More Than a Duke(38)

Three days ago, he’d have jerked his chin toward the back of the ballroom and led the scandalous widow to one of the rooms in his host’s home. He’d have tugged up her skirts and made fast and hard love to her and then returned to the ball with a still-bored grin. Now, he shrugged free of her touch and continued to survey the milling guests.



“I missed you the other night, my lord.”



“Did you?” he murmured.



“Have you heard a word I’ve said?” she snapped, the waspish bite to her question at odds with the husky, sultry tone she adopted in most of her exchanges.



“No,” he said. He beat a quick bow. “If you’ll—” The air exploded from his lungs on a rush. The viscountess forgotten, he took a step forward. Then another. And froze.



An Athena with hair dipped in pure gold stood at the edge of the crowded dance floor. She tapped a hand against her thigh as if in time to the one-two-three beat of the orchestra’s tune.



Close your mouth. Breathe. Do something. Do anything.



The glorious beauty, somehow familiar, and yet not, brushed back a long wisp of honey-blonde hair, away from her cheek. Glorious tresses hung in loose waves about her cream-white shoulders. Athena stiffened. She angled her head as if aware of his scrutiny. Or mayhap she registered the interest of every, single gentleman with red blood coursing through his veins, fixed on the perfection of her body, bathed in the soft candlelight.



Then their gazes caught and held.



Harry jerked, as if Gentleman Jackson had delivered a swift, well-placed jab to his midsection.



The pale blue irises of her fathomless eyes, danced with fury.



Anne.



~*~



If Anne was perhaps as good with words as Aldora, she’d have something far more potent, more powerful than spitting mad. But blast and hell…she was spitting mad. She yanked her attention away from Harry.



The blighter.



First, there was the whole business at his clubs, the Forbidden Pleasures two nights past. It had taken her the better part of the afternoon following her trip to Gunter’s with the Duke of Crawford to squint her way through the page about just how Lord Harry had spent his evening after he’d left the recital. Then, if that wasn’t enough to boil a lady’s blood, he’d not come ‘round for the whole of a day. She tossed her loose waves. Waves not ringlets. As he’d suggested.



The bounder.



And the only reason she cared about his absence was the whole business of his lessons on seduction. A lesson each day, he’d pledged. Well, now he owed her two lessons for this nearly completed day.



Only… she looked back to the spot he’d been a moment ago, now vacant. He was assuredly with that scandalous Viscountess Kendricks. The very same woman whose assignation Anne had interrupted five days ago.



She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. She gasped and slapped her hand to the injured area.



“Is there a problem, my lady?”



At the dry, far-too amused baritone she bit down hard on the same poor piece of wounded flash. She gasped, again. “Blast, don’t you know to not sneak up on a lady?” She despised the manner in which her heart sped up at Harry’s sudden appearance.



He’d not followed his viscountess. Instead, he’d come to Anne. Why should that cause this fluttery warmth to unfurl inside her belly, she did not know. Anne continued to study the couples as they performed the delicate steps of a quadrille. “And there is no problem,” she said as an afterthought to his earlier question. There are several problems, you rogue. Your absence, your interest in the viscountess, your promise to school me in the art of seduction, your—



“You’re frowning,” Harry pointed out, a smile in his words.



“Am I?” Which meant he studied her, at least enough to notice whether she frowned or smiled.



“You are. As is your mother. In fact, she has a rather nasty glower trained on the both of us.”



“With good reason,” Anne muttered under her breath. “You’re an unrepentant rogue.”



He grinned as though she’d handed him the finest compliment. Which she hadn’t. She’d intended her words to sting an apparent conscienceless gentleman. “Shall I wave to her?”



Anne stole a glance at her mother, who stood conversing with the Marchioness of Townsend. “You’ll do no such thing.” Though there was some merit to Harry’s observation about Mother. The truth of the matter was that the countess had been furious since Anne had appeared in the foyer with her golden ringlets gone and her loose tresses partially pinned up, the other locks draped about her back and shoulders. The black look in her mother’s eyes suggested she knew very well who to blame for the scandalous arrangement.