“I did enjoy my time abroad,” he replied carefully.
“And are you a rake?”
“What do you think?” He released her hands as they were forced to their other dance partners once more.
When they came back together, she regarded him cautiously, as if he might be dangerous. “I think you are,” she said somewhat breathlessly.
That wasn’t entirely correct. Or at least not anymore. The women he’d been with in the last several years knew their time together was ephemeral, meant only to placate each other’s physical needs and nothing more.
He had not wished for anything more.
Until now.
“I know something of you too,” he said.
She blinked in surprise at this. “There are rumors about me? Pray tell, what are they saying about me?”
“That you are in the market for a husband.”
“Every woman is in the market for a husband.”
Fair enough. “But I think you may be getting close to achieving your goal.”
“Whyever would you think that?”
He paused, waiting until the second just before they were to go to their other partners for a rotation before finally replying, “Because I know you were kissed while you were on the terrace last night.”
4
The air seemed to disappear from the room for Cecelia at Lord Chambrook’s admission of knowing she had been kissed at the masquerade ball. She was carried away by her other partner in the dance, spared from having to respond. It was a small mercy she found herself exceedingly grateful for. After all, it was nearly impossible to think when her heart raced so.
When the dance brought her back to Lord Chambrook, she tilted her chin as high as she dared. “That is rather presumptuous of you. Why would you make such a claim?”
“Because I know it to be true.” He spun her about and drew her back toward him. His movements were strong, confident.
Unease flitted through her.
There was an uncanny similarity to the man she had danced with the night before—the one who could not have been Lord Brightstone.
“How could you possibly?” She asked through lips she could barely feel.
He gave a flippant shrug. “It’s the sort of thing Demetrius would know.”
Her heartbeat stuttered as it all came together. “Demetrius?”
He inclined his head, arrogant. Alluring. “At your service.”
Humiliation caught her with its wicked barb. Were they not amid a ballroom full of people, she would have jerked free of his arms. “You lied to me.”
And Aunt Nancy had made a terrible mistake.
“No.” He kept his gaze fixed on hers. “I told you I was Demetrius. Never once did I claim to be Lord Brightstone.”
“Nor did you correct my assumptions.”
Her thoughts raced as she thought back to the previous night. What had she said in her confusion during the mistaken identity? Good God, she had told him about how she had put aside Lord Brightstone’s desire to court her for her family.
Her stomach dropped.
