Oh, my, she could just sit and look at him all day long. Alexandra shook herself. Gawking at Lucien Balfour wouldn’t get her anything but flat on her back again.
“You’re blushing,” he murmured, his gray gaze touching hers.
“You don’t need to point that out,” she said, feeling her cheeks grow still warmer. “I am perfectly aware of it.” She picked up her embroidery again. “At least all I do is blush. And someone might blush for any number of reasons. How do you ever control”—turning scarlet, she gestured in the general direction of his waist—“that?”
He chuckled. “It’s gotten easier with age, though it’s more difficult in some situations than others. So you wish to discuss degrees of arousal, then? I can surmise how that conversation will conclude.”
The needle jabbed an untidy hole in her kerchief. “You are very aggravating.”
“And you are very arousing.” He grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “Tell me what you and Rose discussed, or make love with me.”
Alexandra knew very well that his powers of persuasion exceeded hers, particularly when she was arguing against something she actually wanted—badly. “She’s very grateful to you. What did you expect?”
“Don’t try to turn me into a villain. Rose told me at least a dozen times that she didn’t want to marry me. Reconciling her with Robert was in her best interest. It’s just my good fortune that it happened to be in my best interest, as well.”
He did make a fair argument. “What’s your next step, then? Fiona obviously doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“No, she doesn’t. I’ll deal with her when the time comes.”
“And when will that be?”
Lucien shrugged. “Soon. I promised you, remember?”
“You cannot make everything right for me, Lucien. I don’t expect you to.”
His lips twitched. “I’m being gallant again, am I?”
“Except for the kidnapping and the lying to your aunt and all the other plotting you won’t tell me about.”
“I would dispense with all of it if you’d agree to marry me.”
For a moment she wished he had the answers for all her arguments, so she could say yes and fall into his arms and never have to worry about anything ever again. It almost seemed foolish to turn him down—eventually he was bound to come to his senses and stop asking. That, though, was what stopped her. If that moment—the one when he realized winning her was only a clever game he was trying to figure out—came after she said yes and admitted to him how much she loved him, it would kill her.
Lucien stood. “The plotting continues, then.” He leaned down and brushed his lips across her forehead. “I have to escort the harpies to the opera tonight. Wimbole plays whist, if you want company.”
“Whist with your butler. A dream come true.”
“The first of many.” Shakespeare received a scratch on the head, which the terrier acknowledged with a wag of his tail. “Just make sure you’re here when I return.” He walked toward the door.
“You could keep me here for a year, my lord, and it still wouldn’t change you. Or me.”
Lucien faced her again. “Do you believe in redemption, Alexandra? Do you believe people can change?”
She searched his eyes, knowing he was asking her for something specific, and that her answer had to be right. “I don’t believe a person can change to suit someone else,” she said finally. “That only makes it an act.”
“Yes—but do you believe one person can make another onewantto change? For his own sake?”
For such a cynical, jaded, self-assured man, it seemed an almost childish question. “I’m willing to believe that,” she whispered.
He smiled, the light touching his eyes. “Good. That’s all I ask—for now.”
Chapter 19
Redemption. How odd that such a word had come out of his mouth.
Lucien spent the next three days running about like a madman, sending out invitations to the second Balfour gathering of the month, conferring with Robert about the scheduling of the evening’s events, and visiting Alexandra every spare moment. If Fiona found anything odd about his slipping down to the wine cellar every ten minutes, she most likely suspected that he had a drinking problem.
The entire time he worked at plotting Alexandra’s reunion with her uncle, and while he pretended to have conceded victory to Aunt Fiona, he wondered about redemption. The Duke of Monmouth’s story about Lionel Balfour had angered and disgusted him. So, too, did the recollection of much of his own behavior over the past few years.
