Chapter Four #2
He took her arm. Her glove reached nearly to the elbow, but her sleeves cut away above, and there showed a good inch of warm, golden, female flesh. His gloves were silk, but the skin beneath his hand felt equally soft. “We must talk.”
She tilted her head to the side again, exposing that lovely and distracting neck, and nodded toward the musicians in the corner. “Or perhaps we must dance. Less chance we’ll be overheard.”
The musicians struck up a waltz. Hell’s hooves, he’d had one lesson in dancing, and that was from his sister. “You seek to test me, madame?”
“Merely entertain us both. Mistresses must know every kind of art, must they not?”
He was going to make himself a fool by any light, offering aid to this queenly woman in complete command of herself. Might as well compound the disgrace by exhibiting his poor dancing skills. He bowed and held out his arm. “I suspect you know all the required arts, and then some.”
She laid her gloved hand in his, and Gabe stilled at the contact. The soft press of her hand called up some sensation in him that had laid dormant all his life, and now, with it rising, he could not give it a name.
He knew only he did not wish to let that hand go.
“You have not told me who you are supposed to be,” she said as he led her toward the center of the long, grand room where other couples were taking their places.
No names. That had been the point of the masquerade ball, the terms of the agreement. He did not have to divulge who he was—not that his name meant anything anyway—and it was not necessary for him to know much of her.
He wanted, desperately, to know about her. He wanted to know her with a curiosity that felt like hunger.
He wanted to be close to her with a need that was stronger yet.
“A courtier of some sort from decades past,” he said carelessly, concentrating on the beat of the music. “When courts were grand and kings were kinglier.”
He’d been told the style of her dress and had chosen his attire as a complement. He might not be willing to take up lodgings yet in the Declan family townhome, but his mother was making free of the place, and she’d unearthed the garb of some former Duke in one of the attics.
His siren fell easily into step with him as he led off. Nancy had shown Gabe the basic steps of the waltz, but they made more sense with this woman in his arms. She followed easily, as if they were performers who had rehearsed.
She fit into his arms as if she had been made to his specifications.
“You look a Jacobite, with that lace at your throat,” she remarked.
“A pretender, then? Or do you mean a traitor?”
“I meant, a warrior of old, a gentleman with a cause and a passion, who—” Abruptly she cut off the words and looked away.
“I am meant to take up your cause, I understand.” He turned them to avoid a pirate who was clutching a woman dressed for the seraglio.
Gabe was not a man of passion, generally. He was not one for causes, either. He did what was demanded of him, what he must to survive, and he did not think too deeply about things. The injustice of the world would lead him to perpetual outrage if he did.
Her lips tightened. They were lovely lips, distractingly lush, probably painted to achieve that red. She had dressed to seduce.
“You are too late. He has already approached me.”
“And demanded what?”
“A price I find it impossible to pay, and indecent to ask of me.”
“That is generally true of blackmail, in my experience,” Gabe reflected.
He swirled her into a turn, then another.
The steps were not difficult. They felt natural, with her swaying in his arms. The heat of her body reached out to him.
Her scent curled beneath his nose, beckoning.
From this height he could see all the fine skin of her décolletage and the tops of her lovely breasts.
A golden pillow of skin he wanted to bury his face in.
His body was tight, hot. He should have attended to his need for a woman before taking up this blackmail business.
But how was he to know the most alluring woman in the room was also the one he was supposed to seek out?
He could not have known that her mere nearness would overwhelm his head, leaving him feeling he had been wrecked at sea and she was the raft he must hold onto for his life.
Fat bloody lot of help he was. His hands tightened, pulling her closer.
“What happens next?”
She shook her head, and a hanging curl brushed the side of her neck, right in the place he wanted to put his mouth. “He will try to contact me again. I thought, when you—”
“Thought what?”
“Never mind.” She looked away.
He drew her closer. Their bodies brushed together as he pressed her into a turn. Her steps were graceful, light, practiced. She was a woman who had danced often, if not recently.
All he knew from Rutland and Hervey, who had played the messenger, was that the woman he was to aid was a friend of their family, a pet of the Duchess, who would be distressed if she were taken advantage of.
Gabe, with his recent elevation and his time spent before that in the most dissipated circles, was chosen because it was expected that, given his exposure to all types of company, he might be positioned to catch wind of a plot or its perpetrator. That was the hope, at least.
As if he might be any good to anyone. As a babe he hadn’t been lure enough for his father to leave his post and stay with his mother to raise a family.
He’d been rare use to Powlett as the man tried to establish his trade; Gabe was more often in trouble, scrapping with boys older and bigger, the ones who made fun of his dark hair and skin and his presumed bastardy, since he was not Powlett’s get.
At school, between sessions of being hauled out on the carpet for lectures about his mischief and being hauled out for a caning in consequence of his stupidity at lessons, he’d cultivated one useful set of skills: being a wayward young gentleman of the town, adept at holding his drink, acting rowdy in public spaces, pursuing chorus girls who made the rounds of the rowdier young men, and placing bets on every imaginable condition it was possible to make on a bet on, watching the money in his purse ebb and flow in relation to the outrageous of his dares and the ineptitude of the other bettors.
Gabe was absolutely the last person any sane man, or woman, would rely upon, unless it were to generate a cunningly good prank, hold his drink throughout a night of debauchery, and be the last man standing, knuckles bloody, when the debauchery degenerated into a brawl.
But she didn’t know that about him. He found himself wanting to shield her from the knowledge for as long as possible.
To be, as long as the masquerade would hold, the kind of protector and guard that she thought him. That she needed.
“So.” Gabe bent his head to speak near her ear, in part to ensure their conversation could not be overheard by other dancers about them, and in part to judge the effect of his breath falling on her neck.
“If I am to foil this plot, and thwart your blackmailer, I should be with you when he makes his next approach.”
She shivered. The ripple of skin passed along her shoulders, and tiny bumps of gooseflesh appeared across her décolletage. The tops of her breasts, pushed up toward his gaze by her stomacher, blushed rosy.
She desired him. Gabe wanted to let loose a howl of masculine pride. His siren responded to his contact, and unless he was badly mistaken, she was as alive to his nearness as he was to hers.
Which presented any number of intriguing possibilities.
“I do not think that is the only possible strategy.” Her voice was breathy, not the firm command she had issued earlier. “Moreover, I do not see how to arrange our proximity, since I do not know how or when the thief, or his agent, will make his next demand.”
Gabe shrugged as if it were obvious, as if he were following a logical conclusion to its end. “There is only one solution. I must become your lover.”
The blush this time climbed from her breasts up her beautiful neck to the high arched bones of her cheeks. No, his siren was not immune to him. Not immune at all.
For the first time in his life, a woman wanted and needed him.
For the first time in his life, Gabe wanted to be the man a woman like this would turn to. Not the man who would bollocks everything up.