‘Would you care to take a stroll out on the terrace with me, Miss Duprée?’ He did not wait for her answer before tucking her gloved hand into the crook of his arm and striding off in the direction of the doors opened to prevent the room from becoming too stifling.
‘Is such behaviour quite correct, Christian?’ Lisette cast a furtive glance at the people she sensed were watching the two of them together, the women from behind their fans, the gentlemen openly speculative of the Duke of Sutherland’s obvious intention of stealing their young hostess outside onto the moonlit terrace.
‘Correct can go hang, Lisette,’ Christian dismissed happily. ‘If I do not soon taste your delectable lips and touch your creamy flesh, I am afraid I will do something that will never be forgotten, by not only those members of society present tonight but also the heirs that come after them!’
‘Christian!’ Lisette gasped her shock.
‘Lisette.’ He stood aside to allow her to precede him out onto the terrace.
She looked up at him uncertainly, unsure of Christian in this reckless mood. ‘My reputation will be ruined if I go outside alone with you.’
‘So it will,’ he acknowledged unconcernedly.
‘Can you possibly have drunk too much champagne this evening?’
‘First I am fevered. Then I am accused of neglecting you. Now you believe me to be drunk!’ He gave a brief laugh. ‘I assure you, my dearest Lisette, I am none of those things,’ he added huskily.
‘But—’
‘My wound is perfectly healed, thanks to your initial diligent care, my doctor has informed me. If I am drunk then it is with the pleasure of being in your company again, for I have not drunk so much as one glass of champagne this evening. As for being neglectful...’ He gave a shake of his head. ‘I was slightly incapacitated that first week, but I have called at Maystone House every two or three days these past three weeks.’
‘I have not seen you...’
‘No, you have not,’ Christian acknowledged drily. ‘And I have not seen you, except at a distance once or twice, as you travelled by in Maystone’s coach.’ Fleeting glimpses that had reminded him of the last time he and Lisette were in a coach together, those memories leaving him hungering for so much more than a fleeting glimpse of her. ‘Please step outside with me, Lisette, and allow me to explain.’ He looked down at her intently.
Lisette still eyed him uncertainly, so tempted to do as he asked, at the same time aware of the many eyes upon them as they stood in the open doorway, neither in nor outside of the house. ‘What is there to explain?’ she prompted slowly.
Christian glanced across at her father, the tension leaving his shoulders as he received a slight nod from the older man. Not that it would have made the slightest difference if he did not have Maystone’s blessing, but he was glad of it in any case, for Lisette’s sake.
He turned back to her. ‘How about what a pompous, blind, ungrateful ass I am?’ he began, knowing that Lisette would not have seen the look that passed between the two men.
‘Blind and ungrateful how...?’
Christian gave a throaty chuckle. ‘I notice you do not question the “pompous” or the “ass”?’
‘The first is no doubt because you are a duke. The second...?’ She gave one of those achingly familiar Gallic shrugs. ‘Perhaps for the same reason?’
Christian choked back another shout of laughter. Indeed he was fast reaching a point where he really would shock all in the room, and to hell with them, their heirs and his own. ‘Please come outside with me, Lisette,’ he pressed urgently.
‘If you are merely going to upbraid me for my outspokenness to you just now, or some other social misdemeanour I have made, then I would really rather not—’
‘You may upbraid me, if you wish,’ he asserted fervently. ‘For what you have perceived as my tardiness, my neglect and what I now believe to have been my utter stupidity in not doing this sooner!’
Lisette gave a gasp as ‘this’ became Christian sweeping her up into his arms before carrying her outside.
From the ballroom at Maystone House.
For all and everyone in London society to see.
Chapter Sixteen
‘How can you have been so...so stupide?’ Lisette glared up at Christian in the moonlight bathing the terrace on which they both now stood, the pummelling of her fists upon his chest finally having secured her release. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittering with temper. ‘Imbécile!’
Christian needed no translation of the names Lisette had just called him.
Nor did he say a word to stop her, but simply wallowed in the pleasure of knowing his Lisette was here, after all.