For really good books and really bad books, the text speaks for itself. To give a little background, Duke of Falconbridge watched as Ian Eversea nearly cuckolded Falconbridge with F's fiance. As revenge, Alex Moncrieffe decides he will seduce and abandon Ian's little sister, Genevieve. Only Genevieve is in love with her best friend Harry who has just announced he plans to propose to their other friend, Millicent. You'd think Genevieve is easy pickings for the Duke, but she's not. Both Alex and Genevieve are people watchers and they intuit things about others that are not readily apparent. They prick each other, goading each other into more outrageous things, but in a delightful way. I just adored this story. So I'm taking the liberty of posting a very long excerpt because I think the text of this book is what is most important rather than my nattering on about it:

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“What are your pleasures and pursuits, Lord Moncrieffe?” Miss Eversea asked too brightly, when the silence had gone on for more than was strictly comfortable or polite.

That creaky conversation lubricant. It irritated him again that she was humoring him.

“Well, I’m partial to whores.”

Her head whipped toward him like a weathervane in a hurricane. Her eyes, he noted, were enormous, and such a dark blue they were nearly purple. Her mouth dropped, and the lower lip was quivering with shock or . . . or. . .

“Whor . . . whores . . . ?” She choked out the word as if she’d just inhaled it like bad cigar smoke.

He widened his own eyes with alarm, recoiling slightly.

“I . . . . I beg your pardon—Horses. Honestly, Miss Eversea,” he stammered. “I do wonder what you think of me if that’s what you heard.” He shook his head ruefully. “Horses. Those hooved beasts a man can race, wager upon, plow a field with, harness to a phaeton, and drive at deliciously reckless speeds.”

She stared at him now as he walked. Those wide eyes went narrow, bringing him into focus, isolating him in a very potent, too intelligent beam of blue.

“And one cannot do any of that with whores?” she asked softly.

His turn to drop his jaw. He clapped it shut again.

She’d pointed that neat profile away from him again. But when the corners of her pale mouth had tightened, he saw—yes, he saw—a dimple. And now he was certain, he was certain she was doing combat with a smile.

His heart picked up a beat or two. “It’s a frustrating truism,” he allowed resignedly, “but it’s a rare whore who’ll consent to be harnessed to a plow.”

And with awe he saw her lose her battle with that smile.

It fought first with one corner of her mouth, then the other, and then it broke all over her like a sunrise. The very shape of her face changed. Or rather, she came into focus at last in that moment; she’d simply been awaiting illumination from within.

There were dimples, and a pointed chin, and elegant cheekbones. Her face was heart-shaped, sweetly drawn, very alive. She was incandescent with wicked amusement.

In that moment was an entirely different girl.

He stared, stunned.

And then the smile was gone, fading too quickly the way sunrises inevitably do, and she was quiet again.

****
“Can you really see different things in a painting from day to day?” This seemed to genuinely interest the duke. She wasn’t certain which part of it fascinated him most, the fact that a painting could change or that she thought it could

“Well, it isn’t like a crystal ball. Whereby you see shifting images and the like. But haven’t you ever looked at a painting for a length of time, or on more than one occasion, and experienced it differently each time?”

Where to begin explaining art to someone who seemed to know nothing about it? Now, if she were dancing with Harry. . .

“Of course. As a young man touring the Continent, I once looked at length at a painting called Venus and Mars by an Italian painter called Veronese. Do you know it? Venus is nude as the day she was born, and Mars is entirely clothed and down on his knees in front of her, and it looks as though Mars is about to give her a pleasuring. And there are cherubs hanging about. I looked at it for quite some time.”

A . . . pleasuring. God above.

He had her attention now.

She was speechless.

Everything was astonishing about what he’d just said. She stared up at him, her mind exploding with vivid images, her cheeks going increasingly hotter. She knew the painting. She knew precisely where Mars was kneeling in front of Venus.

The duke had said it purposely.

Suddenly she was acutely aware of her five senses, as though they were blinking on, one by one, like fireflies in the dark. Most particularly vivid was touch. She was potently aware of his hands: the one resting with firm assurance against her waist, warm there now through the fine silk of her gown, the other enfolding hers. She was acutely aware of his size, and everything that was masculine to her feminine.
Goodness. He could certainly look at her for a long time without blinking.

“Do you . . . know of a painter called Boticelli?” She sounded tentative.

“I do, in fact. But vaguely.”

“I think he isn’t rated highly enough. I enjoy his grace of line, the light infusing his subjects.”

Moncrieffe knew a subtle thrill. He’d thrown out a temptation, a subtle invitation. She’d recognized it and taken it up. “And I have seen his Venus and Mars,” he added. “Ironically, in it Venus is entirely clothed and Mars, the poor bastard, is sprawled looking as though she’s just had her way with him and he’s spent.”

Somehow they’d drawn closer, closer, and he said this nearer to her ear than any man ought to be during a waltz.

“It’s allegory.” She murmured it, unconvincingly, in his ear.

“Is it,” he murmured back. As though he didn’t believe her. As though he was inviting her to consider that it was, in fact, a representation of what had just happened between Venus and Mars, of what could happen between any man and woman, between the two of them.

She’d gone quiet. What was she thinking? Had her own boldness, or his, overwhelmed her?

“I’ve an acquaintance by the name of Wyndham who paints. His paintings leave you in no question of what they’re intended to represent. No viewers mistake them for anything other than what they are or read additional meanings into them.”

Wyndham painted all the most lascivious paintings for The Velvet Glove, the bordello favored by any man who preferred his whores pretty. Everyone depicted in his paintings was naked, or mostly naked, and having a marvelous time.

“Did you make the acquaintance of this Mr. Wyndham in the process of pursuing your interest in . . . ‘horses’?”

Well.

He was instantly riveted. His eyes focused intently, speculatively on her, and she looked back bravely enough, her eyes both glinting, and tentative and uncertain. It was clear to him that she was new to this sort of flirtation; she feinted and then fell back, as though with his questions he’d revealed a new path her nature was drawn to but hesitant to follow.

He smiled slowly. “I might have done.”

She wasn’t a coquette. But he would wager his life that what he’d sensed earlier in her was true: she kept her passions leashed, for reasons of her own.

Everything leashed could be unleashed. He would find a way.