Chapter Four
Where a single kiss changes everything.
Until one can’t exist another second unless willing to be wrecked by it.
Dom snatched a flute off the tray of a passing footman and downed the champagne with more fury than thirst, the bite of bubbles no match for the tightness coiling in his chest. He’d told Louisa Radcliffe things he’d never told anyone, not even Griff, who had a gift for prying confidences loose.
The duke’s rebellious daughter had unsettled his careful order, slipping into his thoughts, into his dreams, like smoke.
Part of it was her defiance, part of it the reckless spark he recognized too well, and part of it the peril of a woman who met him without flinching, who seemed to see both his failings and his worth and did not look away.
Leaving him with a fierce, unwise yearning, all the more shocking for how quickly it had taken root.
The object of his obsession was across the room, standing far too close to her bloody earl—his competition, should Dom officially enter the race—her shoulder angled just enough to draw a man’s gaze to the tempting line of her bodice.
Harcourt was basking in his own eloquence, hand lifted in an artful gesture.
Dom had a story about him from university he could share, nothing scandalous enough to send Louisa running for the nearest exit, but enough to make his jaw set.
Could she not see he was all surface polish, like most in that gilded circle?
If Dom had closed the deal, a keen talent of his in business but apparently nowhere else, Louisa would be at his side, making his pulse trip like a green schoolboy’s.
He rocked back on his heels, jaw flexing as Harcourt took Louisa’s hand and led her onto the ballroom floor.
She tilted her head toward the earl with the smallest smile, one Dom wanted directed at him, not squandered on a man who wouldn’t understand half of what lay behind it.
Obviously, Bessie hadn’t been pleased to hear he’d botched the tea. (Her words, not his.)
But, then again, his aunt had left out pertinent details.
For one, she hadn’t told him Louisa’s hair was the color of banked embers.
Not merely auburn or the polite copper one praised in drawing rooms, but a living, breathing fire under the chandeliers.
This very moment, he could see the strands catching the candlelight in reckless flashes, making a liar of every dull description he’d heard batted about in those mindless scandal rags.
And her eyes, a startling green lit with a clarity that left a man feeling both seen and measured whether he welcomed it or not.
Bessie had also failed to mention that her charge wielded her wit like a rapier, her intelligence honed by an unyielding sense of her own worth.
Nor had anyone confessed that Lady Louisa Radcliffe possessed the most delectable figure he’d ever witnessed draped in silk.
They muttered “chemist” when they spoke of her, as though it were an oath, when in truth it ought to have been a benediction.
Beauty alone might have undone a lesser man, but the chit was daring—something he’d once been—and this attribute called to Dom even if it shouldn’t.
Like attracted to like, as he’d feared.
The memory of that morning in her mother’s parlor stirred something low and unwise in his heart and his cock, regions he’d tried valiantly to lock in a sealed chest. Sex had never been his failing or his folly, but romantic endeavors didn’t help a man think clearly either.
Sighing, Dom searched for another footman.
He’d called her Lou, for fuck’s sake.
The nickname had slipped out purely because it fit her.
His brain had latched onto the moniker the moment he strolled into her parlor—and with one glance—had the sinking feeling he’d made a critical error in believing he had control of the situation.
He’d gone from thinking it was a sip-and-be-gone tea to actually considering his aunt’s proposal.
His brother’s sage advice chose that instant to echo in his mind: willfulness was hell to manage out of bed, but wonderful in it.
Dom could only imagine, and imagination was proving a dangerous thing. He hadn’t stroked himself to completion this often since he was fifteen. Which left him brooding (his best talent) in the middle of society hell, mentally rehearsing how to ask a woman to waltz for the first time in years.
When he’d never been one for moonlit serenades and dance cards.
In any case, practical arrangements such as the one he and Louisa were considering weren’t about whispered endearments or endless turns about a ballroom.
And yet—
His dreams betrayed him. Of her. Of wanting more. Of a life that wasn’t meant for men like him.
The scrape of a chair leg across marble had Dom turning to find himself encircled by a pair of London’s most enterprising daughters.
One pressed a gloved hand to his arm, her smile knowing, the other all but batting her lashes in time with the strains floating down from the gallery.
They were speaking, compliments, invitations, he wasn’t listening.
He’d been out of this world too long to remember the exact rules, but long enough to know he wanted no part of it.
Over their heads, a flash of ivory caught his eye. Louisa, in a stunning gown the color of winter roses, skirting the edge of the crowd, headed toward the veranda doors. She didn’t glance back. She didn’t have to. He was already on the move.
The cool breath of night met him halfway, loosening the knot in his chest. Should he admit that hordes of people unsettled him? Was that another secret to share?
Outside, the sounds of the ball softened to a distant hum, the air touched with moonlight and the faint mineral scent of a fountain.
This was peace, no prying eyes, no murmured speculation.
Unfortunately, he’d earned every whisper the hard way.
As for the grasping females, the pawing, the glances, the occasional hand clinging to his sleeve or drifting lower without invitation—though he could extend one when attraction called for it—were enough to make a man lock his door and never come out again.
Louisa was there ahead of him, resting on the scrolled lip of the fountain, her gown a pale shimmer that caught his gaze and held it.
In the shadows, the fire of her hair was muted now, a deeper burnished glow, but no less arresting.
The urge to tangle his fingers in the strands and throw them both off balance was wildly persuasive.
He hesitated—one part instinct, one part uncertainty—before striding onto the gravel path.
He’d thought himself immune to the lure of chance.
Clearly, he was wrong.
Women had been circling Dominic Beckett all night, the spectacle enough to send Louisa striding from the ballroom like a frightened debutante, though it was temper, not nerves, driving her.
She wove through the terrace doors and toward the fountain, the cool promise of its water a foil to the heat coiling in her chest.
She’d seen him first.
Wanted him first.
She had no patience for the simpering smiles and fluttering fans angled toward the viscount’s younger brother, as though he were some rare prize on a gaming table. They coveted him because he neither preened nor flirted, his indifference drawing them like moths to a lit taper.
And in the end, she was only another moth.
Why did he have to look more handsome tonight than he had in her mother’s parlor? To find him more attractive than any man in England felt like a dangerous fissure in her facade, one she prayed she could keep from his notice. She hadn’t lost herself over someone, not once, not ever.
In his formal blacks, Dominic was nothing like the soft, overfed men who peacocked their way through the Season.
The cut of his coat traced firm muscle and restless strength, a caged-lion energy that belonged more in Gentleman Jackson’s boxing arena than a chandeliered parlor.
He was a little too lean, with a nervous edge to his stance, one that hinted at motion barely contained.
All evening the ballroom had hummed with talk of him, an infrequent guest to this spectacle, enigmatic, silver-and-black hair tumbling rakishly across his brow.
A little helplessly, she wondered who would marry him if she did not.
As of yet, he hadn’t tossed his hat into the ring.
The breeze chilled her flushed cheeks as she perched on the fountain’s marble rim. Moonlight caught the water in gray-blue arcs, the splash a steady counterpoint to the muffled gaiety behind her. Here, at least, no one would interrupt.
Until the only person in England she wished would did.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel before Dominic appeared, flipping his coattail aside as he settled beside her. “Why pyrotechnics?” he asked without preamble, as if they’d been speaking of it moments ago.
She pressed a startled laugh into her glove, wishing she didn’t enjoy sparring with him.
Louisa turned, her skirt catching on a pick in the marble before she freed the silk with a flick of her fingers.
“At the summer fair in Richmond when I was a girl, they lit a Catherine wheel just as the sun went down. Sparks rained into the river like molten stars, and I remember thinking it must be magic. Until my father told me it was saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, nothing but a quirk of science. It was the first time I realized beauty could be made from fire and powder, if one knew the trick of it. I’ve been trying to harness that trick ever since. ”
He fiddled with his cuff link, another of those almost-hidden smiles tilting his lips. “So not a mere hobby then?”
She frowned, irritated, but not with him. “For a woman, any passion is a ‘mere hobby.’ We’re not allowed more.”