by Lois Greiman
She raised a perfect brow. “I believe we’ve discussed this before, sir.”
He resisted grinding his teeth. They already ached. “Still planning on attacking some unsuspecting miller’s son, are you?”
“I assure you, I shall give him fair warning.”
“Why?” He eased his fists open, remembered to be civil, to nod at an elderly couple she greeted with such genteel grace.
“It only seems right,” she said.
Dammit to hell. “I meant to say, why him and not me?”
“We’ve discussed that before also.”
“Lady Lanshire,” greeted another. Drake turned toward the broadside. The man was tall and thin, with hawkish eyes and a sallow complexion. “You look particularly fetching this evening.”
“You are too kind,” she said. “Thank you, Lord Shipley.”
“Might I ask for this dance to—”
“Nay,” Drake rumbled. The denial surprised even himself, for he knew far better. He could feel Ella’s gaze on his face. Was she angry? Afraid? Good God, he had no idea. “My apologies,” he said, forcing out the nicety and trying a smile. “But the lady has promised this dance to me.”
“Oh.” Shipley looked at Drake, blinked, backed off a step. “Very well then. Some other time perhaps.”
“Certainly,” she said.
They watched him leave in unison.
“He may have been my perfect mate,” she said.
“Who is Lord Gallo?”
“I believe he is a baron.”
“Besides that.”
“My lady,” slurred a voice.
They turned in unison. Edward Shellum staggered to a halt beside them.
“My lady,” he said again, and reaching for her hand, planted a kiss somewhere just short of the elbow. “I believe I remember where I first met you.”
“Mr. Shellum.” Ella’s tone was steady, but there was something in her eyes. “I believe you might be a bit drunk.”
“Me?” He laughed, staggered, ricocheting off her. She tottered sideways. “Jug bitten? Not by half.”
“If you’ll excuse me…” she began, but he grabbed her arm.
“Don’t act so high in the instep. I think you might owe me a bit of something.”
“Let me go.”
Fear. It was fear in her eyes, and suddenly Drake found his hand wrapped around Shellum’s upper arm.
“My lady,” he rumbled. “If you’ll excuse me, I would discuss something with the lad here.”
“Certainly,” she said.
“Unhand me,” Shellum said, but Drake was already dragging him toward the doors. “What do you think—”
“You’ll not touch her again,” Drake said, coming to an abrupt halt.
Shellum staggered in his wake. “Here now, I’ll do whatever—”
Drake tightened his grip, pulled the sot closer, bared his teeth. “You’ll not touch her, speak to her, or speak of her unless she initiates the conversation. Do you take my meaning?”
Shellum opened his mouth to object, but then his eyes found Drake’s. Their gazes clashed, and then he nodded numbly.
“Good lad,” Drake said, and steadying the boy, left him standing alone.
Ella watched him return. He bowed.
“Might I have this dance, my lady?”
She nodded.
Her waist felt small and tight beneath his hand as they took the initial steps. His leg hurt like hell but it hardly mattered; she was in his arms. “Is Gallo a candidate?” he asked as if they’d not been interrupted.
She glanced toward Shellum, who was tottering away. “Gallo?”
“Aye.”
“Well…” She found her equilibrium with the slightest difficulty. “He is Spanish.”
They twirled. “I fear I don’t understand the reference.”
“Foreign men…they are reputed to be fabulous lovers.”
“Reputed?” Some unregistered emotion sizzled through him. He hoped to God it wasn’t relief. “You don’t know then?”
She glanced toward Shellum again. “Surely you’re not jealous.”
“I believe I’ve told you I hail from County Galway.”
She stared at him a moment, then laughed. “That hardly counts as foreign.”
She was heaven in his arms. Her head tilted back. Her hair sprayed out in an arc of chestnut waves. “Why not?” he asked.
“Ireland is far too close. Barely a leisurely stroll from my garden gate.”
“Perhaps I’ve not told you that I’ve spent time in Damascus.”
“And?”
“Some might say that makes me Syrian.”
“I’ve spent some time in the kitchen,” she said. “The experience hardly makes me a cook.”
He tried for more small talk, but there was none. “Are you in love with him?” he asked.
She drew back a bit, pressing her lower regions against his. He refrained from groaning, managed not to snatch her into his arms and carry her to the nearest bed, and boldly resisted passing out. “Lord Gallo?” she asked, sounding surprised.
“Lord Gallo.”
“I hardly know the man.”
“Hardly know him…in a biblical sense or…”
She laughed. The song ended, but her laughter echoed on as bright as daybreak. He was certain, in fact, that the entire crowd stopped to listen.
“Thank you for the dance, Sir Drake. And thank you…” She caught his gaze. Something shone in her eyes again. “Thank you,” she said, and hurried away.
He watched her go. He should leave her be, of course, should turn away, should be as cool as she. But dammit, he couldn’t seem to forget her. She warmed his blood, fired his emotions, made him sizzle with feelings and…
And a host of other things he didn’t want. He had come to London to relax. To find peace.
But then she laughed. The silvery sound wisped softly across the crowded room, as if she were the only one present, as if he were enchanted, as if she were bewitching his very soul.
But that was absurd. Preposterous.
Peeved with himself, with his foolishness, with his own aching desire, Drake strode from the ballroom and away. The night was quiet around him. He wandered the quiet, lamp-lit streets, trying to drive her from his mind, to exorcise her from his memory, but there was little hope.
For he was bewitched.
Chapter 16
Ella twirled her way through the remainder of the evening, dancing and laughing and flirting, but from the corner of her eye she looked for a tall man with entrancing eyes and magical hands. Hands that soothed, that caressed, that protected. Where was he? Surely he hadn’t left, hadn’t conceded defeat so easily. Of course she hoped he had. No good could come of their time together. Still, it seemed cowardly of him to give up, and he did not seem to be a coward. He seemed like a battle-hardened warrior of yore, a knight with sword at ready, a man who would fight for what he wanted.
“Who are you looking for?” Merry May asked from behind. Her tone was innocent. Perhaps deceptively so.
Ella gave her a lazy smile over her shoulder. “My next conquest.”
“He left,” said the other.
Ella raised a brow, took a sip of her blackberry cordial, and turned. Lord Bentley’s mistress wore a pearl-encrusted gown of black silk this evening. Her sable hair had been swept up in a bevy of ringlets and garnished with precious gems of every conceivable color. “And to whom might you be referring?”
May was unimpressed. “The man you’ve been searching for for hours.”
“I’m afraid you’re beginning to hallucinate. How much punch did you have?”
“Are you saying you’re not interested?”
“In whom?”
Merry May smiled, enjoying the sport. “The Irishman.”
Ella scowled as if confused, a fine performance on her part. “The what?”
“The imposing gentleman with the midnight eyes and shivery burr.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know whom you
’re talking about.”
“The fellow who makes women swoon and men snarl.”
“You’ll have to be more ex—”
“The tall one.”
“I really—”
“With the mouthwatering body and the world-is-my-walnut demeanor.”
Oh for heaven’s sake. “Oh.” She tried to make her voice sound bored. But what the hell. Did May have nothing better to do than conjure up ridiculous phraseology? Although, in truth, her mouth did water a little when he was near. “You must be referring to Sir Drake.”
May lifted one cynical corner of her cynical mouth. “Yes.”
Ella scowled a little, took another sip. “I suppose he is somewhat imposing.”
“Imposing.” She didn’t quite laugh, but she could have just as well. “Is that another word for delicious?”
Delicious. A fine choice of words, Ella thought, but continued on as if she hadn’t heard. “You know as well as I do that he is the very antithesis of what I’m looking for, May.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She sipped again, eyes laughing over the rim of her crystal cup. “You hope to be bored out of your mind for the rest of your natural life.”
“Not bored necessarily. Just…content.”
“Well, you’d best stay away from Drake then. He looked as if he might swallow you whole.”
The skin at the back of Ella’s neck tingled. He did rather give the impression that he could devour her. That he wanted nothing more than to keep her for himself. Safe and adored and admired. And what the hell was that all about? She was hardly the most attractive woman in the room. Indeed, she wasn’t even the most attractive woman in the conversation. “But I’ve no wish to be swallowed at all,” she said.
“Then give him to me,” May said. “I’m willing to play Jonah to his very large…fish.”
Ella refrained from bristling. Bristling would be sophomoric, not to mention idiotic. “I’m afraid he’s not mine to give,” she said, and soothed herself with the knowledge that May was, despite her ragged past and her seemingly mercenary ways, extremely loyal to Lord Gershwin. “Besides, he’d never do for you, May; he most probably couldn’t afford to keep you in gowns for a fortnight.”
“Lucky for me, I would rather be out of them where he is concerned,” she said, but just then Gershwin came strolling up.
He bowed. May nodded. Ella curtsied.
“I’m not interrupting anything. I hope.”
“Nothing of import,” Ella said, but May disagreed.
“On the contrary,” she said. “I was just saying how delectable Lady Lanshire’s latest conquest is.”
“Sir Drake?” Gershwin said.
“Do you know him?” May asked.
“No,” Gershwin said. “But he is devilishly intriguing. Were I you, I’d certainly be interested.”
May tilted her head. “Tell me, my lord, is there any hope of ever making you jealous?”
A moment of intimate quiet passed between them. “I am jealous every minute you’re not in my arms,” he said, and she smiled as he led her to the dance floor.
Ella watched them go, feeling that foolishly familiar ache to belong, to have someone. And though she fought against it, she found she could no longer enjoy the festivities. Hence she left shortly after, but when she reached her own front door, she was not prepared to go inside.
Sighing, she paced restlessly through her garden to the pond near the far wall. It was a fine night. Moonlight frosted the water, gilding each tiny ripple with gold. A bench was nestled beneath an arbor bursting with velveteen blossoms. Kicking off her slippers, she sat down, barely noticing the fragrant blooms, the chunky moon, the lulling sounds of the night as she stripped off her pale gloves and laid them one atop the other on the armrest.
Why had Drake left? Or, more aptly, why did she care? Or, still more to the point, why had he been interested at the outset? She was no great beauty, no beguiling enchantress…at least not without her—
“Are you a witch?”
“Lud!” She jerked to her feet, heart pumping madly as she searched the shadows.
She found the intruder seated on a rock not thirty yards away.
Drake. His hair shone blue-black in the moonlight, the dark planes of his face sculpted by shadow and silvery light.
How the hell could she have missed him? He wasn’t a small man. He rose to his feet, as slow and steady as the tide. His coat was gone, and his shirt shone starkly white in the darkness.
“I did not mean to scare you,” he said.
“Then you shouldn’t hide in my garden like some rabid vermin,” she countered. He had, in fact, frightened her, and fear made her testy.
His eyes shone in the moonlight, as if he understood her mood and found it naught but amusing, but instead of approaching, he leaned his back against a spreading chestnut and studied her. “I fear I may not be cut out for balls and soirees and the mincing finery of the elegant ton.”
She watched him, felt her pounding heartbeat quiet.
“Strange,” he mused. “All the years at sea…countless months with nothing but waves and wind while I dreamed of home and hearth. But now, after all this time…maybe I’m suited for little else.”
She felt for him suddenly; his voice was melancholy, and his face, etched as it was in moonlight, looked haunted and noble and…But wait a damned minute. What the hell was his haunted, noble face doing in her garden?
“So you decided to stalk me?” she asked.
He thought for a second. “I don’t believe you could call it stalking since I arrived here first.” He took a step toward her. She backed away.
“If I scream my servants will arrive in a heartbeat,” she said.
He stopped and gave her a quizzical glance, identifiable even in the darkness. His eyes were slightly narrowed, his broad neck bent just so, as if he endeavored to understand her. “Are you certain you even have servants?” he asked.
“Of course I have servants. I’m a countess and quite wealthy.” The fear was gone, but the testiness remained.
“These servants, are they less than a hundred years of age?”
“Y…” She paused. He had rolled his sleeves away from his hands. They too were sun-darkened, long-fingered, tapered. She remembered those hands on her skin. But who was he really? “I’m quite certain Cecelia is. I’m not entirely sure about Amherst,” she said.
He laughed with his eyes and glanced again at the moonlight on the water. “When I was a lad I would oft sneak off to the millpond. Mum worried. But I could swim like a selkie.”
She considered that for a moment, but the thought of his hands on her skin kept distracting her, making her honest. “I cannot imagine you as a boy.”
“No?” He glanced at her. “I was quite adorable.”
“Were you?”
“’Tis what my mum said.”
“Well…mothers don’t lie.”
“No indeed,” he agreed, and picking up a stone, tossed it into the water. Pearlescent rings shimmered from the point of impact, widening. “She was the one who taught me to swim. Said that she foresaw a specialness in me and wished to keep me safe.”
“Really?” A specialness. What did that mean? Was he a witch? Is that how he had seen through her guise on Gallows Road? she wondered, but knew better than to ask.
“Said she hadn’t suffered the pangs of childbirth only to see me drowned in yon stinky bog.”
“A practical woman,” she said, then: “Why are you here?”
“Do you swim, lass?”
He glanced at her again, and though she did her best to hold on to the testiness, she felt it slipping away beneath his moonlit gaze. “I see now that my upbringing had its shortcoming,” she said.
“You don’t swim?”
“In truth, Drake, there’s little reason for ladies of quality to be floundering about in—”
“But there might be every reason for you to learn the skill.”
“Very amusing.”
“Y
ou should learn,” he said.
“Why?”
“So you don’t drown in yon stinky bog.”
“Ahh. Well…as a general rule, I stay out of bogs of all sorts. Stinky and otherwise.”
He tossed another stone. Water echoed out. “’Tis hot,” he said.
She scowled at him. “I noticed that, at times, there is no connection whatsoever between your current topic and your next,” she said.
“’Tis hot. The water’s cool,” he explained. “I could teach you.”
“To swim.”
“Aye.”
“It doesn’t seem quite…” She glanced at the water. And although it was tempting to think of the cool waves easing up her limbs, she had no intention of making him privy to that temptation. Or to the fact that she too could swim like a selkie. “Proper.”
“Not so proper as seducing an unsuspecting miller’s son, of course.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Perhaps that wasn’t so much proper as…practical.”
“If you’re looking for practicality…” He raised a hand, indicating himself. “I am not only practical but accessible.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“As will I, apparently,” he said, and there was something almost self-reproachful in his tone.
Ella canted her head, studying him. “Might you be admitting that you’re smitten, Sir Drake?”
“Tell me, lass, does smitten have the same meaning as randy in the vernacular of the ton?” he asked, and strode toward her.
Perhaps she should have been frightened, or at least offended, but she couldn’t quite resist laughing. “Yes, in fact, I think it might.”
“Then the answer is yes,” he said, and caught her with his smoldering gaze. “But I am still sorry.”
“About…”
“A carriage was not the proper place,” he said. “’Twas not right of me.”
But it had seemed right, actually. Breathtakingly right. Her hands felt shaky at the thought of it, her chest too tight. But she would not be so foolish again. This was not the man for her. “And a garden?” she asked.
He turned his head, ruggedly beautiful in the gilding moonlight, his expression wry, his eyes self-deprecating. “All but perfect.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I rarely make the same mistake twice, Sir Drake.”
