“Why?”
She made herself blink, but still everything in this room except Sir Charles’s powerful form receded into unreality. She felt dizzy, and her unreliable knees threatened to collapse beneath her. Her grip on his fingers firmed, and she told herself, without believing a word of it, that she only held onto him because she was afraid of falling.
“Because…”
Heaven help her, she couldn’t think of a single reason. She fell back on repeating herself and knew in doing so, she lost the argument. “Because we’re alone.”
His gaze sparked with the humor she’d noticed and liked from the first. Those fascinating lines around his eyes deepened. “All the more reason to seize my chance.”
Had he edged nearer? The heat radiating from his large, masculine body made every hair on her skin stand up. A hot, heavy weight started to throb in the pit of her stomach. Her breath jammed in her throat, making her even more lightheaded.
Heaven help her, she’d never felt like this before.
“I think…I think I need to sit down. I’m not feeling at all well,” she said faintly.
“Let me help you. You’re looking a little flushed.”
She quivered with wanton delight as a powerful male arm curled around her waist.
“Sir Charles…” She tried to make his name sound like a protest, but even in her own ears, it emerged like a sigh of surrender.
“Charles.”
She placed her hands flat on his chest and tried to ignore how broad and hard he was under her palms, like sun-warmed rock. “You should let me go.”
“Never.”
“This isn’t right,” she whispered. Her tight throat made speech almost impossible.
Surely that couldn’t be desire in his eyes. If she’d come to terms with one thing during these last days, it was that he couldn’t possibly want her.
“It feels right to me. Doesn’t it feel right to you?”
“I…” She struggled to lie and say it didn’t. But the woeful truth was that she loved being this close to him. She loved the drift of his warm, musky scent, and the pressure of his large, capable hand against the small of her back. Especially when she’d never imagined he’d touch her like this. “I can’t see this as proper behavior.”
Had he moved closer still? “I’m not doing anything that I haven’t done when we’ve danced.”
“In a room full of people.” That large, capable hand firmed, curving her toward him.
It would be so easy to succumb. She wanted him so much. In a final, desperate attempt to wrench herself back to bitter reality, she forced herself to mention the forbidden topic. “What about Meg?”
His grip tightened on her waist, and hard as she tried, she could find no trace of guilt in his face. “To hell with Meg.”
“What?” she stammered.
“What about us?”
She told herself to resist the press of his hand, but she felt her bones softening in surrender. “There is no us.”
“You don’t mean that.”
The awful truth was she didn’t. She battled to muster further protest. The mention of her niece should have brought this always gentlemanly gentleman back to his senses, but his eyes only burned hotter as he surveyed her.
“I…”
“You say you trust me, Sally.”
“Of course I do,” she said quickly, even though right now she wasn’t sure that was true. “And don’t call me Sally.”