Page 37 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

Odd. When Cerys Evan had put her hand on his sleeve in the drawing room last night, he’d felt her palm burn through the cloth to his skin, like a farmer branding a sheep that belonged to him.

“I think of it. Of you,” Bathsheba breathed in his ear. “All of the time.”

He leaned away. Her scent of neroli in her toilet water made his stomach turn over, too heavy, too earthy, complex and confusing.

While the scent of jasmine the night before, clean, light, innocently seductive, had stirred his senses past bearing.

“If you do not like your bed, recall that you chose it.”

“But you know I am ambitious, Dante. Like you. Why should I not have Baeccon’s title and rank, and whatever wealth he can manage not to lose at the gaming table? And why should I not have a lover who pleases me also?” She stroked his arm again.

“Is your husband aware that you intend to make him a cuckold?”

“Let us not dwell on unpleasant matters, when there are much more pleasant things we could discuss.” Bathsheba squeezed his arm, a supplication, a caress.

Once, her very nearness had made him burn with lust. Once, that sultry invitation would have undone him. She was knowledgeable in bed, and he had received the kind of tutelage in pleasure that he’d hadn’t known how to discover for himself.

The kind of pleasure a man could mistake for love, until he grew wiser.

Dante snapped his sketchbook shut. “I hope I will not dash any hopes when I am obliged to say that my affections lie elsewhere. If you will excuse me.”

He imagined her glare burning twin holes in the back of his coat as he walked away from her, spine straight. Good. Let her see how it felt to be rejected. Walked away from.

Cerys turned to face him as he approached her group, as if she had been waiting. Her smile changed from the knowing smirk to something softer. Welcome. When he came to her, she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow as if she belonged at his side, and knew it.

“The Viscount Andover has graciously agreed to lend his ballroom for Lady Baeccon’s matinee, if she wishes,” she said. “And thereafter, Mr. Thompson has agreed to let us use his spa for a run of our Hamlet, and other shows if we please our audience. We are discussing how to arrange the staging and set up seats.”

“Benches will do for the most of ’em,” Dorsey said. “A few chairs for the gouty gents and the elderly ladies. The rest can stand. ’Tis what they do when we’re at a barn or market.”

“Perhaps we can contrive something that will do for the longer term,” Thompson suggested. “To serve through the months while your permanent theater is being built.”

“I have some thoughts on that,” Dante said. “If I may steal Miss Evans away from you for a moment?”

Dorsey nodded, his focus drawn away as the older actress, the one called Mame, strolled up to the group. “You won’t take our Cerys far, will you, Mr. Manelli?” Mame said with a shrewd look.

“Not out of sight,” he assured her. “You may be witness to her every move.”

Mame chuckled. “People pay admission to watch this one, Mr. Manelli. Remember that.” Despite her easy smile, her pointed stare communicated the warning of chaperones the world over. Spoil her, and there will be hell to pay.

He was annoyed at the implication, touched at the older woman’s protectiveness, and curious about its source. Because she was protecting the troupe’s assets, or because she cared for the girl herself?

Cerys walked with him along the well-trodden path toward what would become the Parade, once he completed the designs for the villas Thompson meant to build. “You abandoned me on the edge of the forest to be ravened by the wolves,” he accused her.

She laughed. He wondered if she had pitched the sound to carry, that ringing mirth. Wondered if she knew how Bathsheba tossed her head at the sound, eyes narrowed.

“Poor Mr. Manelli.” She patted his arm with her other hand, then left it there, both of her hands on his arm. He had barely registered Bathsheba’s touch. Cerys’s left him enveloped in heat.

“Got a few nips in, did she?”

“More like rakes with her talons.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I could not come to you. You must be hanging after me, or what else is the point?”

“I have never in my life hung about anyone,” he snapped.

Why so irritable, when he had what he wanted—Cerys on his arm—he couldn’t say. Like a dog that stood and snapped over its food rather than feasting. Yet he could not help but feel he had walked from one snare into another, and the little minx was pulling his strings as she pulled everyone else’s.

She looked up into his face, her expression soft and questioning, then sent a knowing look after Bathsheba.