Sarah smiled, and some of the trouble left her gaze. “Both. One leads to the other, at any rate.”
Isabel got up. “You are talking about me seducing him in order to determine if he did something to my cousin.”
Sarah nodded. “It would be dangerous, I suppose.”
“Except I can’t believe my uncle’s accusations are true,” Isabel said. “After spending a little time with him, intimately at that, I don’t see him as the kind of man who would do something to hurt someone he loved. To hurt anyone at all.”
“You don’t want to believe it,” Sarah suggested.
“I don’t want to believe it,” Isabel repeated. “But if I could prove his innocence, wouldn’t that free my uncle?”
“He is obsessed,” Sarah said. “I’ve seen the altar he’s built to Angelica, I’ve heard him rail in desperation about her being taken from him. If you could free him of the notion that his daughter was murdered, I would hope it would leave him to grieve and perhaps move on.”
“Yes.” Isabel’s thoughts on the matter becoming lighter as they analyzed the benefits. “That would be a selfless reason to do something so bold.”
“And you want to see him again,” Sarah said, folding her arms and spearing Isabel with a look.
Now it was her turn to have her cheeks heat. “I…do. I do want to see him again. I panicked when I realized who he was, but it doesn’t change that night and how it made me feel. It doesn’t change that soon I will never get to feel that way again. There is no reason for him to find out it is me, is there? I still won’t move in his circles. There is no harm that can come of it.”
She was saying it to convince herself, not Sarah. And she was doing just that.
“It seems like a scenario with very little downside,” Sarah said. “Unless he turns out to be a killer.”
Isabel flinched at the thought and pushed it aside. “Well, if he does, then perhaps I could help bring him to justice. You are right. I should do this. It’s my only chance.”
Sarah smiled softly. “You know I know about those. You can’t walk away from them.”
“And I won’t,” Isabel said. “I won’t. I’ll go back to the masquerade and find him again. And this time I’ll do it with my eyes wide open and my agenda in place.”
“But you’ll wait a few days,” Sarah said.
Isabel’s heart dropped far more quickly than it should have. “Why?”
“Because you’re running, Isabel,” Sarah laughed. “And the longer you do so, the more desperate he’ll be in the chase. And in whatever happens once he catches you.”
Isabel swallowed hard as she recalled his hands on her, his mouth on her, his big body moving over and in her. Desperate seemed a good thing when it came to desire.
And she was about to see what it looked like on the Duke of Tyndale.
Chapter Seven
Isabel stepped into the hall of the Donville Masquerade three nights later and her heart leapt. Everything around her suddenly felt different. More alive. More vibrant.
In her previous times coming here, she had looked, stared, felt her body react. She’d known she’d go back to her home and ease her desires with her own hand, and that would be the end of it.
Now, as she looked at the writhing bodies, the dark and desperate connections, as she scented the sex on the air, she felt something different. A deeper kinship to passion, to play, to doing things one shouldn’t do, if only because of the protection of a thin mask.
It was all still titillating, but now her eyes sought something different. She wanted…wanted…
Him.
There he was, standing across the room at the bar with the Duke of Roseford. Matthew wore a mask, but he was instantly recognizable, and her heart rose to her throat as she tried to decide if she should go forward with her bold and daring plan.
Or run off into the night once more.
It was he who decided that for her. Suddenly his gaze fell on her and he straightened up, his eyes locking with hers and somehow drawing her across the room to him. Almost against her very will. He was fire and she couldn’t resist jumping straight into the flame.
She could scarcely breathe by the time she reached him, and she clenched her trembling hands by her sides so that they wouldn’t be too obvious as he swept his gaze over her from top to bottom.
