AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They kissed again, a languid meeting of their mouths before she pulled back. This time, she stepped entirely out of his arms. He reached for her, but she deftly evaded. As she opened the door and discreetly stepped back into the light of the corridor, her eyes twinkled.
“Are you certain you will nae marry me?” His brogue was thick, but from her answering smile, she understood him well enough.
He half expected her to turn rigid at the mention of marriage, but she took his words for the jest they were—even if that jest had more than a little truth to it. “Quite sure,” she said.
The way she said it gave him hope.
“I must return to the ballroom before somebody notices I’m missing. Wait a spell before you follow.”
He reached for her hand and towed her back into the shadows with him. “One more kiss?” he asked.
She obliged. But for him, one more kiss, would never be enough.
* * *
Perdie resistedthe urge to touch her mouth as she traversed the length of the corridor toward the ballroom. She still tingled from Thaddeus’s touch. She knew she was letting herself get swept away, but she couldn’t help it when this had been the first she’d seen of him in days.
The rain had prevented her from walking to and from Berkeley Square and perhaps meeting him along the way. And somehow, he was always enveloped in business with one of the lords for her to approach him at a public event and claim his attention. If she tried, she’d make a spectacle of herself, and her name graced the pages of the scandal rags more often than her mother liked as it was. The broadsheets were still speculating over their sole dance, and the authors of those columns weren’t even aware of the flowers and the notes he sent her. Nor of the letters she sent back with Lionel.
If her mother knew, she would likely be thrilled and perhaps a bit scandalized. Unmarried ladies did not open flirtatious correspondences with unmarried men. However, Perdie had allies enough among the staff. They ensured that the letters always made their way into her reticule before her mother discovered them.
Perdie felt silly, swooning over the contents of those letters. Thaddeus didn’t send her the pretty poetry that she had been wooed with as a girl, the poetry Lord Owen still sent to her and she returned posthaste. She’d stopped opening his letters, but still they arrived.
No, Thaddeus’s letters were frank, sincere. He subtly reminded her of memories they shared together without naming those memories outright. And she did the same with him, teasing him as she had on the road. As she had in the folly. She’d wanted to kiss him for days, and now that she had, she felt like she was dancing on air.
It was a pity she had to contrive to leave her townhouse and sequester herself among the club ladies early enough in the morning to avoid Lord Owen paying her a call. She was likely missing Thaddeus, as well.
In fact, she was frustrated to the teeth over having to make any concessions for Lord Owen at all. Take tonight—she’d spent so long circulating the ballroom trying to avoid him, that she almost hadn’t had her stolen moment with Thaddeus at all. If he had not been thoroughly wicked and contrived for her to meet him alone, another day would have passed without seeing his smile, hearing the Scottish burr on his tongue whenever she riled him, feeling his mouth against hers again.
It was wicked, scandalous, sensational—and she loved every wanton second of it, even as she felt regrets that she did not want to marry.
As she stepped into the ballroom proper, she was so enveloped with her thoughts that she nearly collided with a gentleman. The solidity of the body before her reminded her of where she was. Hastily, she collected herself and apologized.
“Forgive me. I should have paid more mind to where I put my feet.”
“The fault is entirely mine.”
The glib answer was one she would have expected from any gentleman in the ballroom, but the voice left her cold. It chased away the lingering tingles from Thaddeus’s touch. She jerked her head up to meet Lord Owen’s narrowed eyes. He seemed suspicious. She almost patted down her hair, to check it some of it had fallen free of her pins in a passionate moment, but stopped herself at the last second. It would only deepen his suspicions.
“Lord Owen. I didn’t know you were in attendance tonight,” she politely said.
The suspicious look on his face melted away into a courteous smile. “You are a difficult woman to find. Perhaps now that I’ve managed, I may claim the next dance?”
He held out his hand, palm upward. His mouth was set in an easy smile that matched the rakish way his hair fell over his forehead. Here was a man thoroughly assured of himself and his place in the world. He expected her to accept instantly, as if her card would not have been filled with names by this point in the evening. As if she would have saved the dances for him.
She lifted her chin and clasped her hands in front of her waist. She did not look at his proffered hand. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling the thing tonight. I don’t much care for dancing this evening.”
His smile twitched and almost fell away before he pinned it back in place. He offered his arm instead. “Then allow me to escort you back to your mother. She must be wondering where you are.”
Perdie tried not to make a face, but she could find no polite way of avoiding his company. And she recalled they had been friends of a sort. Reluctantly, she slid her hand onto his sleeve and allowed him to lead them around the perimeter. His pace was far more sedate than one she would have set.
“You returned my letters.”
That in itself should have informed him of her feelings toward him.
“Yes.”
“Unopened.”
