Definitely a lord.
Behind his black mask, his eyes held a silvery light, as his other hand settled on her ribs and he pulled her closer. And those eyes staring down at her as he whirled them into the one-two-three of the waltz… Well, they were observing her with more intensity than this moment strictly warranted.
Instinctively, she made to retract her hand and pull away from him altogether—she was no lady, so she wasn’t under some obligation to dance with any old rotter who chose to dance with her—but he held firm as he kept them in time to the music.
A stunning, undeniable fact assailed her. His lack of manners aside, this lord could dance. Not a hint of stiffness in him as he led them around the ballroom. Fluid and utterly at ease in his body, he was a dance partner of the divine variety. A woman could be convinced she was dancing on air in his arms.
Except…there was something in the way he wasn’t taking his eyes off her.
It unsettled.
It unnerved.
It prevented her from giving over to the pleasure of this dance.
“Do I know you?”
She had to ask, for a possibility tickled at the back of her mind.
A possibility she didn’t much like.
This lord might’ve known her from her previous life.
But wasn’t that unlikely? It had been nine years, and she was a full-fledged woman now, wasn’t she?
“That’s a sharp game of Loo you play,” he said, his voice a deep, velvet rumble. The sort of voice that might send a shiver racing up a woman’s spine if she wasn’t careful.
Or even if she was.
Then the content of his words hit her, followed in the next second by recognition.
Oh.
This lord had been one of the other players in the game of Loo.
In truth, she hadn’t been paying attention to him, so focused she’d been on Sir Felix. She’d sized this man up for just another handsome lord and hadn’t thought anything about him since. She made it an express point not to think about handsome lords. They were the ones who could completely upend a chit’s goals and aspirations. She’d seen it happen, time and oft—had even been on the verge of it happening to her that once with Sir Felix—and it wasn’t about to happen to her at this stage in her life.
She could only think of one response. “Thank you.”
His gaze narrowed. “It wasn’t a compliment.”
A laugh startled out of her. “Why is that?”
“You’re a cheat.”
She supposed the tricks Sir Felix had taught her all them years ago could’ve been construed as cheating. She began calculating. “You’re the fellow with the hundred-pound vowel.”
“Aye.”
Her mind made up in an instant, she lifted her hand off his shoulder and dipped quick fingers into the valley between her breasts, which emerged clutching the slip of paper. “Here. Yours free and clear.”
Given the lift of the fellow’s brow, she reckoned she’d shocked him. Well, lords were easily shocked, weren’t they?
Reluctantly, he accepted the note and shoved it into a coat pocket.
She wasn’t finished. “And how much more did I take off you?”
She wanted no remaining ties between her and this too-handsome and too-intense lord after the final note of this dance echoed through the air. Until he’d taken her hand, she’d been having the best night of her life. And though she hated to give up even a penny of the one hundred and thirty-four pounds weighing heavy in her reticule, she didn’t see how she had much of a choice.
