“It’s a bad cold,” she said stiffly.
“You shouldn’t be sitting outside, then.”
“And you shouldn’t be talking to strange women without an introduction.”
The show of spirit intrigued him. He could make out very little apart from her slenderness and the constant tugging at the handkerchief.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” she asked with a hint of snap.
He hid a smile. “Strange.”
She stood. The full moon chose that moment to emerge from behind a cloud, granting his first glimpse of his damsel in distress.
He felt like someone had p
unched him in the gut.
How in hell had he missed her before this? Had he been so fixated on the pinchbeck of Vera Standish when somewhere in that ballroom waited pure gold?
“I’m not strange.” She surveyed him with wide eyes in a delicate face under a pile of thick golden hair. “I’m beginning to think you might be.”
His damsel was breathtakingly lovely. “Why the devil are you sitting out here all alone?” he asked roughly. “You don’t know who might come upon you.”
Tentative mischief lit her expression. He’d been right to suspect liveliness beneath her distress. “Well, you did.”
He should say something rakish. But when he looked at her, his heart stopped. She was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Who on earth was she? Damn it, he’d been out in society since leaving university and he had a reputation as a dog with the ladies. But this girl stole his ability to do more than mumble and act the looby. He managed a smile, quite a feat when his heart performed somersaults in his chest. “I’m generally accounted quite benign.”
She stared at him as if she’d never seen a man. “I should go.”
He chanced a step nearer and felt a surge of triumph when she didn’t retreat, although even in the uncertain light, he saw her wariness. Not quite as innocent as all that, apparently. “You don’t want to go back into the ballroom with red eyes.”
“Nobody would notice.”
His laugh was short. “This is your first season, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then take advice from someone older and wiser—the old tabbies notice everything. And they pass it on. If you don’t want the world to know that you’ve been crying, you’ll enter that room utterly composed.”
Her lush lips turned down. “I don’t like London.”
“You will.”
Daringly he reached for one of her gloved hands. She started, but even through two layers of fabric, he felt her warmth. The urge to strip away both gloves and test the softness of her skin beat like a war drum in his head. But one false move and she’d scarper for the ballroom, red eyes or not.
“I’m not so green that I don’t know a stranger shouldn’t hold a lady’s hand,” she said drily.
“Yes, remiss of you not to tell me your name.”
To his surprise, she laughed. He was glad to see her regain her cheerfulness. “It’s better that you don’t know who I am.”
“Won’t you tell me why you’re crying?”
She raised shining eyes to his and he suffered another blow from an invisible assailant. “You’ve just told me I can’t trust anyone.”
Hoist by his own petard. “You can trust me.”