It went on forever. It was the longest waltz in Ciaran’s life.
By the time Godfrey led Lucy back to Mrs. Jarvis he was smirking with satisfaction, but Ciaran hardly spared him a glance.
His gaze was fixed on something else.
A dark red handprint on the pale, delicate skin of Lucy’s arm.
Godfrey had grabbed her. Hurt her.
A rage unlike any Ciaran had ever felt before swept through him, like a fire devouring his insides. He heard Lucy say something to him, her voice high-pitched and anxious, but he couldn’t make out the words through the roaring inside his head. He thought, fleetingly, of the one time he’d seen his brother Lachlan in a rage like this, when another man had laid his hands on the woman Lachlan loved.
Lachlan had seized the man by the throat and nearly shaken the life out of him. Ciaran hadn’t understood it at the time. Hadn’t understood how a man could feel so much rage, and so much love.
Ciaran thought fleetingly of Lucy. Of moonlight on damp red hair. Of long, dark eyelashes tipped with glittering drops of water. Of an ugly red handprint on smooth, pale skin…
Am I in love with Lucy?
The question stole through Ciaran as quickly as a breath, but then it was gone, and he was moving, following Jarvis and Godfrey, his hands clenched into fists. They were strolling toward the card room, laughing and chatting, satisfied with their success.
He didn’t get far.
“Ciaran, don’t.”
Lucy’s voice was soft, but this time it penetrated the roar in Ciaran’s head. He turned toward her just in time to see her collapse, a sea of bright green silk falling around her, enveloping her like a wave as she sank to the floor.
Chapter Seventeen
Everything happened so quickly after that, the only thing Lucy could recall later was Ciaran’s solid strength. His soft murmurs and gentle hands.
By some miracle, he got her out of the ballroom, called her carriage, and hurried her into it without attracting the attention of the Weatherbys’ fashionable guests.
Had she once teased him about his heroism? It didn’t seem so amusing now.
“Don’t try and tell me you feigned that swoon, Lucy.” Ciaran was standing at the open door of the carriage, his blue eyes moving anxiously over her face.
Lucy blinked at him. Had she feigned the swoon, or hadn’t she? She hardly knew anymore.
He rubbed her cold hands between his. “Are you all right? You’re shivering, and you’re whiter than my cravat.”
You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.…
It wasn’t the first time she’d thought it. Every time she looked at him, Lucy found something new she loved about his face. The angular curve of his cheek, the flecks of gold in his blue eyes. But somehow now, with the light from the townhouse shining on his dark hair and playing over the angular line of his jaw, he took her breath away.
“Lucy?” His fingers tightened over hers.
She tugged gently, urging him into the carriage with her. “I—I’m all right, yes.”
“No, I don’t think you are.” He flung himself down next to her and slammed the carriage door behind him. He ran both his hands down his face, his chest straining with shallow, jerking breaths. He was too agitated to notice how close they sat, with their bodies pressed tightly together on the narrow seat.
But Lucy wasn’t.
For the space of a single heartbeat she closed her eyes and let herself sink into the feeling of his warmth enveloping her, his reassuring strength pressed against her. For a heartbeat only, and then she opened her eyes. “I promise you I am, Ciaran. I—I feigned the swoon.”
Mostly. There’d been a moment, when Lord Godfrey had grabbed her, that the frantic pounding of her heart had made her chest tighten and her head go dizzy with fear. It was the closest she’d ever come to a real swoon, and she had no wish to repeat the experience.
Ciaran leaned over her, his dark blue eyes holding her gaze as if he could see all she hid from him in her eyes. “I can’t let this business with your uncle and Godfrey go on any longer, Lucy. It grows worse every day—” He broke off, his eyes narrowing on her face. “There’s more, isn’t there? Something you haven’t told me.”
Lucy dragged in a shuddering breath. Ciaran was going to be furious when she told him she and Eloisa had sneaked into Uncle Jarvis’s study, but there was no other way to explain how they’d gotten ahold of his accounting book.
