“Jane, this is Miss Pemberton,” he said, addressing the tallest of the three. “Miss Pemberton, this beautiful young lady is Miss Jane Heatherbrook, whose very favorite game is pall-mall.”
Jane turned shining blue eyes to Evangeline. “My birthday is in three days, and Uncle Lioncroft says the children and adults can play together. Oh, and we’re to have kite-flying,” she added, slanting him a coy look. “You promised.”
“If it doesn’t snow,” he confirmed before crouching to introduce the other two girls, each as fair and blond as the other. “These two troublemakers are Rachel and Rebecca, whose birthday is not for several months.”
“Twins,” Jane said with a roll of her eyes. “Twice the terror.”
Mr. Lioncroft rose to his full height again and stared at all three girls, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do next, now that the introductions were over.
After a moment, the two younger ones wandered back to a porcelain doll. A sudden, fierce ache twisted in Evangeline’s gut as she stared after them. As a young girl, she would’ve given anything to have had friends, to be normal, to link arms with another child without her head exploding in an onslaught of unwanted visions. As a woman…She glanced at Mr. Lioncroft through lowered lashes. As a woman, the yearning to touch and be touched had not waned. She’d simply become old enough to realize a true relationship would always be an impossible dream. After all, her mother had tried—and failed.
Clearly bored with the conspicuous absence of conversation, Jane crossed the room to tease the twins, and an immediate row broke out.
Rather than interrupt the argument, Mr. Lioncroft seized their distraction as an opportunity to escape, backing up to the doorway and holding the door open for Evangeline without another word.
Men. They never did know what to do around children. She supposed he’d done as fair a job as anyone, considering he’d been shuttered in a childless mansion for more than the past decade.
“Well,” he said after they’d regained the hallway and the door had closed behind them, “now you’ve met my nieces.”
“Yes.” She could hardly believe those adorable girls were related to their violent, sneering father or their violent, reclusive uncle. But aloud, all she said was, “They’re darlings.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Lioncroft uttered, his voice oddly hesitant. “They’re the only people in this house not frightened of me.”
Not frightened of a murderer?
“That’s because they’re not old enough to know better,” she said without thinking—and thenstartedthinking. Thinking about just whom she was alone with, in a darkened passageway so far from the others. She spun away from him and headed back the way they came, her footsteps pounding as rapidly as her heart.
Evangeline hadn’t gone far before her back slammed against the wainscoting, her breath whooshed from her lungs, and Mr. Lioncroft’s strong hands pinned her gloved wrists to the wall on either side of her head.
He loomed over her, blocking out the flickering sconce light and filling her nostrils with his unmistakable scent. Her traitorous body reacted just as it had before. By the heat smoldering in his dark gaze, she was sure he hadn’t missed the quickening of her pulse or the stuttering of her breath.
When she struggled against him, he leaned closer, pressing his chest to her breasts, his thighs to her hips, until she was trapped motionless beneath him. And then he said the most surprising thing.
“I apologize,” he muttered, the words coming out hot and moist and strained. “For earlier, when I first held you in the hallway.”
Evangeline twisted in his grasp and merely succeeded in rubbing her aching body even more fiercely against his. “For attacking me?” she panted, glaring up at him. “Like the brute you obviously are?”
“I wish I’d kissed you then,” he said softly. “When I thought you were different.” His lip curled with an expression bordering on disgust. “I was clearly mistaken.”
He released her and pushed away in a single movement, leaving her wrists bruised, her flesh overheated, and her body off balance once again. She fought for both her breath and her footing.
This time, he didn’t bother to help her. He strode down the hallway without another word or a backward glance. Within seconds, he had disappeared into the teeming shadows.
Evangeline stared at the empty corridor, hugging herself and cursing him. Helefther. Alone. And lost.
With no one to blame but herself.
Chapter 7
When Evangeline finally found the other guests, they’d reconvened in a large room devoid of carpet and filled with candelabra. A lone musician thrummed at an ancient pianoforte, but the guests’ feet leapt and thumped across the hardwood floor as though dancing in the thrall of a full orchestra.
Evangeline slipped in as stealthily as she could, considering eleven people didn’t quite constitute a crush and her appearance would no doubt be noticed.
She made her way to a row of tall wooden chairs lined flush with one wall and lowered herself to a cushioned seat to watch the whirling gowns.
As the music segued from country dance to waltz, the dancers divided into couples. Mr. Lioncroft’s attention was concentrated on someone else. Someone far more appropriate than a country miss with a sharp tongue and a borrowed dress.
He spun Susan about the floor with elegance and grace, his movements only occasionally hesitant—as might be expected in someone who hadn’t stepped foot in a soiree in over a decade.
