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“Is this haste required by my elderly status?” he asked.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “You were irritating, and I couldn’t resist saying that. But of course you’re not elderly. Just a trifle older than the twenty-year-old gentlemen whom one usually meets.”

“I’ve two more years before I’m thirty,” he said evenly.

“Thirty or no, you don’t want to attend another Season, any more than I do. We’ve scarcely been here a half hour, and my toes already hurt.”

Devin glanced down. Peeking from under Viola’s full skirts were pointed shoes with exuberant pompoms. Naturally enough, her feet were as neat and small as the rest of her. “They are very pretty,” he said, meaning her feet.

“I should be rejoicing that I don’t feel nauseated,” she said, obviously following her own train of thought. “The fear of my debut terrorized me for years, and now I find myself annoyed instead of seasick.” She threw him a helpless look. “You must think me a complete widgeon because I’m not even sure who I’m annoyed at: myself, Miss Pettigrew, your uncle . . .”

Everything in his belly tightened at the way her lips pursed. That, and the way she was treating him, not like an eligible duke, but something far dearer. He could feel desire settling in his spine.

He suspected it was a life-long condition.

“Since your feet hurt, would you like to sit?” he asked, noting that his voice had deepened, and trusting that she was too busy glaring at her shoes to notice.

“There aren’t any chairs, and besides, we should return to the drawing room.”

“You could sit on the balustrade,” he suggested, patting the wide marble slab. He picked up one of the cashmere wraps that his uncle stacked about. “We used to sit on these to play jackstones if it was cold.”

Viola’s eyes searched his face. “It’s hard to imagine you a boy. Were you any good at jackstones?”

“Not particularly, but I enjoyed the game,” he replied. “I haven’t played since my father died.”

“How old were you?”

“Old enough to stop playing games. Sixteen.”

Viola’s eyes were hazel-colored, with green flecks, and at the moment they were full of sympathy. Devin couldn’t decide how he felt about that. He was starting to think that Viola was prone to fits of pity. In fact, it was possible that her affection for Marlowe stemmed from pity due to his objectionable betrothal.

No, that was absurd. Viola had an infatuation for the man, one shared by most of the young ladies inside, as far as he could tell.

“I’m afraid I’m too short to hop onto the balustrade,” Viola said. She cast him a rueful glance. “If there’s anything that reminds me that I’m not a Wilde, it’s my lack of height.”

“I dislike tall women.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely.” It was a new opinion, but nonetheless firmly held. He moved a fraction of an inch closer. “I could easily lift you. We’ve only been outside for a few minutes. If we return directly, my uncle will consider me to have failed to make a proper attempt to woo you. That will lead him to push us together again. Stubbornness is a family trait.”

“Somehow I am unsurprised to hear that,” she said, giving him a grin. “At my ball, I thought you’d never stop insisting that you’d wanted to take me to supper.”

“You had your revenge by handing me over to Lady Caitlin,” he said. “May I?”

She glanced down at his hands, not touching her, but ready.

He thought there was a good chance that he would always be ready to hold her.

“Only because my toes hurt,” she allowed.

His hands closed around Viola’s waist and he lifted her to the balustrade in one sure movement. Her trim waist had no need of a corset. And she was as light as a feather.

There would never be that awkward moment when— He cut off that thought. She was a proper young lady. Marital relations took place in a horizontal position in the dark.

She gave a sigh of pleasure and wiggled her toes. “Your uncle is very amusing, isn’t he? I can tell that he cares for you very much.”

Devin nodded.