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“It is a pleasure to meet a lady of your acquaintance, Lady Phillipa.”
She pulled her fingers away and tugged on her gloves.
“Remington would have killed Shuttleworth if he had known his deeds.”
Her eyes searched every nuance of William’s expression. “I never doubted my brother’s reaction. I only feared for him.”
“So you carried the burden of your attack alone. I am damned sorry for it.”
Lady Phillipa stared at William as if she did not know what to make of him. “I shall never forget your kindness, my lord.”
“It was nothing.”
“It waseverything, my lord.”
William said nothing to that, merely watched as she whirled away and hurried along the cobbled steps leading her to the ballroom. Dipping into his pocket, he removed his cheroot, a frown splitting his brow as he stared at Lady Phillipa’s retreating back. With an irritable grunt, he walked away, determined to call for his carriage and head home.
“Will!”
The hushed cry of Lady Vinnette prompted him to pause. A celebrated beauty married to Lord Thompson hurried toward him, glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder. “My darling, I could not have escaped any sooner! Did you wait for me long?” she asked coquettishly, resting a hand against his chest.
Quite unexpectedly, William was indifferent to her charms and no longer found her enticing. “I forgot we were to meet.”
She flushed and narrowed her gaze. “You tease me, you rogue! My husband will visit his mistress tonight. Say you’ll come to me!”
William peered down into her incomparable features, willing himself to be tempted by the naughty offer and the raunchy delights her stare promised. She was more beautiful than most of society’s beauties, with her dark blonde hair and beguiling green eyes, but he found he no longer anticipated bedding her with pleasure. Instead, he looked beyond Vinnette and toward the ballroom, an inexplicable feeling tugging him to go inside. He hissed under his breath, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Vinnette…”
She slipped her hands around his neck and flushed her breasts to his chest. Despite the flirtatious and provocative dance between them, he had not yet taken her to his bed. He had been so certain she would be his newest lover, yet now he was decidedly disinterested. Sighing, he cupped her cheeks and pressed a tender kiss to her lips. It was meant to buffer the sting of his rejection, for she was a vain woman who could be petty when crossed. “I find I am no longer interested,” he murmured.
She stiffened against him, her fingers curling into his jacket like claws. “What are you saying, Trent?”
He lifted his head, darting his thumb in a soothing caress over her mouth. She softened against him. “An affair is no longer in the cards for us.”
She eyed him, clearly not quite believing the turn of events. At his silence and pointed stare, she finally cried, “Why?” tightening her grip on his jacket.
I bloody well do not know it myself.
“We shall continue being friends, hmm?”
Defiance flashed in her eyes, and she pouted. “Lord Petersfield has been avidly pursuing me, Will. You will lose me to him.”
“Then go to him if that is what you need.”
William kissed her forehead in farewell and deftly extricated himself from her clasp. He bid the marchioness farewell and exited the side gardens out onto the streets, leaving the revelry of the ball behind him. He lit his cheroot and ambled in the direction of the streets of Mayfair, idly tapping his cane on the cobbled street.
Lady Philippa Carlisle. A young lady unlike any he’d ever met. Recalling her unusual gutsiness, William chuckled. Then with a drag of his cheroot, he dismissed her from his mind. Young, innocent chits were not for him to linger on in his thoughts, even if they were extraordinarily interesting. And like many things he decided did not fit into his life, William ruthlessly excised her from his awareness.
CHAPTERTHREE
As a gentleman of one and thirty with numerous duties and responsibilities, especially to his family and estates, William was not a gentleman who was ever undecided about anything. Yet as he stared at his three sisters, in their various states of déshabille sprawled upon their bellies in the drawing room of his townhouse playing cards and laughing and chatting, he could not dismiss Lady Philippa from his thoughts.
Simply forgetting her was more complicated than he’d thought possible. William had never before decided something and struggled with it, ever. He held himself still, absorbing that awareness. He took a sip of the brandy he’d poured himself, staring into the flickering fireplace as if it would provide him with the answers this night. Perhaps he was foolish to dismiss a night in Vinnette’s bed when it was that sweet release of hot pleasure he needed to chase instead of thinking about a particularly fine pair of violet eyes, a stubborn chin, and fiery courage.
William scrubbed a hand over his face. How old even was the chit? Now he understood why his good friend Oscar, the Earl of Wycliffe, had ignored his young bride of seventeen years at their marriage because he was more than a decade older. At the time, William had mercilessly chided Wycliffe for his restraint in taking his wife to his bed, but now William felt distinctly disturbed to recall Lady Phillipa’s slim curvatures and those pouting lips. Especially as the memory pricked a place of want never before felt.
“You cheat, Juliette,” Sophie, his youngest sister of thirteen years, cried, tossing down her cards and glaring at her.
Juliette laughed, came up on her knees and tossed her fists into the air as a sign of triumph. “I’ve won again! Sophie, you owe me your lace shawl and Elizabeth, you owe me three shillings.”
