“You can say that again.” She snatched up a roll.
“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t go near a lady such as you, but it was late and I’d had too much to drink—”
“A lady such as me?” She skewered a sausage with enough force to make him cringe. “For your information,Iwould never go near a man such asyou.”
His irritation mounted. It was one thing for him to judge himself unfit to touch her, quite another for her to do so. She didn’t know the first thing about him. Besides, he’d never given enough of a damn to apologize to anyone before, and here she was not only refusing his olive branch, but slapping him in the face with it?
To hell with this.
“Pardon, but your tongue in my mouth suggested otherwise,” he said scathingly. “Then there’s the small fact that you climaxed, fully clothed, in my arms.”
She turned crimson. Casting a skittish look around, she whispered furiously, “You are no gentleman to say those things.”
“And you are a lady to do them?”
“Youstarted it.”
“And I ended it. Which you seemed loathe to do, sweeting,” he drawled.
“Why, you arrogantrake—”
“Better a rake who knows himself than a self-deluding virgin.”
“Howdareyou.” Her eyes flashed. “I know exactly who I am.”
“Do you? Then why the masquerade?”
She paused for a tray-bearing footman to pass by before saying hotly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “It’s a costumed event where people disguise their true identity.”
Reaching the end of the buffet, she marched to the other side of the Oriental screen where the beverage service was laid out. The exotic panels of birds and blooms didn’t offer much privacy but did partially shield them from the view of those at the table.
“I know what a dashed masqueradeis,” she said between clenched teeth. “I simply don’t know why you’re blathering on about it.”
“Because I see through that camouflage of yours, and you’re not the lady you pretend to be,” he said succinctly.
~~~
A loud ringing sounded in Polly’s ears. Her respiration shallow and choppy, she stared at Revelstoke. Dear Lord, he couldn’t have gleaned her freakish ability…
“I b-beg your pardon?” she whispered.
“Do you think that your dowdy gown and holier-than-thou attitude can hide that you’re a hot-blooded wench through and through? Well, they don’t,” he said coldly. “All they do is make you a hypocrite.”
In a blink, her relief that her defect remained a secret turned to an anger so intense that scarlet seared the edges of her vision.Hewas lecturingheron hypocrisy? After he’d torn her to pieces behind the hedge with his friends for the sake of entertainment?
Resentment shattered her self-restraint.
He wants to talk about duplicity? Then, by God, we will.
“I know who I am. A plain, fat, and peculiar wallflower.” As she said the words, she felt a strange, painful satisfaction—like that of lancing a boil. It hurt, but it also felt good to release the festering inside. “If you try to say otherwise, you’re the hypocrite. Because I heard you—heard you sayI’m not worth the sport.”
For an instant, he just stared at her. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“Don’t bother denying it. Iheardyou,” she repeated with quiet vehemence.
“Then you ought to have your hearing—and your head—examined,” he clipped out. “I never said that.”
