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She rose abruptly in a rustle of silk. Surprised—again—he was slow coming to his feet.
“I need air,” she said. “It grows warm in here.”
He opened the door to the corridor and she swept past him. He followed her out, his pulse racing.
Marcelline had seen him countless times, from as little as a few yards away. She’d observed a handsome, expensively elegant English aristocrat.
At close quarters ...
She was still reeling.
The body first. She’d surreptitiously studied that while he made polite chitchat with Sylvie. The splendid physique was not, as she’d assumed, created or even assisted by fine tailoring, though the tailoring was exquisite. His broad shoulders were not padded, and his tapering torso wasn’t cinched in by anything but muscle.
Muscle everywhere—the arms, the long legs. And no tailor could create the lithe power emanating from that tall frame.
It’s hot in here, was her first coherent thought.
Then he was standing in front of her, bending over her hand, and the place grew hotter still.
She was aware of his hair, black curls gleaming like silk and artfully tousled.
He lifted his head.
She saw a mouth that should have been a woman’s, so full and sensuous it was. But it was pure male, purely carnal.
An instant later she was looking up into eyes of a rare color—a green like jade—while a low masculine voice caressed her ear and seemed to be caressing parts of her not publicly visible.
Good grief.
She walked quickly as they left the box, thinking quickly, too, as she went. She was aware of the clusters of opera-goers in the corridor making way for her. That amused her, even while she pondered the unexpected problem walking alongside.
She’d known the Duke of Clevedon was a handful.
She’d vastly underestimated.
Still, she was a Noirot, and the risks only excited her.
She came to rest at last in a quieter part of the corridor, near a window. For a time, she gazed out of the window. It showed her only her own reflection: a magnificently dressed, alluring woman, a walking advertisement for what would one day—soon, with a little help from him—be London’s foremost dressmaking establishment. Once they had the Duchess of Clevedon, royal patronage was sure to follow: the moon and the stars, almost within her grasp.
“I hope you’re not unwell, madame,” he said in his English-accented French.
“No, but it occurs to me that I’ve been absurd,” she said. “What a ridiculous wager it is!”
He smiled. “You’re not backing down? Is riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne so dreadful a fate?”
It was a boyish smile, and he spoke with a self-deprecating charm that must have slain the morals of hundreds of women.
She said, “As I see it, either way I win. No matter how I look at it, this wager is silly. Only think, when I tell you whether you’re right or wrong, how will you know I’m telling the truth?”
“Did you think I’d demand your passport?” he said.
“Were you planning to take my word for it?” she said.
“Of course.”
“That may be gallant or it may be naïve,” she said. “I can’t decide which.”
“You won’t lie to me,” he said.
