She shrugged. “It’s not what I came to London for.”
His heart quickened. There was so little he knew about this woman; he was hungry for every scrap of information she dropped. “What did you come to London hoping for, beyond helping my sister find her place in society?”
Bess froze, caught out. She should never have accepted a glass of brandy on an empty stomach, it had gone straight to her head.
The brandy, and the unaccustomed thrill of being alone with Ashbourn and having him tell her all these serious, closely held things about his past. About his hopes for the future.
It was no wonder she’d fallen into the intimacy of the moment. But how could she answer his question?
When the answer was, embarrassingly, I hoped to find a scoundrel to bed me?
Nervously, she retreated a pace and bumped into the drinks cart, making the crystal chime. Ashbourn caught her by the shoulder to steady her—the shoulder bared by the wide neckline of the bronze gown. His fingers were strong and hot on her skin. Bess stared up at him, her heart drumming against her ribs.
“Careful,” he said, his voice a gentle rumble that shook through her like thunder.
Bess’s mouth went dry even as other parts of her body became humid and slippery with heat.
He looked at her as if he’d no wish to ever look at anything else again.
After the strange letdown she’d felt when he’d been too busy dancing with someone else to notice their arrival at the ball tonight, Bess had to admit to herself that his undivided attention felt good.
She needed to keep her head, she knew. A night like this was practically designed to make a woman forget everything but the fantasy of romance. She was still wearing the beautiful gown he’d bought her, standing close in the flickering firelight, with fine French brandy swirling in her veins.
And this man. Gazing down at her with those cool, intent eyes of his, heat and interest lurking in their depths.
They were almost blue today, the pale blue of the sky reflected in a frozen lake.
The things he said, the tiny glimpses of a beating heart beneath the cold, marble-hard exterior. The hints of his desire.
He wanted her.
It hurt—because as surely as Bess knew that Ashbourn desired her, she knew that he would never act on that desire.
A man as obsessed with honor and legacy and propriety as Nathaniel Lively? A man who hated his own father for marrying ‘beneath him’? He would never lower himself to someone like Bess.
For God’s sake, he’d had her on his lap in that carriage, the day they met, and he hadn’t done more than nuzzle her neck.
And that was without him knowing the truth about who she was.
If he found out Bess was nothing more than a cook in a coaching inn, the daughter of a mere tenant farmer…she shuddered to imagine his reaction.
No, he would marry Miss Devensham, or another lady like her, with perfect breeding and comportment and understanding of all the rules of the Ton. Someone who could help him with his great work.
And Bess would find someone else to give her the adventure—the memories—she’d come to London for.
She had yet to answer his question, and the moment stretched between them like a sheet pulled taut over a mattress.
He was still touching her, his hand resting heavily on her shoulder. His thumb moved, brushing gently against the side of her neck, and Bess shuddered.
There was barely more than a breath between them. If he bent down, their lips would meet.
Despite herself, everything in Bess tensed, lit up and thrilled and alive to the possibility that his lips would brush hers—but they didn’t.
Instead, Ashbourn dropped his hand and stepped back.
Bess stumbled away from him, unable to look him in the face and hating herself for being disappointed. For hoping in the first place.
She knew better.
