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Stella was thinking about that when Silvester bowed before her. Her heart skipped a beat, and she forgot about the earl.

“I trust you have recovered from your tumble, Lady Stella?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, dropping a curtsy.

“May I have the pleasure of this dance?”

“It’s another quadrille,” Stella said, clearing her throat. “I’d rather not.”

“Poppycock,” he replied, pulling her onto the dance floor without waiting for an answer.

When they joined another couple, Silvester promptly took the lead, spinning her firmly in the right direction. “Belper is a duffer,” he remarked, after they completed a few more figures without disaster. “You’re doing fine.”

“It was my fault,” Stella said. “I turned the wrong direction.”

“I’ve done it myself. Damn—excuse me, dratted—dances get more complicated every year.”

His admission was untruthful. She’d watched the duke circle the dance floor any number of times, including this very evening when he gracefully negotiated the steps of the new Dance Ecossoise, just arrived from France. It was even more complicated than the quadrille.

The dance parted them again, so Stella gave herself a firm lecture. Silvester was kind enough to fib about his dancing skills, but he didn’t know what habeas corpus was, or likely even that there was such a law.

Not that it mattered, since he would never consider her for a spouse, but she had determined to marry the most knowledgeable man she could find, not just someone who was good at dancing.

Back together for a final turn, Silvester murmured, “Did you see that Belper just bumped into the lady behind him? If I heard correctly, she called him a barbarian.”

She smiled at him, touched that he was still trying to make her feel better. “Before I debuted, I believed in the distinction between barbarians and gentlemen.”

To her horror, the sight of his powerful neck, head thrown back as he laughed, prompted an image of her running her tongue down its length.

When he bowed in front of his next partner, she couldn’t stop herself from ducking behind her fan to ogle his arse in tight silk breeches.

Her aunt would be appalled. Appalled.

Not because Stella admired Silvester: that was practically obligatory for young ladies. The Duke of Huntington was the most eligible man in England, possessed of a large estate, decent stature, and all his teeth. Ladies’ eyes followed him everywhere.

But she doubted that other debutantes had explicit daydreams about how they’d like to . . . to lick him. Do breathless, depraved things that Stella couldn’t quite envision.

Late at night, she spun stories under the sheets, during which he did things that she was certain no other lady had even imagined. Obviously, all those men looking for love didn’t engage in dissolute thoughts about the women at whose feet they worshipped.

It was her humiliating secret.

Doubly humiliating because Silvester was so far above her.

All of which didn’t stop her from enjoying the way he bowed, one powerful leg extended. His fashionable pantaloons strained over a muscled thigh that would overshadow even sturdy legs like her own.

A low thrum in her blood informed her that she would cheerfully follow him into the shrubbery or a secluded room.

In fact, it could be that Mrs. Thyme’s warnings about male lust disguised a more serious danger, not in men but women.

To be blunt, ladies want more than a kiss.

Worse than a kiss.

At least, Stella did.

Chapter Three

The Breakfast Room,