“Does my face strike you as eminently hittable, then?” he said finally, as politely and formally as a butler, on a hush that struck her as ominous.
“No! That is...” she stammered. “It’s just... I’m new to London... I’m not very familiar with current ballroom... customs.”
No undertaker had ever dug a deeper hole than the one she was digging for herself now.
His eyes widened. “‘Ballroom... customs,’” he repeated dazedly.
And suddenly, before her eyes, his face went incandescent with wicked glee. Which was when she realized his taut face had been suppressing hilarity all along.
“Imagineif every quadrille was punctuated by a pair of hearty slaps,” he crooned. “I’d never forget the steps. If we all stood about in a circle and ritually smacked each other to music once in a while there might forever be peace in our land.”
She exhaled a shocked laugh, delighted and scandalized. “And the reels would be—”
She stopped herself. Uncertain.
“No. Out with it,” he ordered. As if he were her confessor. As if she were cruelly depriving him of delights.
“Imagine how the reels would be. Everyone waiting patiently for a turn to grapple and punch down the center. Then patiently waiting...”
“...to do it all over again. Ha ha!”
His laugh was a lovely echoing boom in the passage.
Good heavens. It was the strangest sensation. Knee-buckling relief and as though she’d been handed a guinea.
He sighed. “But then that would make every ball just like a typical day in the House of Lords.”
Her smile wavered. For all she knew, it would. Men were confounding creatures, declaring eternaldrunken fealty to each other one minute, challenging each other to duels the next. Sometimes both in one night.
“You witnessed the face hitting, I gather?” he asked, after a moment. Somewhat diffidently.
She considered lying. Something told her he’d know at once if she did. “I did,” she admitted.
He merely nodded shortly. Then he touched her handkerchief to his lip and turned his head toward the corridor. “I’m sorry you were forced to see it.” He paused at length. “I feel that some things need to be said, regardless of the potential consequences. I always calculate the return on my investment, and I knew this was worth it.”
He said this somewhat abstractedly. Fortunately, he seemed to be speaking mostly to himself, because she hadn’t the faintest idea how to respond. She was entirely out of her depth.
“It happens,” she said, finally. Somewhat inanely. “Men will do that now and again. My... my... father is a doctor. I have seen alotof things.”
He turned his head to look at her again, somewhat surprised, amusement flickering in his eyes.
And slowly, subtly, he straightened to his considerable full height and went still.
Whereupon she had an epiphany: upon first meeting, most men seemed to preen or posture, smolder or fidget or gently condescend, all in the name of emphasizing that they were male and she was not.
But the very quality of Lord Kirke’s stillness launched a primal thrill up her spine. It called to mind a swift object in motion come to abrupt rest—a hurled javelin, for instance, or an arrow—on its target.
It was intoxicating and unsettling. For this, too,she knew about men: he wouldn’t linger here one more moment if he didn’t want to, manners be damned. Men did what they wanted to do, generally.
Her heart was now beating double time.
She probably ought to demurely lower her eyes but it seemed foolish to forego the opportunity to study the splendid geometry of his face. One day she would be able to tell her grandchildren about how the infamous Lord Kirke’s thick brows drew closer together the time he scrutinized her at a ball. How there was the faintest frost of silver at each of his temples and how his eyes, the darkest and most alive eyes she’d ever seen, were ringed in faint shadows.
“You seem to know who I am, but I fear I’m at a disadvantage,” he said finally. “And yet you seem familiar, Miss... Mrs.... Lady...”
Hell’s teeth. If he didn’t remember it, she was none too eager to remind him of their door-crack conversation.
“Keating. Miss Catherine Keating, sir. We haven’t been formally introduced but”—she cleared her throat—“we spoke last night.”
