Chapter Three
Judging by the way Dulverton was glowering at Katie, she would have more luck challenging him to a duel than getting a kiss out of him.
He was even uglier than she’d thought earlier—mesmerizingly so—and Katie found that she could not look away.
He was exceptionally tall, but it wasn’t his height so much as his large-boned build that one noticed first. His jaw looked as if it were carved from granite and his cheekbones were jutting, prominent slabs beneath eyes she now could see were a frosty gray.
His bow-shaped lips might have been attractive if they’d not been compressed into a grim frown.
Katie shook herself, realizing how rudely she’d been gawking. Before she could respond to his abrupt greeting, he barked something in another language. It was not French, which Katie spoke indifferently but understood, and not German, which she did not speak but thought she might recognize.
But regardless of the language, his tone was clear: he had asked her a question and was glowering at her as if she were an idiot for not answering.
Katie opened her mouth to tell him that he had mistaken her for somebody else, but then his harsh features shifted into an even haughtier expression—which she’d not believed possible—and he hurled another incomprehensible series of syllables at her, employing a tone she would not use on a dog, all the while regarding her with a towering, obnoxious superiority that immediately got under her skin.
Heat suffused her body as if she had swallowed a live flame and wrath pulsed through her veins. Katie recognized and dreaded the furious, temperamental emotion that seized control of her, but, as was always the case, she seemed powerless to stop her fury from overwhelming her good sense.
Rather than explain that he had mistaken her identity—as the tiny part of her brain that was still rational suggested—Katie gave him a look of intense loathing and then nodded, as if she agreed with whatever he had just said.
His dark blond eyebrows sank even lower, and an expression of befuddlement colored his harsh features.
For some reason, his perplexity worried her more than anger would have done.
Good God. What had she just agreed to?
You are behaving like an idiot.
Katie briefly squeezed her eyes shut. She was acting like a fool.
She opened her mouth to tell him the truth when—without asking Katie’s permission—he sat down beside her, his massive frame filling the bench.
Katie turned to gawk, lightly brushing against him in the process.
He jerked as if he’d just touched something foul and shoved his massive bulk to the farthest edge of the bench while regarding her with such a look of revulsion that it took her breath away.
Any remorse Katie might have felt over her dishonest behavior fled. What a boorish, priggish, insufferable oaf! Even seated on the same bench he loomed over her, but she refused to allow his sheer bulk to intimidate her, instead sneering and crossing her arms, rudely jostling him in the process.
Once again, he reacted as if Katie had jabbed him with a flaming stick rather than her elbow.
Incensed, she openly examined his face, not caring if he thought her rude.
The light from paper lanterns cast a romantic pinkish-red glow over their intimate rose-encircled bower, but there was nothing romantic about the Duke of Dulverton.
Distinct lines webbed the outside corners of his eerily pale eyes and deep grooves bracketed his stern mouth, making her wonder how old he was.
She was close enough to see that his icy gray irises had a thick dark ring around the outer edge, which made them all the more striking.
In any other face she might have thought them attractive.
But in the Duke of Dulverton’s uncompromising visage, they only added to his severity.
The roughhewn angles of his face brought to mind Viking invaders while his high-bridged beaklike nose would not have looked out of place on an ancient Roman coin.
His brutally short white-blond hair would probably curl if given half a chance.
But Dulverton did not look like the sort of man to tolerate curls.
His posture was taut with tension and his jaw flexed as he eyed her with a mixture of mistrust, impatience, and anger.
His bow-shaped lips were pulled down at the corners in a frown that Katie surmised to be his resting expression.
One side of the bow, she noticed, was slightly higher than the other.
It was a mouth that she could not imagine ever smiling.
Or kissing.
Tonight was only the second time Katie had seen him in the five Seasons she had spent in London. He was notorious for only coming to London when important legislation was under discussion and avoiding ton functions while he was in town.
He did not host dinners or attend parties, and only rarely accepted invitations to dine. The only reason she’d known that he would be here tonight at the Earl of Sutton’s ball was because last night Chatham had mentioned that the reclusive Dulverton would be attending his first ball in years.
That was what had given Katie the brilliant idea of putting his name on her list. She had not expected any of them to actually get close to him. Yet here he was, within kissing distance.
And never had Katie met a less kissable man.
She lifted her gaze from his lips to his eyes and was rendered breathless.
It wasn’t so much the color of them, although that was extraordinary, but the intensity in them.
Only a moment ago she had thought him coldly distant, but now he was looking at her.
Really looking as if she were the only other person in existence.
It was… intoxicating.
Katie squirmed beneath his unwavering gaze.
You had better confess; this is not a man to be trifled with.
But once again he spoke first, uttering a series of staccato words in a language that meant nothing to her, annoyance writ large across his face.
This time it was not irritation that sparked within her but curiosity, an emotion that was far, far rarer.
For the first time in forever—or at least five years—Katie was curious.
And the longer she looked at the haughty, ugly man across from her, the more that spark grew, until it fairly blazed within her.
Just what was he doing sitting on this bench beside her?
His eyebrows drew closer together and then he tilted his head slightly and sniffed the air, just like a hound scenting prey.
It was so silly and unexpected that Katie did something she rarely did these days—at least not genuinely—she smiled.
***
Gerrit had difficulty comprehending other men, but he was especially awkward when it came to understanding women. He could not help thinking that even a normal man or woman would find Lady Mariska’s behavior odd.
He sniffed the air for the scent of alcohol. But if she was intoxicated, she gave off no odor.
Suddenly, she smiled at him—a blazing grin—and Gerrit felt as though a hand had reached into his chest and squeezed his lungs. She was breathtaking, and that was not hyperbole; she actually stole his breath.
Van Renesse had told him that Lady Mariska was tiny, slender, and pretty. The man must not be right in the head. Or perhaps his vision was poor. The woman seated beside him was tall, shapely, and, quite frankly, stunning—nothing like his uncle’s description.
The irritation he’d been nursing toward the older man ebbed the longer he looked at his prospective bride.
Gerrit was nonplussed by the effect of beauty on his ill temper. Never would he have believed that he was so susceptible to a pretty face. To an exquisite face, he amended.
Now if only he could get the blasted woman to talk to him.
Conversation was not one of his strong suits.
In any language. That was why he was willing to allow people like van Renesse and Lady Palmer to conduct his betrothal negotiations for him.
If socializing and charming people—specifically women—came easily to him then he would have found his own damned wife and he would not be sitting beside a mute woman in a garden at a ball in a city he despised.
He allowed himself a lingering look at her, not bothering to hide his frank appraisal even though it was crude and ungentlemanly.
Hell. How could any man resist looking at her?
Her body somehow managed to be both lithe and voluptuous at the same time, the twin globes of her breasts straining her bodice while showcasing the delicate build of her shoulders.
Dress styles seemed to have changed while Gerrit was not paying attention.
Gone, it appeared, were the straight silhouettes.
Lady Mariska’s gown was fitted from her shoulders to a waist so tiny his fingers twitched to encircle it.
She shifted irritably and his gaze lifted to hers. The cold fury in her green catlike eyes was almost enough to stifle his erection.
“Tell me the truth, my lady. Did you respond to my letter?” he asked in Dutch, deciding that speaking in her native language might help settle her ruffled feathers. Although what he had done to ruffle them was a mystery.
Lady Mariska cocked her head. Was there something wrong with her hearing? Or her mind?
You can hardly ask her those questions.
He scowled. Of course he would not ask her that. But how did one find out such information? Doubtless there were subtle ways, but Gerrit was not a subtle man. It was best to begin as he meant to go on. He opened his mouth.
“What language were you just speaking?”
As feminine as she looked, her voice was low, almost gruff, and as appealing as her person.
It was not, however, a Dutch voice.
“You are not Lady Mariska,” he said stupidly, lunging to his feet.
The red-haired imposter smiled again as she gracefully stood, her dark pink lips spreading into an impish smirk, which was every bit as brain rattling as her first smile had been. “I could be Lady Mariska. If you wanted me to be.”
Gerrit’s jaw sagged. Nothing in his prior seven-and-thirty years, one-hundred-and-sixty-nine days prepared him for such a response.
She chuckled throatily at his slack-jawed stupefaction and then closed the distance between them with swift grace, her attractively tilted eyes lowering to his mouth.
Gerrit only realized as her hand warmed his chest through the fabric of his clothing that he had not flinched at her touch.
An unprecedented reaction for an unprecedented situation.
“You have such a stern mouth,” she mused.
And then she reached out and touched his lower lip with one finger.
This time, his body responded in a familiar way and flinched—a reaction that seized him almost every time he was touched by another person—his muscles seizing as tightly as pins in a tumbler lock as he stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief.
And then she pushed up onto her toes and pressed her lips against his.