Page 60 of An Unexpected Pleasure

“You are beautiful,” he murmured, and the flicker of heat in his eyes as he looked down into hers underlined his words. “I can see that I will have to beat your admirers back if I hope to have a dance with you.”

Megan smiled. “I am sure that is not the case.”

“Will you promise me your first waltz?” he asked.

“I would not think that is appropriate, surely,” she said, casting an unabashedly flirtatious glance up at him through her lashes. “The future Duke of Broughton, taking the governess out onto the floor for the first waltz.”

He grinned. “It will doubtless scandalize the old biddies. Now I am determined to do it.”

She chuckled, though she shook her head.

His fingers tightened on hers. “You cannot abandon me to all those ambitious mothers and their daughters. Please, say you will save me.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“You would not say that if you had seen them.”

Megan could not keep from smiling. “All right. I will give you my first waltz.” She paused, then added, “But only to save you from the overbearing mamas.”

“Of course.” He turned and picked up a white box from the nearby table. Turning back, he held it out to Megan, saying, “I did not know the color of your dress….”

She took the box, surprised, and opened it with suddenly fumbling fingers. Inside, nestled on a bed of green tissue, lay a delicate white gardenia, framed by its waxy dark green leaves.

“Theo—I mean, Lord Raine…” Megan had not expected this. She reached into the box and pulled out the fragile white flower, breathing in its heady scent. “I—I don’t know what to say. It is beautiful.”

“It pales in comparison to you,” he murmured, taking the small corsage from her hand and fastening it around her wrist. Then he raised her arm so he could smell the flower. Turning her hand, he brushed his lips against the tender flesh inside her wrist.

Megan jumped a little, startled, and cast a swift glance toward his parents. The duke and duchess, fortunately, were engrossed in each other and paying no attention to anyone else.

“Please…you should not,” Megan told him a little breathlessly and took a step back from him. She lifted her head and looked into his eyes, saying softly, “Thank you.”

There was the sound of footsteps at the top of the stairs, and they turned to look up, moving a step farther apart as Anna and Reed came down the stairs to join them. The duke and duchess turned and came over, and for a while they all chatted casually. Megan moved subtly away from Theo, directing most of her comments to the others.

Kyria and Rafe arrived a few minutes later. Kyria was stunning in a gown of pale green silk, pulled back in the front and falling from a bustle in three puffed tiers. Silver lace decorated the hem of the dress and made an inverted V below the tiers of material in the back. Around her neck was a magnificent emerald necklace that would doubtless have outshone anyone less stunning than Kyria.

Kyria gave Megan a swift, assessing glance, and a small smile touched her lips when she saw the corsage on Megan’s wrist. Stepping forward, she greeted Megan with a peck on the cheek, murmuring, “You look beautiful, just as I thought you would.”

Linking her arm through Megan’s, Kyria said, “Theo, why don’t you and Miss Henderson come with us? Papa’s carriage will be too crowded with all of you.”

As they walked out to the carriage, Kyria leaned closer, confiding to Megan in a whisper, “I want to make sure I am there when you arrive. I am anticipating with great glee the look on Lady Scarle’s face.”

“I cannot imagine that anyone will look at me much, Mrs. McIntyre, when I am standing beside you.”

Kyria let out a light laugh. “Don’t underestimate yourself, Miss Henderson. Besides, everyone is quite accustomed to seeing me, whereas you are someone new and different. Everyone will be wondering who you are.”

“Theo and I will be considered the luckiest men there tonight, to be with two women as beautiful as you,” Rafe put in diplomatically in his lazy drawl.

“I feel a little like Cinderella at the ball,” Megan confessed.

Theo smiled at her, kicking up a clutch of nerves in her stomach. “Just so long as you don’t disappear at midnight.”

“I think I can guarantee that I will not.” Megan could not keep from smiling back. How could this man be a murderer?

But he was, and she had to remember that. Theo Moreland was her enemy. She turned her head away, breaking their locked gazes, and kept it that way for the rest of the ride.

CHAPTER 13

The McIntyres’ carriage pulled into a long line of carriages that rolled down the driveway to the front door of the Cavendish Museum. People were streaming up the steps and into the house, the men in formal black and the women decked out in the finest satins and laces, gems glittering at their throats and ears.