She kept blinking, resisting the urge to reach up and rub the blur from her eyes, instead focusing on his face and the bemused, suspicious little half smile that was forming on it to try to regain her focus.
“What do you mean?” she said, still blinking. “An innocent girlhood reunion.”
He laughed. He properly laughed, a deep, full sound that startled her a little. He pushed his thumb into the palm of her gloved hand, rubbing it in a lazy circle.
“You just assassinated a woman in front of a hundred and fifty witnesses, Vix,” he said, stepping closer to her, looming down almost nose-to-nose. “Don’t try to flounce out of that glorious fact with your nonsense.”
“I do not flounce,” she replied, refusing to step backward or be crowded. “Ever.”
He grinned then, a full, genuine grin to match that laugh he’d just released. “I want to know what that talking pink bow did to you to make you destroy her so savagely,” he whispered, still not backing away. “Will you tell me?”
“Why should I?” she asked, trying to breathe, heat starting to fan up over her throat and along her jaw.
He slid his thumb up over her wrist, against her pulse. “Because I’m your accomplice,” he suggested. “Willing or no.”
“Are you implying that you are unwilling, Sir Ambrose?” she asked, her own voice now a whisper too, thin and breathy.
He shook his head slowly, that grin still wide and in place.
Finally, he released her, stepping back with such a sudden gust of cool reprieve that she almost shivered with the sudden chill of it, the sudden mourning of his presence.
He saw it. He saw it happen and he lifted his chin a notch in silent but clear gloating.
“No,” he said at last, examining her once more from the tip of her head to the toes of her slippers. “I am many things tonight, but unwilling is not one of them.”
She gave a pointed glance to the Order of the Rose insignia glinting on his sash and lifted an eyebrow, making him chuckle.
“All right,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe a little unwilling. More champagne?”
“If you insist,” she answered with an airy little shrug, watching him turn to retrieve it with the oddest flicker of feeling in her chest, like a tiny thing inside her that had been askew when the night began had finally been nudged back to rights.
CHAPTER 9
Ambrose made it so far as fully putting his weight on one foot toward following Zeller into his carriage before changing his mind and tipping himself backward back out onto the cobbles. “Don’t fret,” he told the German before he could make one of his variety of musical noises. “Go home. I’ll follow later.”
And he slammed the door before there could be an argument, turning toward Victoria Beck’s carriage before it could peel away and escape him.
He wanted answers, and he wanted them tonight.
Besides, he also wanted to keep looking at her in that slinky purple dress. It was a wonder her brother had let her leave their home in such a thing, giant prude that he was. And God bless him for the oversight.
He held up two fingers to the Beck coachman, pointing to his shiny new medal for good measure in case his authority was in doubt. It seemed to do the trick. The man raised his shiny blackhorse-beating stick and inclined his head at Ambrose until he could swing around the side of the carriage and break into it.
He wrenched the door open and tossed himself into the velvet embrace of the interior in one smooth motion, enjoying the little gasp of outrage that immediately sounded as he landed in the seat opposite his future wife. Unfortunately, he landed at a bit of an awkward angle and was forced to recline on his side for a moment as though it were intentional.
“Just what in the devil do you think you are doing?” she demanded.
“Just what in the devil do I think I am doing,Sir Ambrose,” he corrected, raising his eyebrows at her and noting that his odd posture had put him directly at eye level with her impressive bosom.
She leaned forward and smacked him on the wrist with her fan. “Get out.”
He giggled, rolling onto his back as the carriage started moving. “No.”
She watched him, clearly a little taken aback by her failure to eject him. “You are drunk,” she realized, making him laugh again.
“Just a wee bit,” he said, holding his fingers up to demonstrate. “You kept plying me with the champagne.”
“I did no such thing,” she said with a sniff. “I had the same amount and I’m not lolling around in inappropriate carriages.”
