“And you’ve never paid any heed to rule number two: ‘do as I say.’”
“I’m dancing with you, just as you commanded,” she reminded him.
He arched a brow. “You say that as though I should have asked nicely.”
“It’s worth consideration.”
He shrugged. “Your list was full.”
“You’ve had plenty of opportunities to be the first name.”
“This way is better,” he assured her. “I get to waltz with you and I haven’t broken my streak of never signing anyone’s dance card.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re incorrigible.”
He grinned at her unrepentantly.
Gasps echoed around them. The unprecedented sight of the Earl of Gilbourne smiling dazzled everyone in the ballroom.
“Be careful,” she warned him. “You’re ruining your reputation.”
“They know I hate them all,” he said cheerfully. “One smile at you doesn’t mean I’ll show an ounce of pity at the next Parliamentary session. If anything, it’ll sting worse, now that they know I can be reasonable… and choose not to.”
“How many of them flee the House of Lords every night in tears?”
“On a good day?” He blinked at her innocently. “All of them.”
She shook her head, but was unable to tear her gaze from his. Blast it all, she loved this relentless, brooding, powerful, impossible man. Her smile fell.
He didn’t love her. If he felt any soft feelings toward her at all, they didn’t matter. Rules came first. And the one rule he would stick to was the one where they waved goodbye the moment she came into her inheritance.
One week from today.
Chapter 27
Six days later, Titus was at home in his study drafting a speech for the House of Lords, when the cursed papers arrived.
Official confirmation from Titus’s solicitor: all of the documents pertaining to Miss Dodd’s inheritance were in order. At midnight tonight, she would become an independent heiress. The moment she turned twenty-one, she was no longer his.
Er, his ward. No longer his ward.
Or his.
Not that she ever truly had been. From the moment they’d arrived in London and he’d taken her to Madame Theroux’s instead of straight home, he’d known he was opening Pandora’s box.
His ward had become an overnight sensation. Which just went to prove what a box of cabbage feathers the members of the beau monde were. Miss Dodd had always been sensational. With or without fine French fashions.
He’d danced with her to make her smile—and, yes, because he wanted to, had been dying to, for a fortnight straight. Ever since that night, Titus had been paying the price for his rash behavior.
If Madame Theroux’s gowns had turned Miss Dodd into a princess, her waltz with the infamously unengageable earl made her a goddess. Her status skyrocketed the moment they took that first step. At the new threat, suitors everywhere redoubled their efforts. Every single surface of Titus’s house was filled with flowers for the indomitable Miss Dodd, from dozens of hopeful beaux.
Although Titus had begrudgingly informed his ward that she was free to entertain callers as she wished, to his knowledge she hadn’t responded to a single poem or bouquet sent by one of her countless suitors.
Miss Dodd spent her time with Titus instead.
Early morning walks before the rest of the ton was awake. Afternoons in the library, their stocking feet up on each other’s cushions. Candlelit dinners with wine and strawberries.
It felt like a courtship, though it was nothing of the sort. For one, Titus refused to court anyone. And for two, he was actually enjoying himself. Oh, not the endless ballrooms, where he was forced to watch her flit from the embrace of one dunderbeard to another. And not the long hours he was forced to spend away from her in Parliament, pleading cases before the House of Lords instead of being home with Miss Dodd, as he would have preferred.
