His grin softened to an intimate smile, and he brushed a lone finger along her bare collarbone just once, and so quickly that she would have thought she imagined the touch had it not branded her skin like a flame. “I like your quick mind. I like your feistiness. I like the daring that enabled you to traipse about dressed as a gentleman at a house party attended by the most fashionable set in London. I like your bold hair, the sweet trail of freckles on your nose. I like your mouth beneath mine.”
“Lord Harry,” she protested because she should, and not because he had affronted her. Quite the opposite, for she had never been rendered breathless by a mere handful of sentences before.
“I also like that you say precisely what is on your mind,” he continued, “that you don’t blunt your opinion by what a lady should say, and that you are refreshingly unique.”
She pursed her lips, considering him. “You like that I am strange?”
He captured her gaze, holding it with his, and the fierce light burning within those emerald depths refused to allow her to look away. “I do believe that I like everything about you, Danvers. And I do not think you are strange. I think you are an original. Besides, I already told you my own quirk.”
“Disliking fruit is hardly a cross to bear,” she pointed out, enjoying herself as she had not done in…well,everin the presence of a gentleman.
Oh, she had relished every one of his skilled kisses and caresses earlier in the carriage, but this matching of wits was a different, more dimensioned level of gratification. He made her melt and he also fed her mind. What a dazzling, troubling, addictive combination.
His mouth quirked. “Become more familiarly acquainted with me. I promise that my dislike of fruit is not my sole oddity.”
It was her turn to shake her head, casting a wild-eyed glance over his shoulder to the fraction of the ballroom yet visible to her. Couples paired off. Laughter abounded. Silks swirled. Lights glistened. No one seemed aware of their intimatetête-à-têteamidst the corner holly bushes and jeweler’s cotton that was meant to be snow.
“I do not dare become more familiar with you, my lord,” she confessed, using her most scolding tone. “You have done enough irreparable damage to my reputation for one day.”
“I am the man who will be your husband, Alexandra,” he said simply, shocking her with his pronouncement. “Would you not care to get to know me?”
His words chilled her. She stepped to the side, slipping from his warm presence and putting a more respectable distance between them. “My brother has spoken to you, then, and that is the reason for our discourse this evening.”
“I have spoken with your brother, yes.” He matched her steps, effectively boxing her in against the holly once more. His jaw tightened as his gaze swept her face. “But he did not give me permission to ask for your hand. Thus, in answer to your question, no, my dialogue with Ravenscroft is not the reason I’m standing before you.”
She wanted to believe him. Her foolish, foolish heart fluttered. Hope, a chimera she had long believed buried, flitted to the surface. Could this witty, beautiful man truly want her for herself and not because he had lost his head and ruined her in the carriage before witnesses?
“What is the reason?” she dared to ask.
“Is it not apparent, Danvers?” His grin returned in full force, and Lord Harry Marlow at his most charming was a magnificent sight to behold, even for a practical woman of science such as herself.
If her heart beat faster and heat slid through her body like warm honey, it could not be helped. As objective as she liked to believe herself, before her—and within her flustered reaction—stood the proof that she was only human, all too susceptible to a rakish smile and a knowing touch. And lips that knew how to coax and fingers that knew just how to pluck her hungry nipples…
No. She must not allow herself to stray once more into ruin.
She took a deep breath and recalled the conversation. “Nothing is apparent, Lord Harry. Surely you ought to know that the world is never what it seems.”
“All too true,” he acknowledged with a grim air that suggested he felt the meaning of those words to his core. “But the reason I’m standing before you now is that I want you to be my wife. I want to kiss you and touch you the way I did in the carriage earlier today, only I do not want to stop until we have both reached our pinnacles. First, however, I want to dance with you.”
Shocked by his admission, Alexandra allowed him to take her hand and tuck it into his elbow. Allowed him also to steer her into the heavy sea of revelers. Allowed him to sweep her into a waltz and plant unwanted notions inside her mind.
“What do you mean by ‘pinnacles’?” she asked as he guided her round the floor as if she were the keenest dancer he had ever partnered with.
Lord Harry gave a laugh, keeping his gaze trained high above her head. She watched, mesmerized, as his prominent Adam’s apple dipped in his strong throat, the only indication that her query had affected him.
“Give me time, Danvers, and you shall see,” he promised.
