Anna Campbell – What A Duke Dares (страница 8)
Her body sagged and he saw again the grief-stricken girl who had come into the kitchen. “It won’t be necessary.”
A mixture of surprise and pity made him set his glass down so roughly that wine sloshed onto the pine table. “What the hell?”
Faint amusement curved her lips. Those damnably kissable lips. “You’re easier to tease than you once were, Cam.”
“Why, you—”
She pushed back the rickety wooden chair and stood. In spite of her smile, sorrow dulled her eyes. “Peter and I were meeting in Paris to discuss Aunt Isabel’s will. He was to be my legal representative in London. Now I must represent myself. You have my word I’m going home. But if we travel together, people will gossip.”
Even before meeting this disturbingly attractive version of Penelope Thorne, he’d devised a strategy. “We’ll avoid the cities until we reach my yacht at Genoa.”
“Genoa? That means retracing my steps.”
“Be damned if I’m crossing the Alps in February, Pen. We’re heading south.”
“I can head south on my own.”
He was tempted to agree, if only to escape this attraction that had him counting her every breath. Some corner of his mind kept exclaiming in astonishment,
Her eyes turned to black ice. “I don’t owe you excuses or explanations.” She turned to go. “I wish you good evening, Your Grace.”
He surged to his feet. “Wait.”
He caught her arm. When she was younger, he’d touched her a thousand times. Still, her soft warmth shuddered through him. Dear God, this was a catastrophe. He struggled to bring Lady Marianne’s face to mind, but instead of her cool beauty, all he saw was gypsy-dark hair and eyes flashing insolence.
She stopped. “Let me go, Cam.”
“Do I have your word that you won’t disappear into the night?”
She jerked her arm and he released her, if only because touching her threatened his precarious control. “The snow has closed the roads north. I wouldn’t be surprised if the roads south are impassable too.”
“So we’re trapped.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Exactly, Your Grace.” Drawing her cape around her like an ermine cloak, Pen marched out, spine straight and hips swaying with a sinuous impertinence that set his heart cartwheeling.
Damn her.
Harry Thorne took one last puff on his cheroot and tossed it with a contemptuous flick into the bushes lining the terrace. He hadn’t enjoyed it, although smoking was the craze for the young bucks he ran with.
Just lately he didn’t enjoy much. The malaise had set in last month after his older brother Peter’s death. The exciting life that a fellow of twenty-three with no responsibilities led in the capital had lost all savor.
Guilt added to his depressed spirits. Hell, if he’d known the truth about Peter’s troubles, he’d have rushed to his brother’s side. But Peter had kept his difficulties to himself. Still, it was a damned bitter pill to swallow that his brother had breathed his last, alone in a foreign country, and Harry hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye.
Harry wandered away from the ballroom into the dark garden. The violins scratching out the latest waltz faded until the music was a whisper.
Somewhere out here Lady Vera Standish waited, finally ready, if he read the signals, to surrender her plump prettiness. She’d challenged him to find her. After months of dogged pursuit, he damn well hoped she wasn’t trying too hard to hide.
Except even the prospect of exploring Lady Vera’s much admired, and much caressed charms didn’t dispel his megrims. He reached the garden wall, well away from the house. When he heard a rustle, he turned, struggling to muster a flicker of excitement.
Then a sound he didn’t expect. A sniff and a muffled sob.
Not Lady Vera.
He retreated to grant some privacy to whoever huddled in the bushes.
Another sniff. Another choked sob.
He took a couple of steps down the white gravel path. If someone cried out here alone, it was none of his damned business. If he delayed, Vera Standish would turn to some other swain. She wasn’t noted for her patience.
His shoe scraped across a rock. Silence descended. Whoever was hiding now knew that she wasn’t alone.
Harry recognized that he was incapable of leaving someone to suffer. As a rake and roué, he was a rank failure. With a sigh, he turned toward the holly-smothered alcove. As he battled through the prickly greenery, he couldn’t help thinking of the prince struggling through thorns toward Sleeping Beauty.
“Please don’t come any closer,” a soft, broken voice whispered from mere feet away.
“Too late,” he muttered, bursting through the hedge into an enclosed hollow. His eyes had adjusted and he easily made out the girl in a light-colored gown cowering against the wooden seat.
“Go away.” Although he couldn’t see her face, she sounded very young. Her lace handkerchief twisted in her hands.
“Are you all right?” He ventured closer and she pressed back.
“Perfectly.”
There. He’d asked. She was fine. He could now find Lady Vera. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.” Her quaking voice proclaimed her a liar.
“You sound like you are.”
“It’s a bad cold,” she said stiffly.
“You shouldn’t be sitting outside, then.”
“And you shouldn’t be talking to strange women without an introduction.”
The show of spirit intrigued him. He could make out very little apart from her slenderness and the constant tugging at the handkerchief.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” she asked with a hint of snap.
He hid a smile. “Strange.”
She stood. The full moon chose that moment to emerge from behind a cloud, granting his first glimpse of his damsel in distress.
He felt like someone had punched him in the gut.
How in hell had he missed her before this? Had he been so fixated on the pinchbeck of Vera Standish when somewhere in that ballroom waited pure gold?
“I’m not strange.” She surveyed him with wide eyes in a delicate face under a pile of thick golden hair. “I’m beginning to think you might be.”
His damsel was breathtakingly lovely. “Why the devil are you sitting out here all alone?” he asked roughly. “You don’t know who might come upon you.”
Tentative mischief lit her expression. He’d been right to suspect liveliness beneath her distress. “Well, you did.”
He should say something rakish. But when he looked at her, his heart stopped. She was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Who on earth was she? Damn it, he’d been out in society since leaving university and he had a reputation as a dog with the ladies. But this girl stole his ability to do more than mumble and act the looby. He managed a smile, quite a feat when his heart performed somersaults in his chest. “I’m generally accounted quite benign.”
She stared at him as if she’d never seen a man. “I should go.”
He chanced a step nearer and felt a surge of triumph when she didn’t retreat, although even in the uncertain light, he saw her wariness. Not quite as innocent as all that, apparently. “You don’t want to go back into the ballroom with red eyes.”
“Nobody would notice.”
His laugh was short. “This is your first season, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then take advice from someone older and wiser—the old tabbies notice everything. And they pass it on. If you don’t want the world to know that you’ve been crying, you’ll enter that room utterly composed.”
Her lush lips turned down. “I don’t like London.”
“You will.”
Daringly he reached for one of her gloved hands. She started, but even through two layers of fabric, he felt her warmth. The urge to strip away both gloves and test the softness of her skin beat like a war drum in his head. But one false move and she’d scarper for the ballroom, red eyes or not.