“Are you—”
“Go.” His voice was ice, and Whitby hastened to obey.
He was upon her in an instant. He had not thought he was particularly quiet, but she must have been lost in her sculpture-induced reveries, because she did not turn as he approached.
He reached out and closed his hand over the back of her neck.
She whirled, and his hand fell away.
She was—
Christian could not take her in.
He had thought she would be hard-edged. Cynical and angry. Like him, he supposed. He had expected her to be as resentful of the world as he was, between her scandalous reputation and the insatiable interest of theton.
But she didn’t look hard or cold or angry.
She looked like a goddamned milkmaid.
She was a small thing, he realized now that he stood nearly atop her, her curvy little body poured into her pale blue dress. She hadfreckles,for Christ’s sake, all over the bridge of her nose and the tops of her round cheeks. Her eyes were blue and wide and sweet, and at the sight of him, her mouth trembled open.
“You,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said grimly. “Me.”
Matilda hoped she’d gone mad.
It seemed possible. She had not over-imbibed. She was relatively certain she was not asleep. Failing those two scenarios, vivid hallucination seemed the most likely explanation for why the Marquess of Ashford was here in Lord Denham’s sculpture garden, looming over her like an avenging angel and the unfortunate embodiment of every one of her erotic fantasies.
It certainly couldn’t bereal.The man lived in Northumberland.
Truly, the fact that she knew the location of his bloody country estate was proof enough that she was cracked. She had never evenspokento him.
He merely had a starring role in her sexual imagination.
And, apparently, her hallucinations as well.
“Matilda Halifax,” he said. His voice was low, gravelly and slow, as though he luxuriated in the feel of her name on his lips. His ice-chip eyes, pale above a dark beard threaded with silver, glittered in the moonlight.
This wasnotreal. It could not be.
“Yes?” Her voice was squeaky. She swallowed.
“So youareMatilda,” he said. “Not the other? The twin?”
Matilda felt a surge of annoyance. If she were going to run mad and imagine Ashford approaching her in a moonlit sculpture garden, surely her deranged mind could produce something better than the marquess confusing her with her sister, Margo.
“I am Matilda.”
His fingers closed over her upper arm, and her breath caught. “MH,” he said. His voice sounded almost dreamy. “Matilda Halifax. God, I have been looking forward to this.”
Matilda went cold all over.
MH.
He could not mean—
He could not—
