“No fan?” He held aside the filmy curtains and angled her through the door onto the flags.
She shook her head. “Too bothersome.”
He’d noticed she had little affinity for the usual frills and furbelows; she carried a reticule, but even that was more practical than fanciful.
Resisting an urge to close his hand over hers, he steered her slowly along the terrace, adjusting his stride to hers. Trying to imagine just where she thought she was in her pursuit of his half brother.
Typically, he didn’t have to imagine too hard—she told him.
“This simply isn’t right.” Eyes on the flags ahead of them, lips set in a mutinous line, with her free hand she waved at the terrace around them. “Why the devil couldn’t Randolph escort me for this stroll out here?”
He heaved a histrionic sigh. “Put simply, because you’re too much for him. A dish too rich for his blood.”
She cast him a narrow-eyed look. “You don’t seem to find me so.”
He smiled; the notion was nonsensical. “Of course not.”
“But if you don’t—if you can interact with me—why can’t he?”
“At the risk of repeating myself, I’m thirty and he’s twenty-four. In the ages of man, that’s a significant difference.”
“Would you have scurried off like he did when you were twenty-four?”
He gave the matter due thought. “Truth be told, I’m not sure I remember what I was like at twenty-four, but . . . probably not.”
She humphed more definitely; she could infuse a wealth of emotion into the simple sound.
Rand, he suspected, had managed to get fairly seriously in her bad books, but she couldn’t really blame his brother. She seemed to have no appreciation of her own strength—of the sheer power of her personality, something she projected without any mitigating screens.
That was one of the things he found attractive—that lack of screens or veils—but men like Rand, regardless of age, would run; in fact Rand had merely demonstrated that he had a functioning sense of self-preservation.
They reached the end of the terrace. Lifting her hand from his sleeve, Mary executed a crisp about-face. “Right, then. I suppose I’d better get back to it.”
She set off for the French doors, striding along a great deal more purposefully.
Left standing, bemused, by the balustrade, he swung around and with a few quick strides caught up with her. “Back to what?”
“Back to finding some way to speak with your brother—half brother—in private.”
“Ah—I see.” They reached the French doors and he held back the gauze curtains so she could march through unimpeded.
As he followed her back into the fray of the ballroom, he debated whether he should allow her to chase Rand, and possibly mark his brother for life, or . . .
He glanced at the dais on which the musicians sat—just as they started to play. “Mary.”
Halting, she glanced back at him, her expression clearly stating that she didn’t appreciate the delay in her headlong quest. “Yes?”
“Come and dance.” He didn’t make the mistake of asking but simply caught her hand, drew her the two paces necessary to gain the clearing floor, and swirled her into his arms and directly into the dance.
He ha
dn’t given her time to resist. Once they were traveling smoothly amid the swirling couples, he glanced at her face and was skewered by twin daggers of intense blue; with her eyes narrowed to shards, her gaze was beyond sharp.
He smiled at her.
Her eyes flared. She hauled in a huge breath—causing her breasts to swell beneath her silk bodice, an interesting and rather arresting sight.
One that made him realize that, surprisingly for him, despite being unrelentingly focused on her, he hadn’t really paid that much attention to her physical attributes. It had been her character, her emotions and actions that had captured his attention, and were still what most entranced him, but there was no denying that her figure was alluring, too.