“Take your Margaret. Avail yourself to the pleasures of her body” he urged with a trace of annoyance. “Everyone saw the lust in her eyes, Stanhope. Take her. And once you tire of her, be done with the lady. Just as you would any other widow.” He jerked his chin across the room. “And leave that one to Crawford.”
Harry followed his friend’s movement. The sight of Anne sucked the breath from his lungs. He’d not seen her in but a day and it was too long. Her expertly arranged, gloriously free tresses hung about her shoulders giving her the look of a woman who’d discovered sin and delighted in it. A lone ribbon woven through one errant strand, hung between her breasts. Ah, she was an excellent study. He wished she’d been a horrid student. Wished she’d failed miserably. Instead, she glided down the stairs with the grace to rival all the queens in Europe. Her eyes searched the crowd and he allowed himself to foolishly believe he was, in fact, the one she sought.
Katherine sidled up to her. Strange, he had ever favored Anne’s sister. Now, the duchess seemed a dull shadow to Anne’s effervescent beauty. She whispered something close to Anne’s ear. Even with the space of the ballroom between them, Harry detected the imperceptible stiffening of Anne’s bared shoulders. She gave a curt nod and then followed Katherine off.
He cursed as he lost them in the crowd of bodies.
“You’ve the look of a lovesick swain etched upon your face,” Edgerton whispered. “By God, man, I’m trying to help you.”
Harry straightened the lapels of his jacket. “Go to hell, Edgerton,” he said, tiring of his friend’s sage advice.
“Hullo, Harry. I’ve been waiting for you all evening.”
His body went taut, wishing it had been an altogether different woman waiting for him. “Have you?” He turned and greeted Margaret with frigid coldness. “If you’ll excuse me, there is someone I need to speak with.”
And the desire to find Anne had nothing to do with Margaret or revenge…and everything to do with Anne.
~*~
“What do you see?” Katherine whispered up to her husband. More than a foot taller than Anne and Katherine’s heights of five feet two inches, Jasper skimmed the crowd.
Anne’s heart paused at the unholy glint in her brother-in-law’s eyes. “What is it?” she asked, reaching for his sleeve, and then drew her fingers back.
He brusquely shook his head. “Nothing.” The curt, one word utterance told an entirely different tale.
Anne arched up on tiptoes and craned her neck.
Her sister pinched her arm. “Do behave, Anne. You’ll attract notice.”
She ignored her prudent warning and scanned the ballroom in search of Harry. Her heart tripped a beat as she spied him. He stood, a glorious, golden god beside a lush fertility goddess. Anne sank back on her heels, a hopelessly empty feeling spiraled through her.
“I’ll kill him,” Katherine muttered. Her cat-like eyes narrowed into thin slits. “Oh, the bounder, coming this way.”
Anne’s heart kicked up a beat. She clutched her sister’s forearm. “Is he?” Then, the crowd parted for Harry’s tall, well-muscled frame as he continued his forward course, in her direction. She knew her mother spoke the truth and inevitably there would have to be a goodbye between her and Harry. For now, all she knew was him. A lazy smile played about his lips.
Oh, how she’d missed him. He stopped before the small trio that represented Anne’s family. He inclined his head. “Bainbridge.”
For a moment, Anne suspected her brother-in-law might not return the greeting. She held her breath, but then Jasper sketched a short, if insolent, bow. Katherine glared at Harry.
He seemed wholly immune to her sister’s displeasure. His gaze remained fixed on Anne while the crowd’s laughter soared above the crescendo of the lively country reel.
“Lord Stanhope,” Katherine said in a cold tone Anne had come to know of their mother but never her twin.
“Kat,” he replied absently, in a way that snapped Jasper’s eyebrows into a single, menacing black line.
Anne fisted her skirts at the unwitting reminder of the ignominious beginning to Katherine and Harry’s friendship. If her sister didn’t love Jasper to distraction, then she would have been the Adamson sister who'd earned a place in Harry’s bed. And Anne wouldn’t know Harry in this beautifully intimate way. She’d never know this man who saw in her a clever woman with actual thoughts beyond the fabric of her gowns. How empty her life would have been, if there’d never been Harry.