She knew he was watching her, though he excelled at seeming not to. In the last hour, though, he’d shed the pretense. He’d been prowling the ballroom, his friend trailing him like a shadow—a talkative one, by the looks of it.
Then at last the Duke of Clevedon’s seemingly casual wanderings brought him to her.
Men crowded about her, as they had from the instant she’d satisfied the ladies’ curiosity. He seemed not to notice the other men. He simply walked toward her, and it was as though a great ship sailed into port. The pack of men offered no resistance. They simply gave way, as though they were mere water under his hull.
She wondered if that was what it had been like, once upon a time, for her grandfather, when he was young and handsome, a powerful nobleman of an ancient family. Had the world given way before him, and had it likewise never occurred to him that the world would do anything else?
“Ah, there you are,” Clevedon said, as though he’d stumbled upon her by accident.
“As you see,” she said. “I have not shredded the curtains, or scratched the furniture.”
“No, I reckon you’re saving your claws for me,” he said. “Well, then, shall we dance?”
“But Madame has promised this next dance to me,” said Monsieur Tournadre.
Clevedon turned his head and looked at him.
“Or perhaps I misunderstood,” said Monsieur Tournadre. “Perhaps it was another dance.”
He backed away, as a lesser wolf would have withdrawn before the leader of the wolf pack.
Oh, she ought not to be thrilled. Only a giddy schoolgirl would thrill at a man’s snarling over her, the way a wolf snarled when another wolf dared to approach his bitch.
Still, this was the most desirable man in the ballroom, and his little show of possessiveness would have excited any woman in the room. Whatever else she was, she was still a woman, and a young one, and for all her worldly experience, she’d never had a peer of the realm warn another man away from her.
Before she could tell herself not to be a ninny, he led her out into the dancing. Then his hand clasped her waist, and hers settled on his shoulder.
And the world stopped.
Her gaze shot to his and she saw in his green eyes the same shock that made her draw in her breath and stop moving. She’d danced with a dozen other men. They’d held her in the same way.
This time, though, the touch of his hand was an awareness so keen it hummed over her skin. She felt it deep within, too, a strange stillness. Then her heart lurched into beating again, and she gathered her wits.
Her face smoothed into a social mask and his did, too. Their free hands clasped in the next same instant, and he swung her into the dance.
They danced for a time in silence.
He wasn’t ready to speak. He was still shaken by whatever it was that had happened at the start of the dance.
He knew she’d felt it, too—though he couldn’t say what it was.
At the moment, her attention was elsewhere, not on him. She was looking past his shoulder, and he could look down and study her. She was not, truly, a great beauty, yet she gave that impression. She was handsome and striking and absolutely different.
Her dark hair was modishly arranged, yet in a slightly disarranged way. Had they been elsewhere, he would have dragged his fingers through it, scattering the pins over the floor. The slight turn of her head showed a small, perfect ear from whose lower lobe dangled a garnet earring. In that other place, elsewhere, he would have bent and slid his tongue along the delicate little curve.
But they were not in another place, and so they danced, round and round, and with every turn the familiar waltz grew darker and stranger and hotter.
With every turn he grew more intensely aware of the warmth of her waist under his gloved hand, of the way the heat made her creamy skin glow a tantalizing pink under the dewy sheen, and the way the heat enhanced her scent: the fragrance of her skin mingled with the jasmine she wore so lightly. It was a mere hint of scent in a warm and crowded room thick with them, but he was aware, keenly aware, only of hers.
In the same way he was distantly cognizant of dancers moving about them, a whirl of colors set off by the blacks and greys and whites of the men’s dress. But all this glorious color faded to a blur, while below him and about him was a swirl of pale gold, pink-tinged like desert sands at dawn, dotted with red bows trembling like poppies in a summer breeze. Nearer still was the black lace, wafting in the air with every movement.
At last she looked up at him. He saw the heat glowing in her face, the throb of the pulse at her neck, and he was aware, without needing to look precisely there, of the rapid rise and fall of her bosom.
“I’ll give you credit,” she said, her husky voice slightly breathless. “Of all the ruses you might have tried, that was one I never considered. But then, I’ve never thought of myself as anybody’s pet.”
“I presented you as an exotic,” he said.
“I take exception to the part about the leash,” she said.
“It would be an elegant leash, I assure you,” he said. “Studded with diamonds.”
“No, thank you,” she said. “I take exception as well to your behaving as though you won me in a wager, when in fact you lost—and not for the first time.” Her dark gaze swept up to the top of his head and down, pausing at his neckcloth, and leaving a wash of heat behind. “That’s a pretty emerald.”
“Which you shall not have,” he said. “No wagers with you this night. We may yet be cast out. The Vicomtesse de Montpellier showed me the business card you gave her. Did no one ever point out to you the difference between a social function and a business function? This is not an institutional banquet of the Merchant Taylors’ Company.”
“I noticed that. The tailors would be better dressed.”
“Are you blind?” he said. “Look about you.”
She threw a bored glance about the room. “I saw it all before.”
“We’re in Paris.”
“I’m talking about the men, not the women.” Her gaze came back to him. “Of all the men here, you are the only one a London tailor would not be ashamed to acknowledge as his client.”
“How relieved I am to have your approval,” he said.
“I did not say I approve of you altogether,” she said.
“That’s right. I forgot. I’m a useless aristocrat.”
“You have some uses,” she said. “Otherwise I should not be courting you.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“You keep forgetting,” she said. “This party. You. This is all business to me.”
He had forgotten. She’d wanted to come to this ball to observe. She would have come without him but for their wager—though that had been less a wager than a war of wills.
“How could I forget?” he said. “I could scarcely believe my eyes when my friends showed me the business cards you handed out as though they were party favors.”
“Has your exotic pet embarrassed you, monsieur le duc? Does the odor of the shop offend your nostrils? How curious. As I recall, you were the one who insisted on bringing me. You taunted me with cowardice. Yet you—”
“It would be vulgar to strangle you on the dance floor,” he said. “Yet I am sorely tempted.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You haven’t had this much fun in an age. You told