Page 59 of Stolen By the Duke of Stone

Affection twinged in her chest as she looked up at him. “I didn’t do it for you,” she said, smiling, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy it means something to you. And perhaps—perhaps if you were to ask me now, I would do it for you.”

His eyes flashed to hers, and held.

Jessamine’s stomach flipped. Logically, she knew there were over fifty other people in this room, but all she could think about was the way Andrew looked at her. The way a man might have looked at Venus in Ancient Rome and understood what beauty was for the first time in his life.

His thumb moved across her waist again, another slow swipe that made her blood heat.

She couldn’t stop thinking about that night, the night she had attempted to banish to the back of her mind. Irene was right that they could take it slowly and there was nothing obliging her to re-enter his bed if she were afraid to—oh, but she wanted to.

That was always the problem. The problem was not that she did not want to, but that she did.

“Andrew,” she whispered.

His arms curled her a little closer. The rest of the room vanished. She didn’t know what she wanted to say, but perhaps it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the heat in his eyes and the slow curl of his mouth as he looked down at her.

“You are not what I imagined you would be,” he said gruffly.

“And what did you imagine?”

“I imagined—” He broke off as the music stopped and the dance ended.

Already.

Jessamine wasn’t sure how it had happened so quickly. The dance was over.

She looked questioningly up at him, and he stepped back, releasing her. The moment had passed, like the dance, and now it was over.

Wishing it could have lasted just a little longer so they could have had more of this conversation, she accepted his hand and allowed him to walk her back into the crowd.

Chapter Twenty

Andrew had never been much for ballrooms and dancing.

Yes, he’d done a little—enough that he could guide Jessamine when she faltered—but they had never been the place he felt most comfortable. He was a man with one foot in polite company, and one foot out.

If he lost himself to the sound of the crowd, his mind replaced it with other sounds. The hush of soldiers talking as they hid in trees and readied themselves to ambush French soldiers. The burst of bullets, the screams of pain, and the desperate gasps his men made as they dragged their wounded back to safety.

He rarely gave in to the force of these memories, but they were always there. Until Jessamine, at least part of him had despised London and its Society. What did nobility know of true loss? They pretended at hating the French, all while having copied their fashions. The Napoleonic War was distant enough for it to be gossip and not reality.

For them. Andrew had seen every muddy, bleeding particle of its reality.

Jessamine, beside him, had seen enough pain and sorrow and loss in her lifetime that he absolved her of the sins of her class. And the way she had thrown herself into caring for William showed that she cared for more things than mere appearances.

She cared about William. And she even cared about him.

The lingering sounds of battle faded. Warmth replaced it. He kept his eyes on her; if he looked away, he might lose the peace she cultivated within him.

She was looking past him, a glass of wine in her hand and her earrings swinging slightly as she scanned the room. He couldn’t take his gaze away from the elegant lines of her neck. None of the things he wanted would be appropriate here, or even appropriate back at home, where he had sworn to himself not to touch her for now.

More complication was not what they needed.

But it was very much what he wanted.

Her eyes widened, and she stiffened, one hand coming to his elbow to grip. Some part of him felt vindicated at such clear evidence that she came to him for comfort, but the rest responded as he would to danger. He stepped in front of her, his entire body tightening, and he looked up to find Baron Lorthey striding toward them.

He sucked in a breath. Every time he encountered Baron Lorthey---thankfully, an infrequent occurrence---he could not help thinking of Harry.

Harry Leighton, who had been fighting alongside the rest of them when he had taken five bullets to the chest and stomach. There had been so much blood. Andrew’s stomach dropped to think of it, the blood. How helpless he had been to keep that life inside Harry’s body, and how it had felt to see the eyes of his friend go dark and to know there was no venturing into that place to save him.