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“It’s notyou,” Joy interjected with an encouraging smile.
“I mean… Itisyou,” Peavy said. “He’s looking for a very specific type of woman, and you are not it.”
Miss Drowsy yawned. “Are we certain Eagleton is thinking about marriage? One presumes an infamous rakehell only has one thing on his mind.”
Goose leaned toward Bianca. “She’s alluding to the act of—”
“I followed,” Bianca assured her. To be fair, the scandalous idea of making love to Harry was never far from Bianca’s thoughts as well. “Don’t worry. I know who and what he is.”
“So do we. That’s why I worry.” Tina’s voice was quiet, and her eyes serious. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“He’d never hurt me,” Bianca said.
Peavy did not look convinced. “A man needn’tintendto hurt you, in order to hurt you.”
“Say what you will,” said Bianca, “I trust him. He has been nothing but honest with me from the moment we met. I fully understand that what rules him is not his heart, but his—”
Goose trod heavily upon her toe.
Bianca snapped her teeth closed.
Harry stepped into view, his blue eyes trained on Bianca as if the rest of the ballroom did not exist. “Are you spoken for this set?”
Bianca’s dance card was as empty now as it had been when she first arrived.
“I suppose I could spare another moment of my busy schedule,” she answered.
His eyes glittered as though she had just promised to present herself nude in a tub dotted with rose petals.
“Shall we go somewhere more private?” He offered her his arm. “Perhaps a turn about the garden?”
“Oh, well done,” Joy murmured. “A second set away from the prying eyes of gossips.”
Bianca hoped Goose trod upon her sister’s toes as well.
She wrapped her hand around the hard muscle of Harry’s upper arm and allowed him to escort her out of the ballroom through the open sash-windowed doors to the rear garden outside.
The night sky was inky black and spattered with stars. With the afternoon spring drizzle that had fallen earlier, Bianca had feared the sky would be too overcast tonight to see much of anything beyond the moon, and was gratified to be proven wrong.
The soft breeze carried a light chill, so she held on tighter to Harry’s arm, pressing herself against the warmth of his side.
“Come with me,” he murmured into her ear. “I know where we can go.”
“A secret trysting corner of the St. Trevelyon garden?” she asked archly, torn between envy of all the other women he might have brought there, and delight that they need not spend the rest of their second and final precious twenty-minute set being stared at by gossips.
“You’ll see,” was all he would say.
She matched her steps to his, hurrying to keep pace. They followed a stone path around a curve, then abandoned the walkway completely, choosing instead to duck between trees and behind a hedgerow until they emerged in a wide, empty strip on the other side.
“What is this?” she asked.
“The road to the mews. It’ll be empty for hours. All the guests have already arrived, and none will call for their carriages until after the dancing ends.”
“You mean… We could stand out here past our twenty-minute limit, if we wished to?”
His eyes held hers. “I’m yours for as long as you want me.”
Good heavens. That answer certainly sounded like a wish come true. She darted a glance at the stars. Still motionless.
