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Decima gazed at him blankly, realised her mouth was open and shut it. Henry was quite correct—Adam had added her to his collection and was feeling proprietorial about her, despite his being engaged to another woman.
‘Do I have to remind you that you are an engaged man?’ she whispered fiercely.
‘I know. What a pity that harems have not caught on in England.’
‘You are outrageous,’ Decima scolded, feeling quite ridiculous, lecturing a man in a whisper over lobster patties. The wretch was no doubt only teasing her, but she could not let him get away with this. ‘Poor Olivia—’
‘Is flirting,’ Adam whispered back, inclining his head towards his fiancée.
‘Of course she…is.’ Goodness, who would have thought it? Meek little Olivia was gazing into Henry’s eyes and positively batting her lashes at him. What would Adam do? Expecting him to intervene at any moment, Decima watched aghast.
‘The poor child never managed to get away from her mama long enough to indulge in a little harmless flirtation,’ Adam murmured into Decima’s ear, making the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise and tingle deliciously. ‘I am certainly not going to start lecturing her in the same spirit.’
So, he was so confident about Olivia that he was relaxed about her flirting with a man of Henry’s quite exceptional good looks. Why, then, had he been so prickly when he thought she and Henry were in some way involved?
‘Why are you frowning?’ Adam snapped his fingers at a passing footman and secured two more glasses of champagne.
‘Because I don’t understand you,’ Decima admitted frankly. ‘You seem positively inconsistent.’
‘Thank you.’ Adam bowed slightly. ‘But ladies are inconsistent. I strive to be enigmatic.’
‘Piffle,’ Decima retorted. ‘You know perfectly well that you don’t put on airs to be interesting, so stop trying to tell me you do.’ She had forgotten to keep her voice low and both Olivia and Henry turned to regard her in surprise. ‘Lord Weston is bamming me,’ she explained, taking a restorative draught from her wine glass.
‘Would either of you ladies like an ice?’ Henry said, hastily flashing Decima a warning glance. She wrinkled her nose at him. Goodness, the champagne was making her positively light-headed. It was a delightful feeling, so unlike the way she had always felt at balls in the past, huddled in the wallflowers’ corner with the spotty, the fat and the poorly dowered.
She took another sip and shook her head. ‘No, thank you, Sir Henry.’
‘Then perhaps you will dance with me?’ Adam asked her, catching her dance card as it hung on her wrist and flipping it open. ‘The next dance is a waltz, if I am not mistaken.’
‘I am not dancing, my lord.’ The words slipped out before she realised she no longer had that defence.
‘Obviously not. Just at the moment you are partaking of supper. But as you say, you have finished—’
‘You choose to misunderstand me.’ Decima felt the blush mounting and fought it. ‘I am not intending to dance.’
‘But you have been—all evening. Are you rejecting me as a partner, Miss Ross? I am wounded.’
‘I…no…I mean…’ Decima gazed hopelessly at his bland countenance as he waited patiently for her to dither herself to a stop. She had been dancing. Rather a lot. With a number of different men. And there was absolutely no reason—short of becoming suddenly indisposed—why she should refuse Adam. She gave in. ‘Thank you, Lord Weston.’
Beside her she realised that Henry was asking Olivia to partner him and the four of them reached the floor just as the first notes sounded. Decima stood uncertainly, the confidence that had filled her ever since Mr Mays had led her out quite deserting her.
‘Decima?’ Adam was waiting patiently, and with a sensation of breathlessness she stepped into his arms and took his hand. When she could breathe again the familiar scent of him was such a shock that she almost stumbled—citrus and man and, quite simply, Adam. His arm held her firmly, as he might have collected a horse that had stumbled, and they were dancing.
‘That is a particularly fetching gown,’ Adam remarked. She could hear the smile in his voice and it brought her eyes up sharply to his face, but mercifully he was not regarding the embarrassing swell of exposed bosom. He grinned at her. ‘Those freckles get everywhere, don’t they?’
‘No, they do not,’ she retorted. ‘I believe you have now seen every freckle I possess and I would be obliged if you would not refer to them again—it is most unseemly.’
‘You make me feel unseemly,’ he remarked plaintively, whirling her around a slower pair of dancers. For a second their bodies pressed together. A flash of heat, of hot liquid yearning, ran through her loins and Decima drew back with a gasp.
She said the first thing she could think of to bring them both back to earth and to a sense of their obligations. ‘When is the wedding to be?’
‘June the eighteenth.’
‘Oh.’ Now what to say? ‘And where will it be?’
‘I have no idea. My future mother-in-law has not yet vouchsafed her decision on the matter.’
‘Does Olivia not have a say?’ Surely a bride would have very decided ideas about every aspect of the ceremony.
