I considered that for a moment. It was true, most material things that I wanted, I received. Usually in triplicate. But the real things, the important things, the most essential thing… That I could never, would never have. Butthathadn’t been what he meant.
“Not really, no. Which is why you must tell me.”
“Tom,” he said simply.
I felt every bit of the intimacy when I asked, “Mr. Tom…”
“Just Tom. Itisa masquerade. I won’t be the one to ruin the mystery.”
“I can hardly call you Tom while you address me by my title.”
“I’ll call you whatever you’d like,” he said, a pleased lilt in his voice. He couldn’t possibly mean… Surely, this was just an amusing conversation for him, not anything more.
I’d had a dalliance or two on the continent before my brother passed, visited a molly house once or twice, but I hadn’t been brave enough to try anything in town. In nearly a decade, I hadn’t had so much as a flirtation.
And never with someone who looked likethat.
“Xander,” I said, opting for a casual tone, steering us toward slightly safer waters.
“Xander,” he repeated. And, oh was I wrong… These waters were too deep to stand, the current too sharp to tread. No one had ever said my name with such dulcet reverence. I wanted it breathed into my neck between kisses.
“Perhaps not,” I choked, desperate for distance.
“Too intimate?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,Your Grace.” Somehow that might have been worse. A bit of lusty gravel layered his tone now.
“Xander it is,” I half shrieked.
The effort earned me another chuckle. “If you insist. Lady Juliet sent me to bring you a drink. It seems she quite forgot about the presence of the drink cart.”
I was so distracted by the grin he’d finished the speech on that it took a moment to grasp the implication. Juliet. But she had instructed me to make full use of the cart. Which meant…
She had been Lady Juliet Dalton still when I told her my secret. She was, perhaps, the only person alive who knew for certain. My mother and sister suspected. Cee too. But I’d told Juliet in a fit of desperation when I could not offer her the release from our engagement that she’d begged for. She’d been unexpectedly kind when she learned the truth, at least before she forced my hand and left me no choice but to end it.
And she had sent this man up to the office in what I was beginning to suspect was an ill-considered matchmaking contrivance…
“Perhaps she thought I could use a friendly face,” I supplied, flailing for any other explanation than the one I was staring down.
“Something like that.”
“I should return downstairs. If you know who I am, then you know my mother and sister are surely wreaking havoc.”
“Ju—Lady Juliet will see to your mother. And I passed Lady Davina on my way up. Lady Grayson was trying to arrange a match between your sister and her brother.”
“Well then I certainly need to return.”
I couldn’t force my legs to obey my commands, to stand. Not when he was so close, and his eyes had tiny flecks of amber in the center.
“There are worse suitors. He won’t do anything untoward,” he said.
“It’s not him I’m worried about.”
His head tipped back into a laugh, a giggle really. It was so unexpected, so endearing a sound, that I couldn’t help but join him.
“I had a similar thought when I saw them. But if he’s anything like his sister, he’s more formidable than he looks.”
