Zoe looked down at his hand and wondered how he did it.
But as soon as they were out of the drawing room, he let go of her. He folded his hands behind his back and walked on. His legs were long, but he did not hurry. She had no trouble keeping up with him.
Aware of servants watching while they pretended not to, she would not let herself stare at him. This wasn’t easy. For one thing, the provoking boy she’d known so long ago had turned into someone else: a tall, strong, hauntingly beautiful stranger. That took some getting used to.
For another, this stranger had effortlessly awakened in her feelings she’d heard talked of endlessly but had never experienced. She was still reeling from that discovery.
Still, he was a stranger, and she was relieved not to have to marry him. He seemed to be very conceited. He was nothing like the boy she’d known so long ago.
All the same, she couldn’t help wondering what he looked like naked.
She couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like if he put those big, warm hands on her womanly parts.
She shivered.
“It is unseasonably cold,” he said. “We’re in for a filthy night, I don’t doubt. The sky was overcast as I left White’s and continues to darken. Do you know what White’s is?”
She towed her mind back to the moment. “I heard my sisters say you had friends there,” she said.
“It is a gentleman’s club in St. James’s Street,” he said. He told her the names of various members, describing his friends in detail, quoting Beau Brummell, and explaining the latest set of wagers in the betting book.
It was interesting, and he spoke in an amusing way. Yet Zoe was aware that he was…not drunk exactly, but in a haze.
She was familiar with the haze of intoxicants. In the harem, opium helped bored and frustrated women pass the time. She could not understand why so sought-after and powerful a man, who was free to go where he pleased and do as he pleased, chose to pass his day in a haze.
It was not her concern, she told herself. Yet she couldn’t help wondering whether the hazy state dulled his carnal urges or made hismembrum virilesoft.
She doubted it.
He paused at the door to the library.
She glanced behind her. The small drawing room was not very far away. Still, the library was private, at least for the moment. If he wished to touch her she would let him, she decided. Purely for educational purposes. She knew a great deal about men and what they liked and what to do for and to them, but she had not learned what she liked. Karim’s touch had never stirred her, nor hers him.
This man would be different. That much was obvious.
“After you, madam,” he said.
She walked into the library, her heart picking up speed.
He followed her in, then walked straight to the central window. He flung open the curtains.
A roar went up from the crowd.
Zoe stood stock-still, staring at the back of his head, at the familiar pale blond hair. Yes, he’d always been the boldest of them all, though everyone used to say it was Gerard who was the reckless one. But bold and reckless were not the same thing.
She was aware of footsteps in the corridor behind her, and her sisters’ voices becoming more audible. In another moment her brothers would hear the noise outside, and they’d emerge from their lair and…
And it would make no difference at all. They would do the same as they’d always done. In childhood none of the others had ever been able to stand up to him. Now he’d been a duke for almost half his life, accustomed to do as he pleased, accustomed to being deferred to.
The library had tall windows, like doors, giving out onto a narrow balcony. Marchmont threw open a pair of windows.
Her sisters let out a collective gasp.
“Good grief!” one cried.
“He’s mad!”
“Drunk, is more like it.”
