Distaste? Sebastian remembered being dazzled by her exceptional beauty. But distaste? Never!
He shook his head. ‘I believe you are mistaken, My Lady.’
‘I do not think so,’ she maintained stubbornly.
‘You are calling me a liar?’ His voice was dangerously soft.
‘I am merely stating what I saw,’ she retorted.
‘What you think you saw,’ he corrected firmly. ‘Am I to infer from these remarks that you would prefer not to stroll in the gardens with me tomorrow?’ he asked dryly.
The Countess glanced at him quizzically, a frown between those mesmerising green eyes. ‘My preference, My Lord, is for you to leave me in peace,’ she finally murmured. ‘Coming here at all was a serious error of judgement on my part. In fact, I am seriously thinking of making my excuses and leaving in the morning.’
Sebastian had only subjected himself to the tiresomeness of this house party because he was intent on seducing this woman—he certainly had no intention of allowing her to escape so easily!
‘Are you not being a little over-hasty, Lady Boyd?’ His tone was pleasantly cajoling now. ‘I believe Dolly told me that this is your first venture back into Society since your time of mourning came to an end. Is that so?’
After the awkwardness of this evening it was likely to be Juliet’s last venture into Society, too!
She liked Dolly immensely, and had always found the other woman a complete antidote to the formality of the stuffy rules that so often abounded at any occasion attended by the ton. But if Dolly believed she was doing Juliet a kindness by casting one of her own lovers into Juliet’s path, then she was under a serious misapprehension. The attentions of a man such as Sebastian St Claire—a renowned rake and a flirt, and moreover several years her junior—was the last thing Juliet needed to complicate her life. Now or at any other time.
‘I do not consider my decision any of your business, My Lord.’
‘No?’ He quirked mocking brows. ‘You do not think it would cause embarrassment for Dolly if you were to leave so soon after your arrival?’
Juliet raised a cool eyebrow of her own. ‘On the contrary, My Lord, I believe I will be saving Dolly from further embarrassment by removing myself from her home at the earliest opportunity.’
‘So your intention is to run back to the safety of your estate in Shropshire at the first hint of opposition?’ Sebastian needled.
Juliet gasped. ‘You go too far, sir!’
He appeared completely unruffled by her anger. Instead he leant forward to place his hand on her gloved one as it rested on the tabletop, his lips a mere whisper away from the pearl-adorned lobe of her ear as he whispered, ‘My dear Countess, I have not even begun to go too far where you are concerned!’
Juliet felt the colour come into and then as quickly fade from her cheeks as she looked up and saw the flirtatious intent in that whisky-coloured gaze. How dared he talk to her in this familiar way?
‘You are causing a scene, sir,’ she snapped as she deftly extricated her hand from beneath his. ‘I believe it might be better, for both our sakes, if you were to refrain from talking to me for the rest of the evening.’
He gave a wicked smile. ‘Will that not look a little strange, when we have seemed to be getting along so well together?’
‘Seemed is the correct word, sir,’ Juliet assured him frostily. ‘This conversation is now at an end.’ She moved slightly in her seat, so that her shoulder was firmly turned against him, and began to converse with her host about the expectations of the weather for the forthcoming week.
She had never before met a man such as Sebastian St Claire. A man so forthright in his manner. A man who refused to listen to or accept the word no.
Juliet had always accompanied Edward to London in spring for the Season, attending such parties and balls with him as he had deemed necessary, and giving a ball herself towards the end of the Season, to which all suitable members of the ton had been invited. Lord Sebastian St Claire had not been amongst her guests.
St Claire’s eldest brother, the haughty Duke of Stourbridge, had several times been invited to dine privately with them, and Juliet could see a certain resemblance between the two brothers in colouring, and in that inborn air of arrogance. But young rakes such as Sebastian St Claire had not entered into Edward’s lofty circle of acquaintances, nor consequently, Juliet’s own.
Even as she continued to talk to the Earl of Banford, their conversation soon including his mother, the Dowager Countess, Juliet found her attention wandering as she wondered what Edward would have made of the young Lord St Claire.
He would not have approved of him.
No, he was too young. Too irresponsible. Too rakish. Too everything that Edward had disapproved of.
Suddenly that realisation was enough for Juliet to want to make a friend of St Claire, in spite of her own reservations!
The candle was still alight in Juliet Boyd’s bedchamber when Sebastian stepped out onto his balcony to enjoy a last cigar before retiring to his bed, but the lace curtains once again made it impossible for him to see the occupant of the room, and whether or not she was already abed.
It had certainly been an interesting evening, if a frustrating one. That frank, almost intimate conversation with the Countess had been enjoyable, but it had been followed by the irritation of having her completely ignore him for the rest of the meal—as she had stated she intended doing. Even more frustrating, she had disappeared completely by the time the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, after enjoying several glasses of excellent port.
Would she carry out her threat to leave in the morning?
Sebastian had come to realise this evening that in her acceptance of Dolly’s invitation, and by placing herself at the very centre of Society, which had judged and condemned her a year and a half ago, Juliet Boyd was being an exceptionally brave woman—but he had not expected her to be quite such a stubborn one, too!
Yet, if anything, that stubbornness—the way the sting of her anger had brought the colour to her cheeks and given her eyes the appearance of glittering emeralds—had only succeeded in deepening Sebastian’s interest in her…
Dolly would have to talk to her, somehow persuade her into staying…
The faint click of a door catch warned Sebastian that he would soon cease to be alone. He dropped his cigar and ground it beneath his shoe, then moved back into the shadows mere seconds before the doors of the Countess’s bedchamber opened and she stepped out onto her balcony.
Sebastian’s breath caught and held in his throat as she moved forward to stand next to the balustrade and look up at the bright starlit sky.
This venture out onto her balcony before retiring had been one of pure impulse, Sebastian had no doubt. She was prepared for bed: her hair—those glorious dark curls that he had earlier imagined cascading over her creamy shoulders and down her back when it was released—actually reached the whole length of her spine to rest against her shapely bottom. It was stunning—so thick and dark, and bathed with silver by the moon shining overhead. She wore a robe of pale green silk over a matching nightgown, but with the moonlight shining down so brightly even the two items together could not disguise the fullness of her unconfined breasts beneath, nor the gentle curve of her waist and temptingly rounded bottom above long and slender legs.
She was desire incarnate.
A goddess…
‘Who is there?’
Sebastian had no idea what he had done to give himself away. Drawn in an unconscious breath at the sight of her beauty? Or perhaps