The consequences were too great for her to risk it, yet the longing that scythed through Jules ripped the breath from her.
I am going to do it…aren’t I?
She pressed a hand over her belly, feeling that yearning opening there and sinuously twisting through her. Jules pushed from the bed and stood before the mirror, naked. Her heart pounded and her body flushed pink. Even her eyes glowed with a luminosity that was unknown.
Tipping her face to the ceiling, she closed her eyes. Her father would not attend the ball. Her stage makeup and moustache would be removed, and she would wear a wig. How could anyone recognize her?
…
Jules took a steady breath and allowed her feet to whisper across the hallway as she walked ahead, hoping she would not be stopped before she entered the grand ballroom of the duchess. As she drifted closer, the merry noises of conversation and laughter spilled from the drawing room and the hallways. The sound of an orchestra playing wafted closer, and her heart thrummed as she entered. The ballroom was already full of a crowd in a blaze of riotous colors.
Several local gentry and aristocrats were present, and while the ball was smaller than a London one, Jules was certain there would be at least two hundred guests. It had taken a pretty penny to procure a suitable gown from the village modiste. Jules had implied it was for her sister, who desperately needed a gown to attend the duchess’s ball. The dark red gown was simple in its design, with its small, puffed sleeves and lace-trimmed neckline. It clung to her upper body in a way that felt far too revealing and sensual.
The gloves clasping her arms to her elbows felt supple and comfortable, the shoes on her feet soft and delicate. Her face had been stripped of all stage paint, the moustache removed, and her hair styled in short curls around her cheeks and ears. She had discarded the idea of a wig and used a scarf made from an offcut of the dress wrapped around her hair to disguise the short length. The style was hardly up to current fashion as she had done it herself. When she’d seen her reflection in the cheval mirror just now, Jules had been startled by her prettiness and soft femininity. There had been no jewels to adorn her throat, and no diamond earbobs winked at her ears. Still, she had taken a deep breath and walked down the lonely hallway and stairs of the west wing to the grand ballroom of Longbourn Park, a feeling of pleasure and sensuality washing through her in anticipatory waves.
Jules ventured farther into the ballroom, aware of the racing of her heart and the breathless sensation sweeping through her. It felt odd to be walking around in a ballgown, her strides felt clumsy, yet she also felt…free. It was a perplexing awareness. Several ladies nodded their heads in greeting, though she saw in their eyes a question to her identity and which family she’d arrived with at the manor.
A few gentlemen’s gazes lingered on her decolletage and tightly corseted waist, made even more sensuous by the small wire bustle flaring over her derriere, but their attention soon flitted away. Jules surmised she was not interesting or radiant enough…except possibly for one gentleman.
You are beautiful.
The echoes of his words rippled over her skin, pushing a small smile from her. It was the duke she searched for, and Jules found him on the terrace, partially hidden in the shadows, observing the merriment around him. She drifted closer, staring at James, aware of the whispers about him from several ladies.
“I am determined to dance with him tonight. He is so handsome!”
“And very wealthy!”
“He has not asked anyone to the floor as yet.”
“I am certain he is to ask Lady Emelia, she has already declared herself to be his future duchess!”
A bout of giggles followed that, and Jules ignored the hitch inside her chest, keeping her attention on the duke and not those gossipers. She noted the way his lashes fluttered closed, how his nostrils flared as he took in the new scent which wafted from the ballroom. He faltered into absolute stillness and canted his head, his lips curling in sensual pleasure. She knew it then…that he smelled her, even as impossible as it might have seemed given the mass of bodies and perfumes in the room.
Her throat went tight. For the first time in her existence Jules felt her sensual power and allure with a thrill of delight. Something inside of her unfurled like a flower in bloom, desperately reaching toward sunlight. Except the man hovering in the shadows of the terrace did not feel warm, his beauty was dark and mesmerizing like the night, his allure oddly dangerous in ways she did not comprehend and might never do.
He came toward her, his steps languid and confident, his gaze never leaving hers. The harsh sensuality of his cheekbones and the hard lines of his jaw were richly accentuated by the tight way his hair was pulled back into a single clasp at his nape. The duke was disturbingly intriguing in his formal black-and-white evening wear, which fitted to his frame so perfectly that it left no doubt as to his elegant masculinity.
He radiated an aura of savage elegance that made her intensely conscious of her own burgeoning sensuality. Jules’s heart and body responded in a very physical, extremely disturbing way. She inhaled, then exhaled, long and slow.
The crowd watched him, and a small frown touched the duchess’s face when she saw the direction her son traversed. The duchess stared at Jules with a very decided frown, clearly trying to discern her identity. She had been foolish tonight. Donning a dress. For him. Pretending to be someone she was not. The usual standard of propriety constricting females had never applied to Jules, so it felt silly to feel so uncertain now.
This was a mistake.
The thought whispered through her, urging her to slip from the crowd and disappear before the duke reached her side. If Jules possessed any wisp of rationality at the moment, she would have acted on the warning. Instead, she waited for him to reach her, held fast by the hunger crawling through her veins for him. The duke stopped before her and she lifted her face to his, almost defiantly.
“Wildflower.”
He said her name like a benediction, and because she was out of sorts, she teasingly replied with, “Wolfe.”
“You are beautiful.”
Fire throbbed low in her stomach, hot and wicked.
“You also appear exceedingly uncomfortable,” he said gently. “Why did you come as you are?”
“For you,” the words escaped before she truly thought about it. “I…I wanted to dance with you.”
He said nothing to that, merely stared at her in that still way of his. Jules almost fidgeted.
