Her fingers curled around his, and he hated how much he enjoyed that, too.
“Do you disapprove?” she asked, not sounding at all sorry. Before he knew what was happening, she was opposite him in the country dances, her eyes sparkling like the woodland forests he had so loved as a boy.
She was enchanting.
He was utterly enchanted.
“Yes,” he said, trying to find his sternness. “Of course I do. You are a—a minx.”
She laughed, and he had the impression he had delighted her. “No one has ever called me that before.”
“Just give it time,” he muttered.
She laughed again, and he did his best not to feel any kind of victory. “You gave me your name, Henry Beaumont. Not your title, but your name. That leads me to think you don’t dislike me too much.”
Looking directly at her face was too much like staring into the sun, so he fixed his gaze over her shoulder. A matronly woman was glaring at them; no doubt she was Miss Picard’s mother. “Why did you force me to dance with you?”
“I did not force you.”
“And yet here we are.”
“Only because you had rather I not dance with your friend,” she said smugly. “You did not even ask me before manhandling me across to the dance floor.”
Heat rose up his neck, mostly because she was correct, and he was a little horrified at himself for having done it. “If you had resisted in any way, I would have stopped.”
“I know.” A tiny genuine smile touched her mouth. “You are far too proper for that.”
“You make a lot of assumptions.”
“Well, I know that you have not danced once since I arrived. You are the son of an earl with no thoughts of immediate marriage, yet you have not retired to the card rooms.” She wrinkled her nose at him a little as she smiled. “And you were shocked at finding me alone in the pleasure gardens.”
“Is that so surprising?”
“Perhaps not.” Her eyes twinkled up at him, and the next time they came together, she lowered her voice and said, “Though I was disappointed you did not kiss me.”
He almost jerked back from her. The pressure of her fingers against his felt as though they were skin to skin without the barrier of gloves. The way her lips curled suggested she knew many of the things he was thinking.
“Do you often ask the gentlemen you dance with to kiss you?”
“Only the handsome ones.” She laughed again. “There, I see I have shocked you again.”
“And how often has that tactic succeeded?”
“Shocking you? Every time. Asking gentlemen to kiss me?” She pursed her lips, and he did his best not to look at them. “A lady never tells.”
He doubted many would refuse her if the surroundings were right. In Almack’s, under the watchful eyes of the Patronesses, was not a place where a gentleman could get away with something improper.
“Will you be in London for long, Lord Eynsham?” she asked when the dance next brought them together. “I should like to dance with you more.”
“Why? So you can proposition me again?”
Her lovely face tilted up to his. “Will you accept?”
“No.”
“Pity.” She sighed, then shot a glance at him. “Never mind. I will dance with you anyway, in Bath if nowhere else. Be sure to be there again in the summer, Lord Eynsham.”
“Why?” he asked, wondering if he was going mad and their entire conversation was some kind of punishment, a torment of his will he was utterly unprepared to face. “So you can pique your mother?”
