He was beginning to wonder if instead of increasing her interest he’d jumped his fences with that kiss and made his horse bolt. He’d not once caught her looking at him tonight. She was instead doing everything she could to avoid looking at him.
She’d spent the entire night amidst a gaggle of youths – a mix of her female friends and their beaux.
The child she danced with laughed at every word she said. Drew suspected the boy would laugh no matter what she said, and undoubtedly Miss Marlow was bored. But even so her eyes focused intently on her idiotic companion while her female friends fluttered their fans, along with their eyelashes and cast their gazes about the room seeking to hook some unsuspecting male.
Irritation burned in Drew’s veins.
He’d expected Miss Marlow to at least come closer. He’d even given her a clue earlier, by walking past her, suggesting a silent game they could play, passing close without touching, in secret acknowledgement. She had not picked up his gauntlet. She’d left it where it lay, kiss and all, and instead blatantly ignored him.
He leaned his shoulder against the wall silently seething. He’d thought this the victory leg but despite her youth and innocence Miss Mary Marlow was not going to be easily caught.
A challenge. He sighed, suddenly, letting the tension in his muscles ease with his outward breath. A challenge was like a chase, it whispered to his male instincts. He liked to be challenged. What fun would there be in life, if everything came easily?
Raising his glass of wine to his lips he watched her let go of young Warminster’s hand.
Then she turned to take her place in the line of the set. Her eyes lifted, and her gaze reached across the room. It was literally a glance, only an instant, but in that instant their gazes collided. She had looked for him. She had known he was watching her all along and exactly where he stood.
A smile curved his lips as she looked away and began to clap, watching another couple skip along the middle.
You will be my wife, Mary Marlow. You will. And you will beg me to offer for you, when I do.
He was going to change his tactics, though, perhaps she needed a little less subtlety and a little more urging.
* * *
Lord Framlington’s gaze made Mary’s skin prickle on the back of her neck as she looked along the line of dancers. He’d stared at her for an hour. What he expected her to do she did not know. Perhaps he thought she would seek an assignation with him. She could even hear his words in her head, “Come and meet me, Mary, outside where it’s cooler, where it’s quiet”.
It was nonsense of course, she was not psychic. It was her urge. Yet he’d applaud her weak conscience if he heard it and say, “Listen to it, do what you want to do, not what you should”. It was his voice she heard.
“I know you feel the same for me as I feel for you! Stop running and come back to me!” he’d called when she’d run away from him, along the pathway.
How could he know, and how had Lord Framlington managed to invade her thoughts so utterly after one kiss? But it had not just been since his kiss, ever since she’d danced with him she’d heard his voice and seen him in daydreams, and when she slept.
His gaze left her, like a physical touch slipping away.
Mary looked to see him set his half empty glass on the tray of a passing footman before he strolled away, leaving the ballroom, and she presumed the ball.
A sense of desertion tugged somewhere in her stomach and an odd ache settled like a cloak about her heart.
Was that it then? Was it over? Had she spurned him successfully? That had been her intention, to cut him dead and she’d succeeded until that final moment when she’d dropped her guard and glanced his way.
Perhaps he’d taken the hint regardless and tired of playing with her. There were a dozen other heiresses on the market, she was not his only choice.
But you are his choice. Her traitorous, wicked heart thought it a compliment that a man of Framlington’s looks and reputation wanted her as his wife.
“Idiot,” Mary said aloud, to her heart. Unfortunately as the dance drew to a close, Derek heard it too when he took her arm to walk her to her parents.
“What have I done to deserve that charge? Did I step on your toes?”
Patting his arm she shook her head, forming the false smile she’d relied on tonight. “I was speaking to myself, sorry. I agreed to dance with two partners for the supper set, I will have to apologise to someone.”
He accepted the excuse, without hesitation. Why would he not? Mary had not been in the habit of lying, until the day of the Jerseys’ garden party. Now she had lied twice.
When she reached her parents Lord Derek gave her knuckles a chaste kiss and bowed. The kiss did nothing to her innards. Unlike the kiss on her lips that had twisted in her stomach like someone hurriedly coiling embroidery threads.
Physical memories clawing at her soul, the room spun and Mary longed for home. The burden of pretence was too tiring.
“Mary, is something wrong?” Her gaze lifted to meet her father’s.
“I have the headache.” If sulking made her pathetic she did not care. “May we go home?”
“Already, we have not even eaten supper?”
“I know, Papa, but my head hurts.” Her fingers pressed to her temple. It throbbed with the pain of bottled up tears. She wished to cry over her insanity.
His brow furrowed and his fingers stroked her upper arm gently. “We will get you home.”
“I must use the retiring room first though, Papa.”
“Very well, you go up. I shall have the carriage called for, and tell your mother. We shall await you in the hall.”
Mary turned away, her head pounding. She felt a little sick as she climbed the stairs. The retiring room was quiet. Her mother’s maid was not there; she must have already been told they were leaving.
As Mary left the room, her fingers shook and she walked along the silent hall, with her thoughts screaming.
“Miss Marlow.” Her arm was gripped, firmly and she was pulled aside, into an alcove, and then pressed back against the wall as Lord Framlington’s mouth came down on hers.
She lifted her arms about his neck instinctively kissing him back with a longing that raged through her and took away the pain in her head, but then common-sense prevailed and she let him go, gripped his shoulders and pushed him away, whispering. “What do you think you are doing?”
“You have been playing a good game of ignoring me, but we both know you cannot. As I cannot ignore you.” His breath brushed over her lips his voice low and quiet. She would have turned and walked away but he gripped her wrist and held her still.
“Miss Marlow. Mary. Darling. Do not deny this. I know what you feel, because I feel it too.”
“I feel nothing.”
“And that is why you kissed me a moment ago, and at that garden party. You feel. You want. But I cannot come to you in a place like this, so if you want what I can give you, you will have to come to me…”
“What you give—”
“Kisses, darling. Happiness. A life filled with moments like this. You know I am looking for a wife, I know your brother has told you—”
“Most men do not look for a wife in the shadows of a hallway, or a narrow garden path—”
“I am not seeking any wife, I am seeking you, and if you wish to explore that, you will have to come