She had barely seen hide nor hair of him for three days since the opera, and in the brief exchanges they had managed when they had twice collided in the street, she had not had the opportunity to ask him what his sister-in-law had said to sour his mood. Because there had been no denying that during the second half, after he finally returned to his seat a full ten minutes after the performance had started, the newly minted Marquess of Thundersley had had a face like thunder itself and, for reasons she wasn’t prepared to decipher, that had worried her.
It wasn’t like Luke to be so dour and occupied, and with him imminently leaving Bloomsbury for at least the next two weeks, she was eager to get to the bottom of it before he left for Cornwall to fetch his mother and she worried the entire time he was gone.
‘Are you sure you would not appreciate the fresh air on the terrace?’ Lord Ealing was like an irritating insect. Or perhaps, with his lipless mouth and short, stick-thin body, an eel lurking in the reeds waiting to pounce on an insect. ‘Only it is rather stuffy in here and you do look a bit flushed, Miss Hope.’ The darting eyes flicked back and forth between her apparently hot face and her décolleté as if he had no control over them. If she had had the common sense to grab a shawl before the party started, she would be making a point of tightening it around her to let him know she found his gawping both rude and offensive.
‘If I look anything, my lord, it is bored.’ She never should have listened to Charity and worn this particular gown or allowed herself to be talked into eschewing the gauzy fichu she had laid out to pair with it. The single inch and a half of cleavage it revealed was proving to be problematic as it drew male stares like a magnet. Before Lord Ealing’s bulbous eyeballs had latched on to her, it had been Horace Strickland the renowned painter of horses and purveyor of profusive perspiration, and before him it had been the husband of a well-known actress who had now sunk so irredeemably in her estimation that she would never be able to be civil to him again.
And they were only an hour in.
‘Haven’t you got someone else you can bother?’
‘You know my tender heart only beats for you, my flame-haired and fulsome Aphrodite.’ Those eyes fixed to her chest as the tip of his tongue moistened his non-existent lips, making her feel dirty and exposed.
As usual, she covered those unpleasant internal sensations with outward disdain. ‘Then I fear your tender heart is doomed for ever to be disappointed, my lord, as mine barely notices you exist.’ To prove that inescapable fact, Hope glanced wistfully towards the hallway, wondering if anybody would notice if she slipped upstairs to continue meticulously copying out her finally finished manuscript. Or change her stupid gown. She most definitely had to change this gown. ‘In fact, at this precise moment, I wish with all my heart that you didn’t.’
Like the idiot he was, Lord Ealing was delighted by her insult. ‘If your continued uninterest is a calculated feminine tactic to pique my interest further, you should know it is working for I am charmed completely by you, Miss Hope. Utterly andhopelessly charmed.’
‘Oh, good grief! How unoriginal and tedious.’ Luke suddenly appeared out of nowhere at her elbow like a giant henchman, the seams of his coat straining across the pickaxe-honed muscles of his belligerently folded arms. ‘You have my solemn pledge I will never make a pun out of your name again, Hope.’ Then he seemed to increase in height as he loomed menacingly over Lord Ealing, pinning him with his icy glare as he forced him to look up at him. ‘Why are you still stood here when the lady clearly told you to go and bother somebody else?’
‘Well... I... Um...’
Her wild-looking knight swatted the intimidated gnat away with a dismissive brush of both hands. ‘Be gone, fool, before you annoy me too and then you will be sorry.’
And miraculously, just like that, he was.
Luke smugly watched the odious lord scurry across the drawing room as if his breeches were on fire, then grinned, thoroughly pleased with himself. ‘Well who knew? Intimidationisas effective a deterrent to an unwanted suitor as a romantic tryst is? Although I still prefer my method and, I suspect, so do you.’ He winked then, making no attempt to stifle his amusement at bringing up that kiss again simply because he enjoyed reminding her of it as often as possible to vex her.
Not that she needed his reminder. Her wayward thoughts revisited the dratted thing much too often of their own accord.
‘I can assure you there was nothing romantic about your drunken slobbering, Lord Trouble.’ As she shuddered in mock disgust, because the wretch hadn’t slobbered in the slightest and knew it, she fought the urge to smile back at him. She allowed only the corners of her mouth to curve upward because she was pleased with her quick response now that she had finally conquered the flustered blush which always accompanied his constant reminders. ‘But I thank you for your timely interference in my predicament all the same. Lord Ealing’s pitiful attempts at seduction were starting to grate and I promised my parents faithfully that I wouldn’t make a scene. They still haven’t forgiven me for tipping an entire decanter of port over Lord Ogilvy’s head in the middle of their last soirée, though to be fair more because they had the devil of a job getting the stain out of the Persian than because I punished Lord Ogilvy for excessive ogling.’
‘Sadly, I suspect I have only granted you a temporary reprieve from the ogling tonight.’ He inclined his head to where the eel-like Ealing sulked as he glared at them. ‘As your sunny, welcoming character has clearly made a lasting impression on him. Alongside a few others, I notice.’
If he had noticed, he should have rescued her sooner.
‘We both know it isn’t my character which attracts them like flies to the dung heap.’ Curse this stupid gown! She had only donned it because she had wanted to look pretty, and she had only wanted to look pretty because of... Instinctively she narrowed her eyes at Luke, peeved that this was actually all his fault and more peeved that it really wasn’t. ‘Why are men so reliably shallow?’
‘To be fair to my sex, it is a base animal instinct we have no control over and, as much as it might pain you to be so, you are rather...beautiful. Exceptionally so tonight.’ It galled her that she was thrilled with the compliment, when such nonsense from other gentlemen was usually met with short shrift. But Luke wasn’t most men and he had never stared at her in the lascivious way most men did. He frowned as his dark eyes swept her up and down then focused resolutely on her face. ‘Perhaps a sack might disguise the problem? Something baggy enough and thick enough that it conceals all that overt and striking femininity you were cursed with.’
‘Are you suggestingtheirungentlemanly behaviour is somehowmyfault?’
He laughed as she bristled, holding his palms up in surrender. ‘Not in the slightest, I wouldn’t dare say anything of the sort, so don’t you dare reach for the port and douse me with it. Those men are crass, ill-mannered brutes, ruled entirely by their urges and who should be heartily ashamed of themselves for their unseemly leering and panting. I am merely suggesting a way that you might mitigate against all the unwanted attention whichyouso obviously loathe as that gown is, frankly, temptation personified and it requires a strong male constitution to admire it with restraint.’
His fingers dispassionately tugged at the lace of her short, capped sleeve. ‘And the damnedest thing is that I know on any other woman, this same frock would look positively demure, plain even, as it is neither too low nor too tight and not the least bit showy. Yet...’ He sighed as he let go and shook his head as if it was all an unfathomable conundrum. ‘On you, it is a deadly weapon. So much so, you outshine every other woman in this room. And without even trying to.’
He did compliments so well and that one in particular warmed her, so she schooled her features into her blandest mask in case it showed. He was much too self-assured already, he really didn’t need any more encouragement. Not that she had any plans of encouraging him. ‘Sackcloth is notoriously itchy.’
‘It is and it’s bound to chafe. But if sackcloth is not to your taste, a nun’s habit would likely have a similar effect on all the collective lusty males in the vicinity. Or then again, maybe it wouldn’t, as there is something devilishly attractive about the forbidden and you are bound to look positively sinful in a habit too. Because you look positively sinful in everything without trying to too, don’t you—my flame-haired and fulsomeAphrodite.’
He was insufferable. ‘Clearly you could have rescued me ten minutes earlier, couldn’t you? But you were having too much fun at my expense.’
‘That I was.’
‘And you wonder why no woman has rushed you up the aisle?’
‘It’s a mystery to be sure.’ He raised his arm. ‘Care to take a turn around the terrace for some fresh air with me instead, and we can discuss it further?’
‘Only on the understanding that I am taking a turn purely for the fresh air and most definitely not your dull company.’
