He loomed close enough for her breath to warm his face. The sweetness made him close his eyes in sensuous appreciation. When he opened his eyes, her lids drooped, and her body curved toward him in unmistakable surrender.
Kiss her, his physical self insisted.
Don’t kiss her, his brain frantically demanded over the rising clamor of his senses.
He stood motionless, caught between the two contradictory impulses. While his heart thumped like a drum, and his blood surged hot and turbulent.
A tiny moan escaped her, and she angled her chin higher in appeal.
The sound snapped his strange paralysis.
Abruptly he stepped away. Another step to ensure temptation remained out of reach. He straightened and folded his arms over his chest. Only he knew the gesture was to stop him from grabbing her. Whatever magic she exerted, it was devilish powerful.
Her return to actuality was slower. She lifted heavy eyelids and sagged against the door. One gloved hand rested on the wood as if she needed support.
He knew how she felt. His own knees weren’t completely solid. And he hadn’t even touched the jade.
Good God, what did she do to him?
“My original decision stands, madam.”
She frowned in puzzlement. Either she was a superb actress or she really was hopeless at concealing her thoughts and feelings. “I don’t understand.”
He took another step away and grabbed the ledge of his desk behind him to keep himself from lunging for her. “While I find you charming, that’s as far as my interest extends.”
Her skin was so fine and clear, he saw the color drain from it. The eyes she leveled on him were dark with an anguish completely out of kilter with his rejection.
“Lord Ashcroft…”
He had to get her out of this room, out of his house, before he did something foolish. Like touch her. “Our interview is at an end.”
Trembling, undecided, she remained poised before him. He braced for some embarrassing scene, begging or tears.
She surprised him as she’d already surprised him so often. She drew herself to her full height. She was tall for a woman. An Amazon, firm-muscled and full-breasted. He had a sudden dizzying vision of how her long legs would wrap around him in coitus. He stifled a groan.
Her chin rose, her mouth hardened, although nothing hid its generosity. The voice that emerged was crisp. “I wish you good day, then, my lord.”
Even her hands were steady as she tugged those damned veils down. Only a few minutes in her company, and already he regretted the concealment of her features.
Oh, she was good, whoever she was.
With a snap of her skirts, she turned and strolled from the room as if those searing seconds of sexual awareness had never existed.
“Stupid little bitch!”
Diana braced but didn’t flinch as Lord Burnley raised his hand. She’d long ago learned the only way to hold her own with the marquess was to pretend to a courage she didn’t possess.
As she stood before him, she kept her voice steady and she planted her feet firmly on the carpet. “If you bruise my face, you’ll delay our scheme until the marks fade, my lord.”
“I don’t have to hit your face,” he snarled. Nonetheless, he lowered his fist and began to pace the tiny library of the house he’d rented for Diana in Chelsea. The area wasn’t fashionable, but it was close enough to Mayfair for their purposes. “What possessed you to beard him in his den? I told you how to snare him. A chance meeting. A sprained ankle in the park. A lost dog.”
His impulse to violence seemed to have subsided. She bent her head to hide her relief.
“I decided a direct approach would intrigue him.”
“Now he’s rejected you out of hand.”
She shrugged with completely artificial nonchalance. “He’s a man who can have any woman in the world. Why should he be interested in me?”