Chapter Seven
“You look as though you’re contemplating murder.”
William did not dignify Worthington’s observation with a response. He was too busy watching Edmund Alcott lean toward Eliza Hayfield with the solicitous attention of a man who had identified his quarry and was moving in for the kill.
Not that Alcott would describe it that way. Alcott was respectable. Alcott was honourable. Alcott was the second son of a viscount with a modest fortune and excellent prospects, the sort of man mothers dreamed of for their daughters, steady, kind, utterly without scandal.
Alcott was also, at this precise moment, making Eliza laugh.
William’s hand tightened around his glass of champagne until he was vaguely surprised the stem didn’t shatter.
“Will.” Worthington’s voice carried a note of genuine concern. “You are going to draw attention.”
“I am always drawing attention. It is rather the point of being me.”
“You are drawing the wrong kind of attention. Half the room has noticed you glaring at Alcott as though he has personally offended you.”
“He has personally offended me.”
“By speaking to a young lady at a musicale? That is generally considered acceptable behaviour.”
“By speaking to that young lady.” William watched Alcott offer Eliza a glass of lemonade. Lemonade, the same drink she had been holding when William first saw her. Something about Alcott giving it to her felt like a violation. “At that proximity. With that expression on his face.”
Worthington followed his gaze. “Alcott’s expression appears to be… pleasant. Interested. Perhaps mildly hopeful.”
“Exactly.”
“Will, you cannot murder a man for being pleasant.”
“I could. I choose not to. There is a distinction.”
The musicale was in full swing around them, a soprano warbling through an Italian aria, guests arranged in careful clusters, the evening unfolding with all the predictable tedium such events entailed.
William had arrived with every intention of finding Eliza, of continuing the conversation they’d begun in the park, of exploring whatever fragile connection had formed between them.
Instead, he had arrived to find Edmund Alcott already at her side.
The man had been there when William entered.
Had been positioned beside her chair with the comfortable ease of someone who had staked his claim early and intended to maintain it.
Had been speaking to her with the earnest attention of a man who saw marriage on the horizon and was doing everything in his power to ensure it happened.
William wanted to tear him apart with his bare hands.
The violence of the impulse startled him. He was not a violent man, had never been one, despite his reputation. He used charm as a weapon, not fists. He destroyed with words and withdrawal, not physical force.
But watching Alcott lean close to Eliza, watching her smile at something the man said, watching another man occupy the space William had begun to think of as his, Something primal and dangerous was clawing at his chest.
She is not yours, he reminded himself savagely. You have no claim on her. You have shared a waltz, and a handful of conversations, and a single charged moment in a park. That does not make her your property.
All of this was true.
None of it made the slightest difference to the possessive fury currently burning through his veins.
“You should go speak to her,” Worthington said.
“She is otherwise engaged.”
“So disengage her. You are a duke. You outrank Alcott by approximately a thousand social miles. If you want to speak to her, speak to her.”
“And what would I say?” William’s voice came out harsher than intended.
“‘Excuse me, Alcott, but I’ve decided Miss Hayfield belongs to me, despite having offered her nothing but warnings about my own unsuitability? Please remove yourself so I can continue my campaign of vague intentions and emotional unavailability?’”
Worthington was quiet for a moment. “Is that what you’re offering her? Vague intentions?”
William did not answer. He could not answer, because he did not know.
What was he offering Eliza?
He had called on her. Had brought her flowers.
Ferns, because he remembered, because he could not stop remembering everything about her.
Had walked with her in the park and confessed fears he had never spoken aloud to anyone.
Had held her hand in public, for goodness sake, an act of reckless intimacy that would fuel gossip for weeks.
But he had not offered her anything concrete. Had not spoken of courtship or intentions or any of the formal declarations that a respectable woman had every right to expect. He had simply… circled. Drawn close and pulled away. Warned her off while being unable to stay away himself.
And now Edmund Alcott, straightforward, honourable Edmund Alcott, was sitting beside her with clear intentions and a spotless reputation, offering her everything William could not.
Let him have her, whispered the voice of reason. Let her marry a man who will make her happy. A man who knows how to love without destroying. A man who is nothing like you.
The soprano reached a particularly piercing high note. Several guests winced. Eliza glanced away from Alcott, just for a moment, just a flicker of her attention, and her eyes found William across the room.
The impact was physical.
Even at this distance, he could see the slight parting of her lips. The flush that crept up her throat. The way her body seemed to lean toward him, almost imperceptibly, as though pulled by a force she could not control.
She had been thinking about him. Even while Alcott talked at her, even while she smiled and nodded and played the role of attentive listener, some part of her had been waiting for William.
Some part of her was his.
The possessive surge that followed was so intense it nearly brought him to his knees.
Mine, something growled in the depths of his chest. She is mine, and I will not give her up. Not to Alcott. Not to anyone.
He set down his champagne glass and moved.
***
Eliza was trying to concentrate on what Mr Alcott was saying.
He was pleasant. He was kind. He had sought her out at the beginning of the evening and had been attentive in all the ways a proper suitor should be, solicitous of her comfort, interested in her opinions, respectful of her boundaries.
He was exactly the sort of man her family hoped she would attract: respectable, stable, utterly without scandal.
She felt nothing.
Or rather, she felt something, a vague appreciation for his courtesy, a mild interest in his conversation, the sort of tepid warmth one might feel toward a friendly acquaintance.
Nothing like the fire that consumed her when William was near.
Nothing like the desperate, aching want that had kept her awake for nights on end, replaying every touch and every word until they were burned into her memory.
She was nodding along to Mr Alcott’s description of his family’s estate in Kent when she felt it.
That prickle at the back of her neck. That sudden awareness of being watched.
She looked up.
And there he was.
William stood across the room, champagne glass in hand, watching her with an intensity that stole her breath. Even at a distance, she could see the tension in his shoulders, the hard set of his jaw, the way his grey eyes had gone dark with something that looked almost like anger.
No. Not anger.
Jealousy.
The realisation sent a thrill through her body that was entirely inappropriate for a public musicale.
He was jealous. The Duke of Hollowshade, who could have any woman in London, who had been warned away from her by his own cynicism and her aunt’s dire predictions, was standing across a crowded room, looking at her as though he wanted to tear Mr Alcott away from her side with his bare hands.
She should not find that thrilling.
She found it devastatingly, shamefully thrilling.
“Miss Hayfield?” Mr Alcott’s voice intruded on her thoughts. “Are you quite all right? You’ve gone rather flushed.”
“I, yes, quite all right.” She forced her attention back to her companion, away from the magnetic pull of William’s gaze. “Forgive me. The room is rather warm.”
“Shall I escort you onto the terrace? The air is cooler there.”
“That will not be necessary.”
The voice came from directly behind her, and it was not Mr Alcott’s. It was low, rich, touched with an edge that made her skin prickle.
William had crossed the room. He was standing at her shoulder, close enough that she could feel the heat of him even without contact, and he was looking at Mr Alcott with an expression of polite menace that made the younger man take an involuntary step back.
“Hollowshade.” Mr Alcott’s voice was carefully neutral. “I did not realise you were acquainted with Miss Hayfield.”
“We are intimately acquainted.” The word intimately landed with deliberate weight, and Eliza felt her cheeks flame. “I called on her just yesterday, in fact. A charming visit. We walked in the park together.”
Mr Alcott’s expression flickered, surprise, perhaps, or reassessment. Walking in the park with a duke was a significant statement. It suggested a level of attachment that altered the social calculus considerably.
“I see,” he said slowly. “I was not aware—”
“Few people are aware of the particulars of my acquaintances, Alcott. I prefer it that way.” William’s smile was all teeth and no warmth.
“However, I find I wish to be quite clear in this instance. Miss Hayfield has graciously agreed to save me her attention this evening. I hope you will not mind if I claim it.”
It was not a question. It was a dismissal, courteous in form, brutal in function. William was not asking for permission. He was informing Alcott that his presence was no longer welcome.