“This way?” She leaned into his touch, in spite of herself.
“You’re an aberration,” he accused, but without bite. “You are the most inappropriate, bold, insulting, insinuating lady I know.”
“I will accept your compliment,” she told him gravely. “As for the announcement this evening…I have not acquiesced.”
He made a sound of impatience deep within his throat. “This, at least, is a road we’ve traveled before. Do you wish to ruin Thornton and his marchioness?”
He had her there. She searched his handsome face, wishing she could read him, but he remained impenetrable as ever. At last, she gave in. “You know that I do not.”
He inclined his head. “Just as I do not wish to expose my family to further ruinous gossip after they’ve already been forced to endure so much. We are in agreement, then. For the sake of our families, it is in our best interest to announce our betrothal this evening during the course of the ball. We will dance together, act the part of a couple in love, and wait until the thing is well underway and everyone half in their cups before doing so.”
“I’m sure it isn’t in our best interest.” She forced herself to move. Three steps to the right, and she was removed from his touch and the charmed sphere of his heat. She could breathe again. No kisses had occurred. Her sanity, she fervently hoped, was restored. “But I will accept your offer of marriage just the same.”
pencer’s hand shook as he lifteda champagne flute to his lips and downed the entire contents of the glass in one swig. He detested balls. He deplored announcements. He bloody well loathed the institution of marriage. He no more wanted to entrap himself within its strangling confines again than to leap from the roof of Boswell Manor. His brother couldn’t stand to speak to him. His proper mother was horrified at what he’d done, so much so that she’d burst into tears when he’d sought her out yesterday evening. The unshakable dowager had been inconsolable.
He couldn’t blame her. Good God, everything about the events of the last two days left him reeling and ashamed.
And in a perpetual state of arousal. There was the crux of it. He wanted Lady Boadicea in a way that defied logic, for he abhorred her cavalier manner, her insouciance, the bloody bold way she walked into a room crowded with a hundred other guests and drowned out the sight of anyone else.
His eyes lit on her, and he couldn’t tear them away. Drinking in her beauty made a strange, heavy sensation settle in his gut. His future wife had dressed for his mother’s Welcoming Ball as though she’d gone into mourning, and perhaps indeed she had. Her entire gown was fashioned of silk and lace the same hue as a raven’s wing. Its exacting style—emphasizing her narrow waist, clinging to her luscious bosom, and glittering with a lace and jet bead overskirt—would have rendered any other woman wan and severe.
Not Lady Boadicea.
Rather, the black magnified her beauty, providing the perfect contrast to her creamy skin and fiery locks, which had been piled high atop her head in loops, showing her elegant throat to advantage. Three-quarter length sleeves capped her delicately rounded shoulders, leaving her supple upper arms bare. She was vibrant enough not to require any ornamentation at all, whether it be color or gem.
A fringe of small curls kissed the sides of her face, forcing his gaze inevitably to her berry-red lips and that taunting beauty mark hovering at the corner. She was ten paces away and he could still make it out, though whether from memory or acute vision, he couldn’t be sure.
He should have kissed her earlier that afternoon in his library, should have taken that soft mouth and owned it until she fed him the honey-sweet sighs that had been driving him mad since he’d first heard them the day before. But he had not, and now here he stood, empty champagne glass in hand, mouth dry, cock straining against his trousers as the most vaunted families of the peerage tittered and conversed around him.
Before he could move across the crush to her, the familiar, lanky form of his brother appeared at her side, standing too near. Harry took her hand, raised it to his lips for a kiss that lingered.
Something within him that he hadn’t known existed clanged shut, like a trap manacling an unsuspecting animal’s paw. Spencer was dimly aware of a passing servant accepting his flute before he stalked forward. A sea of bustles and trains parted for him. Several pairs of eyes looked at him askance as he jostled his way to Lady Boadicea. He ignored them all. He didn’t want this farce of a union any more than she did, but he would not, damn it all, allow his brother to flirt with her just prior to the announcement of their betrothal.
He reached the cozy pair, stopping only when he was shoulder to shoulder with Harry. Her exotic fragrance hit him, and before he could stop himself, he inhaled deeply. Lady Boadicea’s forehead crinkled with a pensive frown as her brilliant eyes swept from Harry to Spencer, and then back to Harry again.
Spencer didn’t like that order. Not one bloody bit. “Lady Boadicea,” he greeted her with a formal bow that would put anyone else’s to shame. Halfway mad and hunted by demons that kept him from sleep he may be, but he was the Duke of Bainbridge. Proper form had been beaten into him from the time he was a lad in leading strings. His inner beast was firmly under control tonight.
She extended her hand with flawless formality. “Your Grace.”
He accepted it. Was it his imagination, or did her tone contain a hint of censure? He favored her frown with a matching one of his own, unable to resist baiting her even if that made him an unmitigated bastard. “You are looking exceptionally saturnine this evening, my lady.”
She stiffened, her grip tightening on his as he raised her fingers to his lips at last for a slow kiss. “I’ve dressed in proper mourning attire for the loss of my freedom.”
“Bloody hell,” Harry gritted with such violence that Spencer would not have recognized his voice had not he been standing at his side. The resentment emanating from him was undeniable. “Marry me, Bo. It isn’t too late. I don’t give a damn about a scandal.”
Spencer went stiff, his body feeling as if it were drawn on a rack that would pull from every angle until he’d be torn asunder at last. Deep conflict, even after three years, still had the power to completely unravel him. It was why he had withdrawn from his seat in the House of Lords, why he never went to London, why he no longer spoke to any of his old friends. He had changed, forever. He hadn’t died that day with Millicent, but in some ways, he may as well have.
“I cannot, Lord Harry,” Lady Boadicea said into the silence he couldn’t seem to puncture with words. “I’m so sorry.”
Spencer’s tongue felt heavy. His pulse pounded. His emotions remained a confused jumble, ricocheting off his chest. And yet, he couldn’t speak.
“I’ll never forgive you for this, Spencer,” Harry growled in his ear.
He wanted to face his brother, but he couldn’t.
Lady Boadicea’s blue gaze burned into his. He fell into it, needing to focus his mind and stave off the clamor within. She seemed to sense his wildly fluctuating thoughts, for she gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze. “Bainbridge, you look as if you’re about to cast up your accounts.”
Her grim—though likely apt—pronouncement wrung a startled laugh from him. He released her hand, dispelling the clouds from his mind. How had she known what to say? It seemed almost impossible that this fierce, improper female before him should have only been a part of his life for the span of a day.
