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Laughing Anastasia took the flute. “Which would do what? Negate your position of being Helios?”
“I am sure you have heard of my reputation by now,” he commented, pinning Anastasia with a mild look. “Does it bother you?”
“And what reputation do you refer to?”
The stains of a waltz came, and Gabriel offered his hand. “May I, Miss Porter?”
Settling the glass down, she took his hand, “It is my pleasure, Your Grace.”
A wave of murmurs rose through the room as they took their place, and even those already on the dance floor gawked shamelessly. “Everyone is looking at us.”
“Let them look,” he said. “I suppose it’s my fault. You are my first dance of the night and possibly my last—that is if you will give me another.”
The violins leaped to life, and the beautiful strains filled the ballroom. He took her into his arms as they soared together. The heat of his hands on her lower back was sinfully delicious the way it burned through her gown.
“You did not finish your previous statement,” she noted.
“I’m a rake.” His exacting accent sounded like cut glass. “The devil’s scourge of London’s ton, the bane to unfettered women, and the temptation to married ones. I am the blot on the so-called pristine upper ten thousand. I am the embodiment of a blackguard, a hellhound, a—”
She waited. “A what, Your Grace?”
“I am trying to find a word that accurately describes what men like I am without implying that I am hideous to look at,” he replied. “None come to mind, but simply, I am punished for having a sensual appetite and fulfilling that need.”
“I see,” Anastasia replied. “What of love?”
“The fallacy? What of it?” he asked.
“Well that answers my question if you had found it before,” Anastasia replied. “Were you ever engaged?”
“No.”
“And amorous interests?”
“A few.”
“Mistresses? A half-dozen of them I presume?” Anastasia was prepared for him to say two, four, or perhaps even five.
“Sadly, Miss Porter, I have none. In fact, the truth of the matter is—” he met her eyes directly and dryly drawled, “—I am such a poor, unfortunate rake that I do not have even a single mistress to my name.”
Anastasia laughed, “I know what you are doing, Your Grace, and it won’t work. Not with me.”
“Really?” he asked, grinning and giving her a little sample of his hidden charm. “WhatamI doing?”
“Trying to scandalize me, but while I have been sheltered my entire life, I have read enough to know men like you exist, and your… proclivities do not shatter the ground under my feet.”
“Give me time,” he said, throwing her a sensual look that made her toes curl in her silk slippers.
“As luck would have it, you have the Season,” she replied as the waltz ended. She curtsied, and he bowed.
“Walk with me?” he took her arm.
So, they got off floor; fans flickered out as they walked, a telltale sign that ladies had begun to gawp and whisper behind the silks. A buzz of interest followed her, but Anastasia blithely ignored the ladies’ avid stares and gentlemen’s smirks.
“I suppose they think I will be your next conquest,” Anastasia murmured as she spotted a man openly gaping at them, his curly hair pell-mell.
“Perhaps,” Gabriel replied. “It is more that they know I distance myself from wallflowers.”
Back at the refreshment table, Anastasia drew a glass of water and saw the same curly haired man from before. “Who is that lord looking at me as if I were a phantasm?”
