible to avoid that perfume. The one created for Labellelle. Careless, that. It wasn’t at all the scent for Priscilla Penfold, but he wouldn’t ask her to change it. He tried to remember what scent she’d used as a girl. Something light and flowery, he thought, probably made in the Merrymead stillroom from garden flowers.
