“Oh, indeed. I think you a woman who knows what you’re about, and it’s rather refreshing. Puts a gentleman a bit behind, in a way—we’re only taught how to converse with silly young women who are searching for husbands. There is never any fun in the conversations. I usually find myself drifting off to some other time and place, I’m afraid.”
“I do that frequently, too. Tell me, what place do you drift away to?”
“The Middle East. I spent most of my childhood and youth there. Egypt and Jerusalem, mostly.”
“Ooh,” she whispered, and heard his neck crack as he whipped his head in her direction. “How I envy you. I have long dreamed of travelling to the East. I might have gone, too, with my brother, if I had not lost my sight.”
There was a period of silence—not borne of discomfort, but of thought. “If you might permit me to call on you, Lady Elizabeth, I would greatly fancy an opportunity to tell you some stories, and draw you a picture of the East through my eyes.”
She did blush then, a flush she hoped wasn’t discernible. While she tried to keep her composure, inside she was dancing for joy. Her emotions were suddenly volatile, something she never permitted herself. But then, she hadn’t allowed herself to think of a future in a long time. “I think that would be most lovely, Lord Sheldon. I anxiously await your call.”
“Will tomorrow do, or does that smack of a sort of desperation?”
“Not desperation,” she said with a smile and a slight lift of her chin. “But an eagerness to share a part of the world that few see, and even fewer Englishmen get to experience.”
“Indeed,” he murmured, and the sound slithered down her spine, awakening something dormant deep inside. Careful now, she warned. It was far too soon for feelings like this. She was being fanciful, allowing herself to be swept away. She had been impulsive and fanciful before, and it had ruined her.
“Zeus appears to be frowning even more now,” he murmured in a most becoming baritone rumble. “Do you think it a reflection upon our unseemly conversation, or is it the way our heads are bent together while we whisper?”
“Oh, dear, are we causing talk?”
She heard the smile in his words. “Talk of any sort is much better than the music we were forced to listen to tonight.”
“Do you not like Mr. Mozart?”
He shrugged; she felt the movement. “I have spent too long in the East. I prefer, I think, or perhaps I have just grown used to, the sounds of the doumbek and the darbuka. There is a haunting sensuality about it. Even having never been there, one may close one’s eyes and listen to the sounds and imagine silk veils and dancers before you. But that is a story for a visit, is it not?”
“Yes,” she said, and frowned slightly when she heard how breathless her voice was. “What is it?” she asked suddenly, aware of a sensation that swept the room. “I hear rumblings.”
“I fear that we were lost to all but our conversation.” The earl shifted beside her and Elizabeth sensed that he half turned away from her. “It appears as though the majordomo is preparing to announce someone.”
“Really?”
“Quite a character, it seems. Decked out like a marauding Scot, actually. Has an expression that would have given Genghis Khan fits of apoplexy.”
“Oh, dear,” she whispered. There was only one character of the ton who fit that description, and she wanted to be far, far away from him. “Well, I think it’s grown rather close in here, don’t you? Perhaps we should heed Zeus’s silent counsel and stroll to where a window might be cracked open, or perhaps a strategically placed terrace door?”
He was very intelligent, the earl was. He took her hand and deftly but discreetly manoeuvred her to the periphery of the room, where she could sense a door awaited their escape.
Suddenly, there was an almost violent brush of air that forced their hands apart. Then Sheldon was snatched from her side, right before she heard the thud of his body hitting something solid.
“I doona know who ye are,” Alynwick growled in his unmistakable brogue, “but yer hands are no’ where they belong.”
The earl tried to reply, but his rasping voice alerted Elizabeth to the fact he couldn’t take in air. The wave of shock from the crowd told her that the Highland beast was either choking him with his bare hands, or had thrust his arm, which she knew was as thick as a tree trunk, against poor Sheldon’s windpipe.
“Stop this at once,” she demanded in a hiss. “You’re making a scene.”
She could feel when those dark eyes landed on her. “I’m making a scene?” he retorted as if accusing her of making tongues wag.
Prickles of awareness raced down her spine, and Elizabeth knew the cause stemmed from the fact that every guest of the Sumners had their eyes fixed firmly on her and the mad marquis. “I insist you stop this now, Alynwick. Everyone will talk.”
“Doona worry, lass, we’ll give them somethin’ tae talk about, because yer leavin’ with me.”
“The devil I am!” she yelped in outrage. “Alynwick, dear God, pay attention to what you’re doing. I can hear Sheldon struggling for air.”
“Sheldon, is it?”
The sound of tussling, of fine wools brushing together, came to her ears, and she thought about throwing herself forward, hopefully between them. But if she fell to her knees, or worse, the floor, it would cause even more of a scene.
“Here now, what’s all this fuss about?” The masculine growl that came next Elizabeth was relieved to hear.
“Sod off, Sussex,” Alynwick muttered.
“Come now, my lord,” her brother said. His voice was smooth and light, but Lizzy heard the edge of warning in it. “We needn’t have such violence here.”
It was a subtle warning to the marquis. The Brethren Guardians, of which her brother and the marquis were both members, did not need this sort of notoriety. Indeed, just by coming to break up the pair, Adrian was putting the Guardians at risk—because no one knew that Sussex, Alynwick and Lord Black shared more than the most polite and distant acquaintance with each other. If the marquis didn’t cease this madness, then everything they had fought to keep from the prying eyes of the ton might very well be in jeopardy.
“Murder at the Musicale,” Sussex drawled. “I can read the headlines in the morning papers. I doubt you’re interested in giving the masses something other than sugar to sweeten their morning tea.”
Alynwick growled something in that familiar beastly way of his. That was followed by another rustle, a rasping gasp and a brush of masculine-scented air that swept past her—Alynwick being shaken off his lordship.
“Apologies, Sheldon. I am quite certain that the Marquis of Alynwick did not mean to introduce himself in such a way.”
“The hell I didn’t!”
“My lord,” Elizabeth whispered, moving a step toward the rasping earl and reaching out for what she thought might be his arm. “Are you all right? Can I summon a footman to fetch you something? A drink, perhaps?”
“Don’t even think to touch him in my presence,” said a dark, menacing voice in her ear. The sound made her shiver, as did the mysterious scent of his Scotch-laced breath washing over her. “If you doona want him torn tae pieces, leave him be.”
She didn’t want this—the marquis standing behind her, crowding her—and she stiffened, discovered the safe barriers she always erected when she found herself in his company. “You are nothing but an animal,” she snapped, careful to make certain no one but Alynwick could hear her outburst. “Unhand me this instant.” But the brute wouldn’t