“I’ve met your papa, remember? The man dotes on you but doesn’t spoil,” he said. “Your mama would be wrong.” He indicated the occupants of the room with a wave of his hand. “If anyone here knew the real circumstances behind my title and fortune, thetonwould know the true definition of illy bred.”
Something like anger flashed across her face, and Percy felt his insides warm at the prospect the anger was in his defense.
“You must remember, Your Grace, I’ve met you.” Her sudden smile was conspiratorial. “Everyone else would be wrong.”
Percy’s belly blazed with gratitude and something less respectable. How she looked at him without fear, how she defended his past without knowing but the smallest detail, it made Percy wish to throw her over his shoulder like the barbarian he truly was and take her away from all these sycophants and liars to a place that they could make entirely their own. A place where they could be but a man and a woman. A place where he wasn’t the monster lurking in the dark. He’d be everything she believed him to be. Maybe one day he could believe it himself.
“Shilling for your thoughts,” she said, smirking.
Friends, he reminded himself, releasing the fantasy. There was no place in existence where they could meet halfway. He could give her pleasure and intellectual company, but nothingmore. Give a mule a bath and tie a bow around its neck and it was still an ass.
“I’m afraid I don’t dance,” he said truthfully, shocking himself. More shocking, he went into detail. “I was deemed a hopeless case by the officers in my regiment and by other coworkers later.”
“I’m astounded.” Danny gave him a onceover. “You, a man who can leap from trees and cross a room in mere strides, cannot keep count with the music?”
“Afraid not.” Percy waited for her reprimand. All gentlemen were expected to know the steps. A lady sitting down during the quadrille was a mark against a man of honor without a partner. One more tally on the books for his lack of breeding. And all men knew the sting of mouth-pie.
“That’s marvelous!” Danny clapped her hands. “Positively titillating.”
“I beg your pardon?” God, if only his brain would stop replaying the word ‘titillating’ in his head.
“You can’t dance,” she explained. “Here I was under the impression you were perfect. I do believe I like you all the better for it.”
Percy would deign to acknowledge how the words ‘I like you’ made his heart pound or how a most appalling sound of surprise escaped his throat that sounded like a great swine in the throes of mud bathing.
“Perfect?” Absurd. “I am a liar, a thief, and a murderer—not to mention most lax in my correspondence.”
“But you do all those things so infuriatingly well,” she said. “Finally, something I can hang over your head.”
“You’re keeping score?”
“Absolutely.” Her grin was radiant. “Isn’t that what friends do? Tease each other and keep one another honest?”
And the swine was dispatched and fried into bacon. Somewhere, in the course of pulling a gun on him, a verbal sparring match that left him skewered, a hasty embrace, and a lust-filled encounter with his knife, the woman had indeed come to be a companion, trusted, desired.
They were friends.
Unbelievable.
“The next activity is yours,” she said.
“Activity?” The only action he wanted to take right now was a long pull of a stiff drink.
“A ride in Hyde Park? A drive through Vauxhall?”
He grinned. “Pistols at dawn?”
“If you like.”
He shook his head, still admiring the burns from his roasted hide. “Your list of items to hang over my head continues. You’ll find I don’t partake in many gentlemen’s sports.”
“I see.” Her expression said she wasn’t disappointed. “What does a rough-n-tumble boy do for amusement, then?”
He chuckled at her digression from aristocratic pomp to country lilt.
It was a bad habit of his, underestimating Lady Daniella. What would scare off most proper ladies didn’t cause so much as a blink of trepidation. Which left the unfamiliar reaction of Percy wishing to show her everything.
Leaning close, he inhaled her rich scent of spices and whispered so only she could hear, “We play football.”
