Rose swallowed hard and coughed, her eyes watering. “You cannot help yourself, can you?”
Thomas plucked the cup from her hands and set it aside. “Not when I don’t have to. When I’m with someone I trust.” He tucked her hand inside his elbow and folded his other over it. “I should return you to your seat.”
Her earlier fluttering butterflies became a flock of seagulls ranging for food, setting up a giddiness in her that made her lightheaded. Her words of warning to Cecily haunted her; this feeling in itself was seductive and misleading. No matter what passed between them, she had to cling to the realism that she had expressed to Ann and to Robert. This man was not for her. She could not be with him. It was a mere flirtation and nothing more.
Even if it felt like it. Even if the pull she felt toward this man was as relentless as the pull of the moon upon the tides. Even if she had felt it when he was a boy upon the roof and she still a child.
She took a deep breath to calm herself as they stopped in front of her chair on Spinster’s Row. She turned to him and said as evenly as she could manage, “Thank you, Lord Newbury, for the dance.”
He took her hand and brought it to his lips, whispering, just before he kissed it. “Meet me tomorrow morning at ten just inside the Cumberland Gate. I have much to share with you. Bring a chaperone, but make sure she is one of the servants you most trust.”
With that, he nodded to her, then to Ann, who had also returned to the row. Rose watched him go, her knees finally giving way. She sat hard, and Ann reached for her.
“Rose? Are you all right?”
Rose nodded slowly, the full meaning of the past half hour sinking in.It had all been part of the game.Part of raising his profile in Society, demonstrating that Rose trusted him and Robert with their friends, with her sister.With her.The euphoria of the dance, of being close to him, leeched away, and Rose’s eyes burned.
Then her lips pursed.No.He would not do this to her. Or rather... she would not do this to herself.
She blinked and turned to Ann. “I’m fine. So tell me. What was it like to waltz with Lord Ramsbury?”
Chapter Eight
Thomas came toconsciousness gradually the next morning, disappointed that the pillows he had wrapped his arms around the night before were not the plush curves of a passionate woman who always smelled faintly of hollyhocks and roses, her namesake flower. Images from their waltz floated through his mind—the flush of her face at the height of the dance, the feel of her hip brushing against his, the way she responded to his leading. While his brain argued that he had known her a little more than a week, the pressure in his chest urged him to remember he had known her his entire life. The ache in his loins, however, had another argument entirely.
While the visions visiting Thomas at night still lingered around Katherine Carterton—whose curves were even rounder and more luscious than Rose’s—his daylight musings wandered more and more to Rose, who challenged him, her defiance in the face of his title and reputation as alluring, if not more so, than the seductive mistress he’d held close for so many years.
And he had, indeed, held Kitty Carterton close. It was his secret, if one wanted to dwell on such a thing, that while he had embraced and encouraged his reputation as a rake—which served its purpose well—he had been faithful to one woman, a woman who had encouraged his fantasies and monopolized his dreams. A woman who had bought elegant and expensive silk scarves for their bedplay. A woman to whom he still whispered, “Good night, Kitty,” each evening as he drifted off to sleep. Giving her up so abruptly had jarred him, and she continued to haunt him at night.
A point all too obvious this morning. His dreams had, evidently, been quite potent.
Thomas pushed back the covers and got out of bed, seeking the chamber pot to take care of the first order of business for the day. Then, memories of Mrs. Carterton exorcised from his head, he rang for Langley. He wanted to look sharp for his meeting with Rose, and he found himself hoping that whomever she brought as a chaperone would be willing to look away for a bit. When he had asked her to engage in this business, Thomas had not intended to officially court her. Now, given that he could not stop thinking about her, wanting to be with her, imagining the pleasure he could bring to her, perhaps it was time to let her know.
At the light tap on his door, he called out, “Enter!”—but it was not Langley. Robert walked in looking unshaven, bleary-eyed, and exhausted. He also had a swollen eye, which was surrounded by a vicious red and purple circle bordered by a small cut over his cheekbone.
“You look like hell. What happened?”
Robert sank down on the foot of Thomas’s bed. “Fight on the floor last night.”
“I hope you gave as good as you got.”
Robert gave a low huff of laughter and held out his hands, which sported matching cuts and battered knuckles. “Even Bill’s wolves were impressed.”
Thomas poured water into his washbasin. “I didn’t think you were going after the ball.” Thomas washed his face.
His brother shrugged.
“So what are you doing in here instead of sending for a beefsteak for that eye and going to bed?” He reached for a towel, scrubbed his face dry, then began preparing his shaving soap.
“Because you need to know something. There is a rumor going around that Broxley may be trying to re-engage Roger Bentley in this thing with Rose. Apparently, he did not take kindly to the public humiliation at the Higginbotham ball.”
“It was well des—”
“Or what you did to him at White’s. It’s one thing to show a man up as being a horrible dancer. Quite another to put his cowardice on display to his peers.”
“Then he shouldn’t be a coward.”
“If you came at me with that cane, I would duck and run.”
