Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nicholas bit back his glower as he crossed the ballroom to speak with some vaguely familiar gentleman from his Eton days. Isadora had almost immediately found a group of willing admirers, and yet another of them was leading her out to the dance floor.
He gritted his teeth.
This was entirely his doing. In fact, it was what he had hoped for; he had taken a step back under the full understanding that someone else would take over that role.
She was a beautiful woman and a duchess to boot—there were few men in the world who would not be at least passingly allured by the prospect of stealing her attention for a dance.
But the sourer fact was, she had given her attention—and rather willingly. No sooner had he left her company than she had dismissed him entirely.
Also his fault. Precisely what he had told himself he’d wanted. It wasn’t as though he hoped she would be miserable the rest of the night.
The next round of dances began, and he resigned himself to another full half hour of dull conversation and watching his wife dance with other men.
She laughed, gliding elegantly about the room, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. Every time they whispered something to her, she responded in kind, with spirit. Not flirting precisely, but very clearly enjoying their company.
Excusing himself, he went to get a drink.
And then, because he couldn’t help himself, he leaned against the wall and watched Isadora’s progress.
There was a hungry, possessive feeling in his chest, and he knew if he did not appease it somehow, it would rage larger and larger, until he could no longer control it.
With Grace, it had never been like this.
He had wanted her, loved her, but he had never felt the need to glare after her possessively as she mingled about a room filled with other gentlemen.
When she’d received admiration, he had viewed it as belonging to him, in a way.
Their marriage was so compromised that he had almost taken the credit for her achievements.
He had already considered her his, so he had never felt the need to claim her in front of others.
Isadora was no more his than the transient stars in the sky, for all the terms of the law claimed her for his own.
As soon as the dance ended, he crossed the room to where yet another gentleman was propositioning his wife.
That ugly feeling erupted in his chest again—the desire to make her his.
“Isadora,” he muttered low, interrupting them and not caring in the slightest. “Dance with me.”
She arched a brow at him. “Are you asking me, sir?”
“No. I’m telling you that I have claimed the next dance.” He reached for her hand, taking it firmly in his. “Excuse us,” he said to the gentleman, whom he now recognized as Lord Rupert, the man who had shared his first dance with Isadora.
Without meaning to, he had kept a running tally of names.
Lord Rupert just smiled, as though something were terribly funny, and inclined his head, “Yes, Your Grace.” He bowed to Isadora. “Your Grace.”
“My lord,” she replied with far more warmth in her voice than she had used tonight with Nicholas. He felt that restless, itchy feeling again. When she turned her gaze to him, it was cold.
“I thought you claimed you don’t dance,” she mumbled.
“I changed my mind.”
“First, you humiliate me by leaving me alone at my first ball as a married woman, and then you chase away those who did deign to pay me attention.” She removed her hand from his. “Perhaps I don’t feel like dancing.”
This was nothing more than he deserved, and yet he felt it like a blow to the gut. His pride took a hit, but this went deeper than mere pride. “You would deny me?”
“You denied me.”
“I—” Frustrated, he raked a hand through his hair, then looked back at her. “I have done my best to be patient, Isadora, but I have reached the limit of my endurance.”
“Oh, so you have no desire to dance with me yourself, but you would rather no one else did?” That brow arched still further. “You wish to make me as miserable as you yourself seem?”
Oliver’s gleeful words came back to him then, ‘You don’t want anyone else to have her either… poor woman.’
Nicholas shook his head and gritted his teeth. “I wish to dance with my wife.” The words almost tore out of him. “And I—I regret the way I walked away from you before. So would you please do me the honor of dancing the next set with me?”
For a moment, he thought she might turn him down again purely out of petty vindictiveness, and he didn’t know what he would do if she so publicly gave him the cut. But, to his relief, she slipped her delicate hand in his and allowed him to lead them both out to where a waltz was taking place.
“Was that an apology?” she murmured.
“Yes. Do you accept?”
Her chin rose a little. “Accepting does not make me less angry with you.”
“You hardly seemed to suffer in my absence,” he said wryly.
“What do you know of how I suffered?” She stepped closer into his body, and he placed a hand on her waist. This was not something he could have borne to watch from the sidelines. “You were not there in my head.”
“No, but I was watching you fairly closely.”
“I suppose I ought to be honored, Your Grace.”
He blew out a breath. “You know you are the most stunning woman in the room. Why push things?”
“Do I?” She raised her gaze to his face as they began to dance, the steps ancient but familiar.
He ached to hold her closer still, to wrap his arms around her so she could not escape.
Flighty thing—he had the notion she would flutter away before he could even make the attempt. “Do I know that, Nicholas?”
Finally, they were back on first-name terms. “Should you not? Look around yourself, Isadora.”
“And yet, the man whom I would suppose to be most inclined to notice my appearance mentioned nothing of it.”
“You…” He frowned. “That matters to you?”
“Of course it matters to me! Do you think your opinion means nothing?”
He opened his mouth, and shut it again. In truth, it had not occurred to him that his opinion mattered much at all. He was her husband, certainly—but he was only a man, and he had just watched half the men of Yorkshire trample their own dignity tonight for the favour of a quarter-hour at her side.
“Then I’m sorry,” he mumbled like a sheepish schoolboy. “I hadn’t meant to offend you.”
She sniffed and looked away, and he gathered her closer until there was no daylight left between them. His hand slid to the small of her back. She stiffened, and her chin came up. “What are you doing?”
“Making certain every man here knows who you belong to.” It came out lower than he’d meant it, closer to a warning, and her pupils dilated.
“Are you jealous?”
No. The word sat on his tongue, but he stopped himself before he could say it, the denial ringing hollow in his mind.
“I want everyone to know you’re mine,” he said eventually. “That is a husband’s prerogative, is it not?”
“Then it is a wife’s prerogative that everyone know you are mine as well,” she murmured.
That was a new thought. He blinked down at her, wondering, but she met him without flinching. “I belong to no one else.”
“But you do belong to me. Which means you can’t abandon me in the middle of a ballroom and only dance with me when it suits you. You cannot have it both ways, Nicholas.”
“Very well.” He whirled her off the dance floor and to a quiet corner, ignoring the gazes that turned their way.
Amid the shadow of a pillar, her back pressed against the wall, and her chin tilted up to look at him.
Somewhere behind him the fiddles thinned to nothing and the ballroom guttered out at its edges, and there was only this: her throat, her breath, the damask at her waist under his gloved hand.
Time seemed to slow as he gazed down at her, his heart pounding in his chest, and want climbing around him. He hadn’t meant to put them in this position, but he was tired of being stuck in the middle of the room having this conversation when he wanted a modicum of privacy.
Her eyes went limpid in the taper-light. The anger had drained out of them and left something dark and unguarded in its place, and her breath flowered warm across his jaw, and he understood he had already leaned in.
He could no more stop than he could count all the stars in the sky.
Her lips parted, as though by invitation, and her fist closed in his lapel. “Nicholas?” she whispered.
Orange blossom. Soap. The thrum of his own pulse in his ears, and he thought if he kissed her here in front of half of Yorkshire he would not stop, would not know how.
If only they were alone… Then he might have a chance of doing all the things to her he had been craving.
He could push her skirts up her thighs, learn all the things she liked. He could make her beg.
Yes, he would like that—very much.
Her fist tightened on his coat, drawing him closer. She smelled so good, and—
“Excuse me, Your Grace?” The voice came from behind, and Nicholas could have struck the man for daring to interrupt him now. With one final glance at Isadora, he stepped back from her and glared at the intruder.
“What is it?”
The fellow quivered, plainly wishing himself elsewhere, and Nicholas would have been glad to assist him. “My apologies, Your Grace. But you dropped this.” He held out both Nicholas’s card and the roll of notes accompanying it. For a second, Nicholas just stared.
How had he come to drop such a thing?
But he would rather have yielded that money than have to stop their private moment.
Then again, perhaps it was a good thing someone interrupted. He glanced back at Isadora, flushed and pretty and indescribably tempting. Kissing her here and now would be a veritable mistake.
“Thank you,” he said to the man, and tucked the roll of money back into his pocket.
He had considered going to the tavern cellar after this, and it was always worth having some spare change on hand for that.
After all, when he ventured out as Will, the pugilist, he could not have his fob, rings, or diamond neckcloth pin as potential payment held in lieu.
Isadora appeared to gather herself, brushing down her skirts, flushed to the collarbone and looking anywhere but at him. “I think I’ve had enough for tonight,” she murmured. “Might I return home?”
Across the other side of the room, her aunt and uncle were approaching, clearly hoping to gain her time or attention or something of a rather more material gain.
He took her hand. She glanced up, startled, but his eyes were on the Chesters. “Come with me.”
“Nicholas?”
“You needn’t say a word to them.”
She peeked at him, cheeks flushing, and he caught a glimpse of relief in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.
He merely nodded, leading her toward the exit. Every few steps, someone stopped them to exchange a word or bid them farewell. Nicholas did the talking, although Isadora lit up for everyone except her aunt, who fluttered an imperious hand from the crush.
“Isadora?” she called, the command in her voice grating along Nicholas’s skin. “A moment? Surely you are not too busy to spare a moment for your aunt, after everything we did for you?”
Schooling his expression with a sigh, Nicholas turned and set himself between them. “Thank you, but we were just leaving.”
“Your Grace.” Isadora’s aunt smiled uncertainly. “You have certainly been very busy these past weeks. But surely you can tell Isadora to visit her family once in a while. We miss her, you know!”
“Do you?” Nicholas said blandly. “I had understood you found her an inconvenience before she married well. However, I shall be sure to pass the message along. Shall we, Isadora?”
Without waiting for an answer, he left the ballroom, practically pulling her after him in his wake.