“You are,” he pressed. “You are afraid to be alone with me. You do not trust yourself, do you?”
“Of course I trust myself.” She stood then, with all the bearing and dignity of a queen. “I am going to win our wager, Your Grace.”
He stood as well, the grin kicking up his lips real, much to his dismay. He was not supposed to be enjoying this skirmish with her, this battle to get her into his bed.Christ, he was not supposed to bed her. But there was something about Rose Beaumont that was so very alluring.
She intrigued him. He wanted to learn her mysteries—all of them.
“Fair warning, my dear,” he drawled, rounding the table and offering her his arm in gentlemanly fashion. “I adore a challenge.”
She took his arm, allowing him to escort her from the dining room. “I am not challenging you. I am merely stating a fact.”
Her scent hit him, and he knew a brief wave of memories. Hattie on his arm. Hattie laughing at a dinner party at some sally he had made. His wife had possessed the loveliest smile. The aching sear of grief hit him in the chest, just as it always did. He missed her every day.
“Your Grace?”
The lilting, accented voice of Rose Beaumont intruded upon his grim musings, returning him to his surroundings. He realized they had entered the blue salon that had been studiously decorated by his last paramour with an eye to comfort and pleasure. The use of the townhome had been hers for the duration of their six-month affair, and it had been where he had brought Rose for dinner because taking her to his true home, where Verity was, had been an impossibility.
But he was standing there now, frozen, trapped in the murk of the past.
The reminders of everything he had lost.
He swallowed down a knot of despair. “Forgive me for woolgathering, Mademoiselle.”
His voice sounded hoarse. Troubled, even to his own ears. He had found comfort in the arms of other women following Hattie’s death. It had taken him years to manage it, but he had. Still, none of them had been her. None of them could compare.
He did not think it was the woman on his arm who brought with her the surging sea of his past, but rather his reaction to her. He had been attracted to other women before, but it had never been as visceral as his reaction to Rose.
“There was a sadness in your eyes just now,” she observed, the hand still resting lightly in the crook of his elbow moving to stroke his forearm in a gesture of surprising tenderness. “Something is troubling you.”
“A matter of the past,” he dismissed. “Nothing more.”
He would not discuss his wife with the actress at his side, a woman he scarcely knew. A woman he dared not trust. A woman who was here with him for reasons he must not lose sight of or forget.
“The past stays with us always, does it not?” She cocked her head at him, studying him, a small, sad smile flitting over her lips. “No matter how far we travel, no matter how much time passes, we cannot outrun ourselves, all the hurts and pains we have known. They follow us everywhere, locked inside little valises in our hearts.”
What a strange creature she was, insightful and rare. He could not shake the wild thought that Hattie would have liked her. Thathecould like her, were their situation not so dire. Had she not shared the bed of a despicable villain like Drummond McKenna.
“The past is never far from the present,” he agreed solemnly. It was the only concession he would make. The only one he could. “What is it you seek to outrun, Mademoiselle Beaumont? Or may I call you Rose?”
Her gaze shuttered, and she released her grasp on his arm, stepping away from him. “There is nothing I seek to outrun. I am looking for a new beginning. Closing one book to begin another.”
Interesting. Was she suggesting she had indeed broken off with McKenna? He had to dig deeper. To find out more.
He followed her as she wandered across the plush carpet, taking in the chamber with a curious stare. “There must be a reason for you to be closing the book, as you say.”
She made her way to the piano dominating a corner of the room—this, too, had been a relic from his last lover, a famed German opera singer. “May I play, Your Grace?”
He watched as she trailed her fingers over the smooth ivory keys, not exerting enough pressure to make a sound. How lovingly she caressed them. The wicked beast within him imagined, just for a beat, her trailing her touch over his body in the same fashion. And his cock went hard.
He cleared his throat, willing the desire to abate. “You may, Rose.”
She raised a brow and cast an arch look in his direction. “I did not give you leave to call me that yet.”
Yet, she said. As though she planned to.
This was promising.
“I decided the time to ask for permission is at an end between us,” he said as she seated herself on the bench.
