Culross leaned close, the question of where to meet left unfinished as he and his mysterious minx met their paired partners in the middle.
His body went whipcord straight. His muscles coiled so tightly they threatened to snap. The Devil tested Culross—first with all the beauty’s talk of Scots, and now with the brush of fingers against his enemy and shipping rival—the Duke of Hartwell. And brother-in-law to Lady Linnie Tremaine, née McQuoid Smith.
The thinly disguised peer paid Culross no notice. Unlike everyone else—Culross included—Hartwell’s gaze locked on Culross’s mistress in the making.
Culross recognized the other man’s look. He’d worn it himself.
Stiffening, Culross shifted his focus to the Lady of Diamonds.
She had forgotten him.
The lady’s wide-eyed, unblinking stare belonged to Hartwell.
A roaring filled Culross’s ears.
The hell another Tremaine would poach what belonged to him. He would not be made the fool twice.
A possessive instinct, swift and unfamiliar, unfurled in his chest.
Not another.
Not another man stepping where Culross meant to stand.
The costumed peasant girl’s lips formed an ugly pout. “Darling?” While the set continued around them, the duke’s buxom, barely clad partner pressed her generous breasts against Hartwell’s shoulder. “What is it?”
Hartwell’s tastes had always run loud and obvious.
With her shrill, childlike voice, the woman could have been Aphrodite herself, and Culross would sooner cut his ears off than bed her.
“Enjoying a spot of fun, are you?” Culross jeered, taunting the duke with a reminder of his impending nuptials.
Let the pompous bastard squirm.
Culross’s enchantress didn’t wait for him to release her. She snatched her hands away, breaking the charged moment between the two men. Towering several inches above the other guests, Culross tracked the rapid path she carved through the crowd in her bid to escape the dance floor.
No one had ever fled him.
As if she could flee him.
He did not lose what he set his sights on.
The Tremaines forgotten, his pissing match with Hartwell forgotten, Culross was not finished with his enigmatic partner.
He went after her.
Chapter 3
Meghan fled through Lord and Lady Rutland’s sweeping Georgian townhouse. The wild patter of her beaded slippers along the carpeted corridor joined the tinkling crystals dangling from her gown and mask.
The rasp of her labored breaths filled her ears, muffling the fast-fading revelry she left behind.
She kept running to the place all peers possessed in their grand townhouses—a place that, at this time of year and hour, was sure to be empty.
Meghan reached the northernmost point of the marquess’s and marchioness’s residence and let herself into the brick-enclosed orangery.
The tall, arched windows to the south and the glass ceiling overhead were draped in oilcloth. Between that, the solid north wall retained heat, and a welcome warmth flooded the space from a wood-fired stove at the center of the room.
Her hands still trembling, Meghan drew the door shut behind her and leaned against it. Her eyes slid closed.
