“I wasn’t aware of that,” he admitted. But it didn’t surprise him to learn it.
“I met her,” Rhiannon said. “At least, Ithinkshe’s his mistress. Of course she didn’t say she was. One doesn’t go about admitting something so scandalous to a stranger. Not even at a house party such as this.”
They spun together again, and he couldn’t help but notice the lush fullness of her lips. “I reckon not.”
“Doyouhave a mistress?”
For the second time, he nearly tripped, this time on her swaying hems. He narrowly avoided disaster. “Christ, minx. This isn’t the sort of question you ought to ask of me.”
“Is it the woman I saw you with in the great hall?” she persisted.
“No,” he bit out. “Lady Heathcote is an acquaintance and nothing more. Not that it is any of your concern.”
“Any more my concern than it is yours when I accompany a gentleman into the garden?” she returned.
She rather had him there. He couldn’t deny it.
“Touché, minx,” he said grimly.
“Well?” she demanded.
“What was your question?” he deflected, spinning them and beginning to feel dizzied.
Maybe it was the champagne.
Or the dancing.
Or maybe it was just Rhiannon.
“Doyou have a mistress?”
Aubrey’s gaze traveled down the creamy, elegant column of her throat, and it was all he could do not to set his mouth there, to make his mark upon her. “I’ll answer your question when you answer mine.”
He had never felt this primitive surge for another woman, and it was deuced maddening. He wanted to protect her, to claim her, to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to his room and spend all night making love to her.
She is your friend’s sister, he reminded himself harshly.She’s a bloody virgin.
“What was your question?” she asked, her voice a touch breathless.
Her gaze had darkened and slid to his mouth.
He searched the ends of his mind and couldn’t recall for a few seconds until they nearly collided with another couple and sanity returned to him. “The reason for your disguise.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes.” He cast a glance over her red wig. “Though you do make a most alluring redhead as well.”
“It was you.”
“Me?”
She pouted, and he wanted to kiss that pout off her mouth right there in the midst of the ball. He could too. Couples were free with each other here. No one would look twice if he led her to the periphery of the dancers and fucked her against a bloody wall, for Chrissakes. But the last thing he wanted to do was draw any attention to her, so he kept his lips to himself.
“Yes, you,” she said. “I wanted to be free to find a lover without you ruining it.”
A lover.
His head roared.
