Chapter 2 #2
She blinked those extraordinary eyes. Her lashes were darker than her hair, he noticed, but still quite pale. It gave her an otherworldly look.
“Why? Because I mentioned your looks? I beg your pardon if I’ve made you self-conscious. It’s only your face, you see, and your general…” She gave a vague wave that seemed to encompass all of him at once. “Your general everything. I was caught off guard. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”
Fitz felt once more as though he were sinking beneath the chaotic, rushing waters of the brook, but this time a delicate, gloved hand was holding him under.
“No, not about my looks,” he choked out.
“At least, it’s not entirely the done thing to tell a gentleman you fancy his face, but it’s more flattering than not.
I meant the comment about my eligibility for marriage. ”
“Oh!” She looked intrigued, as though her fingers itched for a pencil so she could take notes. “Ought I to have pretended not to know? I didn’t realize it was a shameful secret.”
Amused, and also feeling a bit as though he was losing his mind, Fitz had to bite his lip against a smile.
He didn’t want to encourage her. “I’m not ashamed.
Indeed, reaching almost my thirtieth year without having been snaffled by a matchmaking mama is an accomplishment of which I am justifiably proud. ”
“You’re an inspiration to all your friends and relations, I’m sure.
” The wench had the audacity to pat his arm patronizingly.
“But I did not ask Mrs. Lamington to introduce us so that we could discuss your appearance, nor your chances of succumbing to matrimony. Let me set your mind at ease: handsome or not, I have no interest in marrying you.”
“No?” Against his will, Fitz was beginning to rather enjoy this bizarre interaction. “In that case, I’m charmed to make your acquaintance. If your purpose is not marriage, then to what do I owe the pleasure of this conversation?”
“You misunderstand. Marriage is, in fact, my purpose.” Her violet gaze sharpened, sending a bolt of something alarming—and electrifying—down Fitz’s spine. “Tell me about your father, the Marquess of Huntingdon. Lord Alfred. He is a widower, is he not?”
* * *
Even with his jaw dropped and his gray eyes going first comically wide, then suspiciously narrow, Lord Fitzwilliam was unfairly and inconveniently handsome.
Somehow, even after all the time she’d spent charting his progress across the ballrooms of London, it had caught her unawares.
She couldn’t believe she’d just blurted it out like that.
Luckily he seemed barely to have noticed.
She supposed a man that handsome must be quite used to hearing about it from every lady he met.
She frowned, not altogether pleased with the idea.
Lord Fitzwilliam was frowning now, too, his affably handsome face hardened into a sternness that sent an unwelcome pulse of delicious awareness through her belly.
She thought she’d accounted for every variable when she conceived of her plan, including Lord Fitzwilliam’s personality. But she hadn’t accounted for the difficulties of managing her own attraction to him, once all of his warm, encompassing attention fell upon her.
It was one thing to take note of a man’s objectively pleasing countenance and other physical characteristics generally deemed to denote attractiveness, such as long, strongly muscled limbs and a deep chest. It was quite another to allow one’s precious objectivity to waver!
To find oneself actually affected. In a physical sense. It was mortifying. And deeply inconvenient, considering her plans.
Which weren’t going well, if the fierce expression Lord Fitzwilliam turned on her now was anything to judge by.
“The Marquess of Huntingdon is, indeed, a widower,” he informed her coldly, drawing himself up to his full, impressive height and staring down that lovely straight nose.
“And as you have seen fit to be uncommonly blunt with me, I will do you the courtesy of responding in kind. My father may be the bane of my existence in many respects, but he is a good man. A good father. And I won’t stand idly by while a…
a…an adventuress sets her cap at his fortune and title in his twilight years! ”
“Adventuress!” Caroline’s attention snagged on the word. “I quite like that.”
When his face darkened even further, like a storm blowing in over the cliffs of St. Kilda, Caroline hurriedly adopted a more placating tone. “Not that I am one! Not in the sense you mean, at least.”
“When a young lady as beautiful as you, who could have any gentleman she crooked her finger at, expresses interest in a man more than twice her age—you will pardon me, but it doesn’t take a brilliant mind to deduce the source of her interest. Or do you intend to claim love at first sight?”
Caroline found it surprisingly difficult to ignore the tingle she felt at the knowledge that he found her beautiful.
A bit giddy, her rapid-firing brain leapt over the first part of what he’d said to seize upon the concept that most interested her.
“Love at first sight! What a fascinating notion. I would need to review the available evidential studies and research, but I do not believe its existence has been conclusively proved. Although in nature, one often finds that the courtship and mating rituals of the animal kingdom, while complex and fascinating, tend to be of shorter duration than those of humans. So perhaps there is something in it.”
His dark brows drew together in a look she’d encountered quite often when she spoke about her studies with people outside her field: bemused confusion.
A prickle of embarrassment singed the tips of her ears.
Caroline hadn’t spent much time in what was termed Polite Society; a few days dining and socializing with the upper classes of Lisbon or Vienna or Rome, while her father secured permission or funding for one research study or another, was the extent of her experience.
And that had been quite enough for her, since most well-bred gentlemen had little or no understanding of her interests, and even less of a desire to hear about them.
It seemed London society was no different.
“I apologize for straying from the topic at hand,” she said, a little stiffly. “Your father—”
“Not here,” he muttered, glancing around the crowded ballroom. Taking her by the arm, he skillfully maneuvered them to a secluded corner, so smoothly Caroline had no time to protest. Not that she wished to, precisely.
Screened from the view of their fellow guests by the slender fronds of a rather magnificent Ravenea rivularis, Caroline’s breath caught in her lungs.
They were not private—people danced and laughed and chattered obliviously on, mere paces away.
But somehow, it suddenly felt as though they were the only two people at the ball.
As though they could do anything they wished, and no one would know.
Curiosity, a so-called sin she had been encouraged in all her life, reared its head. Caroline waited to see what Lord Fitzwilliam was about.
The moment stretched between them, taut with tension.
His gray eyes raked her from head to toe, making Caroline desperately aware of her body in a way that reminded her of how she felt after a long, arduous scramble over rocky terrain.
She was aware of every beat of her blood, the shortness of her breath, the damp heat that rose to the surface of her skin.
They stared at one another in silence for a moment longer, just long enough for Caroline to become as aware of his large, finely made body as she was of her own. Finally, he spoke.
“I have no idea what you’re going on about, but you will leave my father out of your schemes, madame,” Lord Fitzwilliam commanded, and there was a growl in his voice that seemed to come from deep in his chest. It shivered over Caroline’s skin like a rough caress even as she fought to hold onto her equanimity.
Her plans were too important to give up simply because this man wished it.
“Ah, but I can’t promise that. He is an integral part of my plan.”
His eyes flared with some strong emotion, but his sensually shaped lips curved into a smile. “You brazen little hussy.”
Caroline felt the back of her neck go warm, but she met his gaze boldly. “Why, Lord Fitzwilliam, you sound almost impressed.”
“Because I am! This is a level of husband-hunting to which most young ladies can only aspire. I feel I am in the presence of a human Diana, the goddess of the hunt. Except, of course, for the bacon-brained tactic you’ve undertaken of involving your prey’s son in your plot.”
Impatience throttled her. He seemed determined to misrepresent her purpose. “If you would only listen for a moment and let me explain—”
Bracing one arm on the wall above her head, Lord Fitzwilliam loomed so close, the buttons of his embroidered waistcoat brushed the front of her gown. “There is nothing you could say that would induce me to deliver my father into your clutches. However, there is, perhaps, something you could do.”
His tone had gone dark and soft, like black velvet rubbing against every inch of Caroline’s exposed flesh. That sensation returned, of being extremely aware of her body and its surging excitement. Her heart felt as though it was trying to hammer through her rib cage to reach him.
He still didn’t understand what she was trying to accomplish and she knew she ought to make him listen, but for once in her life Caroline found that rational thought had quite deserted her. It was such an odd, unaccustomed feeling that she decided to follow where it led.
The wall behind her was cool and blessedly solid as she leaned against it and tilted her face up to his. “What do you want me to do?”
Hunger blazed across his face, transforming the chiseled perfection of his handsome features into a feral mask.
A shudder wracked Caroline’s frame, tightening her nipples to hard peaks inside her chemise.
Between her legs, she felt suddenly hot, slippery, and she shifted her thighs restlessly to chase the sensation.
“Kiss me,” he rasped, his stare devouring. “One kiss. To show me what a brazen little hussy might offer up in return for help securing a marquess.”
Caroline’s gaze dropped to his lips. She swallowed, distantly noting the way her own mouth felt tender and sensitive, as if yearning toward something. Without conscious volition, her body drew closer to his.
Utterly transfixed by her own response, Caroline let her arms lift as they seemed to want to do, so that her hands could glide over the broad slope of his shoulders, feeling the shape of the man beneath the fine wool coat.
Her fingers clutched at thick muscle, greedy, tugging him down toward her until their quick, shallow breaths mingled and her lips parted and she stood on tiptoe and all the questions she’d ever had about mating and courtship and the bonds that drew two creatures together swirled into her head, and out again on the next breath.
If she did this, if she kissed him, she sensed she would finally have the answers to those questions.
How could she resist? Caroline stretched up onto her tiptoes, curling one hand around the nape of his neck for balance and cursing the damned glove that was in the way of feeling the silky brush of his hair against her skin.
“One kiss,” she breathed, gripped with feverish anticipation. “For science.”
He didn’t question her motives or wait for further permission. One large hand came up to cradle her face, then he tipped her head to the perfect angle to slot their lips together in a searing, breathtaking, mind-stealing kiss.
No wonder people make such fools of themselves for passion, she realized dazedly…if this is what it feels like.