Rafe overheard more words, hurriedly spoken between two people.
“If she tells anyone, what of my reputation!” a young woman was saying wildly.
Rafe stepped toward the nearest open door, peering around the doorframe to see Mr. Windham with a young woman beside him. He was trying to calm her down, the two locked in a tight embrace, completely alone.
Well, it takes no great stretch of the imagination to wonder what is going on here.
“You said you were courting her?” the woman asked, pushing her hands firmly into Mr. Windham’s chest, breaking their embrace. He didn’t answer, his silence enough of an answer in itself. Rafe arched a brow.
Laurence Windham, you were the last person I’d expect to find in such a situation.
Rafe slipped away from the open door and hastened back down the corridor, following the fiery-tempered woman he had seen before. He stalled when he found her. She stood on the balcony, gripping to it hard and breathing deeply, her white gown shuddering in the breeze. When she released a muffled gasp, something in Rafe’s chest pained him.
“Such a man is not worth…” Rafe began as he walked forward and closed the balcony door behind him, approaching her on the balcony with sudden eagerness. She turned, backing up a step in shock. She had removed her mask, revealing her full face to him. The sight of her face rather stunned him into silence. “…the tears.”
She was a beauty, but an unusual beauty, which made her all the more captivating. The high cheekbones were incredibly prominent, the freckles on her nose showing where she had been sun-kissed. These same marks stretched across her bare arms. Her lips were rather full, her blue eyes practically silver in the moonlight.
Rafe instinctively delved a hand inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, proffering it to her silently.
“Thank you,” she stammered through her tears and dried her cheeks, turning her back to the door and looking out over the grand garden once more. “…You saw what I saw?”
“Hard to avoid. They could have at least closed the door. Imagine that; a cad and one that is so bold, he leaves a door open. It’s almost as if he wished to be caught,” he teased, hoping to lighten the air a little. “Windham. Not the cleverest of men, is he?”
“Perhaps not, no,” she muffled from behind the handkerchief. She shook her head, drying another escaped tear.
“Allow me to guess.” He leaned on the railing beside her, inching closer. He couldn’t explain this pull toward her.
He’d seduced many women over the last eight years of his life, all for a chance to be distracted from the true pain in his heart. Every woman had come to him willingly, but for some strange reason, with this woman, he found he was not intending to seduce her at all. He merely wished to talk, to have those bright blue eyes turn to gaze at him again.
“You were courting Mr. Windham?” Rafe asked.
“Were the tears the clue?” she asked with an amused smirk. He smiled softly.
“You have wit.”
“You have boldness.” She gestured to their lonesomeness and the handkerchief he had given her. “Yet if you are hoping to persuade me into the same scandalous behavior, you are sorely wrong, stranger. I am not that kind of woman.”
“Scandalous indeed.” He sighed dramatically, rather imbued by the fact she did not know who he was because of the mask he was wearing. “Yet I am not a man who goes out of his way to destroy ladies’ reputations, ma’am. Believe me, any kisses I have shared have been to make the woman smile. That is all.”
She looked sharply at him, those full lips parting.
“Well, that got your attention.” He turned to face her.
She seemed to be thinking much, blinking more than once, her gaze darting between his eyes and his lips.
“You choose your words carefully, do you not?” he asked with interest, leaning a little closer toward her. “And sometimes you decide that saying nothing is best.”
She raised her eyebrows in a sort of challenge, and said nothing, buying into his idea. To his relief, she didn’t move away, even when he came so near that her skirts brushed against his breeches.
“I think I’d give a lot to find out what that little head of yours is thinking at this moment,” he whispered.
“My thoughts are not treasures to be unearthed, sir.”
“Are they not?” Rafe’s curiosity certainly found them to be a treasure. He tilted his head to the side, watching her intensely as her eyes darted down to his lips again. “Well,I guess… after that little incident, you are wondering how it feels to be kissed.”
Her eyes snapped up to meet his gaze.
“Ah, so I’m correct.” He smiled indulgently. This was more than just a little fun. The rather innocent way this lady was staring at him was intoxicating. “Have you ever been kissed, ma’am? Did that bastard of a suitor now wrapped in the arms of another woman ever kiss you?”
