Excerpt of The Wild Marquis by Miranda Neville

The first thing she learned about her visitor was that he possessed a fine pair of boots.

Then he offered a hand. Disconcerted, she accepted the help without thought. As she rose she had an immediate impression of youth and elegance. Not that all book buyers were old and unkempt. Bibliophilia gripped gentlemen of all stripes. But Juliana knew most of the serious book buyers in London by sight, and not one of them sported such effortless masculine grace.

The impression made by his figure withered when she met a pair of crystal blue eyes, scanning her from head to foot with alarming intensity. His scrutiny raised a flush in her pale skin and made her grateful for her high-necked black gown and close fitting cap.

In the past, when alone in the shop, a man had occasionally made an amorous advance. So Juliana dressed herself in enveloping gowns of a particularly beastly cloth, which managed to be both shiny and ineffably drab. Add the sensible linen cap tied under the chin and covering every strand of hair, and the problem had disappeared. She resembled, she knew, a diminutive nun of more than common virtue, or a small black beetle. Her forbidding appearance was supposed to make book buyers see her as a well-informed bookseller and forget she wasn’t a man.

With this visitor it wasn’t working. His gaze told her he saw through her disguise and knew she was young, blonde and female. Lord, she wouldn’t be surprised if he saw through her garments. She’d never encountered a man who exuded such raw seductive potency.

With little knowledge of the species, she had no difficulty recognizing a member of it. This was a rake.