The door closed behind him and he took a deep breath. He’d actually walked out during dinner. Something he had never done before. Something he would never have thought of doing before. And he felt quite giddy with the thrill of it.
He wanted to see Eugenie.
Now! This moment.
“Have my horse saddled,” he called to one of the servants as he strode across the marble hall. “I have an urgent appointment.”
“Your Grace?” His startled gaze ran down over Sinclair’s dinner clothes. “Aren’t you going to change first, Y-your Grace?”
“Of course I am,” he frowned, as if he’d never forget such a minor detail. The fact was he had. Completely.
Upstairs he waved his valet away, dressing himself with unusual carelessness, and hurrying down the backstairs to the stables. By then his mount was ready and he set off at a gallop, out into the starry night, feeling remarkably free and reckless, and quite unlike himself.
Belmont Hall was not exactly ablaze with lights. Evidently the family kept early hours. It occurred to him that he hadn’t had the foresight to discover which was Eugenie’s bedchamber; however, by the use of his wits he saw one of the windows had a flowery curtain, more suited to a young girl. Probably it had not been replaced as she grew up, and he could not imagine Jack or the other boys with such a curtain on their window. Well, not for long, anyway.
It was a chance the old Sinclair would never have taken. What? Risk embroiling himself in a scandal? But this was the new Sinclair and he was a very different creature.
Standing in the darkness, below the faintly candlelit window, he knew he was behaving erratically. Some would say he had lost his wits. There was a moment when he almost turned away and rode home, but before the urge could take hold, before the old Sinclair could spoil his fun, he bent down and picked up some pebbles from the drive and threw them against the glass in the casement.
They made a satisfying rattle.
A shadow appeared against the candlelight, and then the curtain was drawn aside and there she was. Eugenie. She stared down into the garden, trying to see who was there, and then threw open the casement and leaned out.
Her hair hung loose about her, a waterfall of tumbling curls within which her face was a pale oval.
An angel.
“Terry? Is that you?” she hissed. She sounded annoyed.
Not quite an angel, then.
“It’s not Terry,” he said.
She gasped, her hand creeping to her throat. Or maybe she was holding her nightgown up so that it didn’t dip too far and disclose too much of her pale, curved flesh.
“Sinclair?” she whispered loudly. “What on earth—” She began to shut the casement. “Go away. I don’t want to see you again.”
“Come down. If you don’t I’ll ring the doorbell.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed. Then she saw the stubborn expression on his face in the moonlight. “Wait there. I’ll be down in a moment.”
Sinclair decided he wouldn’t wait under her window. The doorbell threat had been a bluff, and it suddenly seemed far too risky even for his new self to lurk about here. Good God, he wouldn’t put it past Eugenie’s father to demand he call the banns! He saw what looked like an arbor in the shadows behind him, set in the far corner of the garden.
It was an arbor. He ducked under the arch with its overgrown climbing rose, and sat down on a cold stone bench. Probably damp, too, he thought uneasily. He stood up, knocking his head against the arch and its thorny canes, cursed, and sat down again.
If Eugenie was anything like other women he’d known he could be waiting here until dawn while she primped and preened, trying on dress after dress, seeking to make herself beautiful for him.
But he already knew Eugenie wasn’t anything like those other women and that was a big part of her appeal.
Just then she appeared from the shadows, in a simple dress hastily thrown on, a shawl cast about her shoulders, her hair still loose. For a moment she stood, looking all about her, and then he called her name, and she hurried through the garden to the arbor and, arriving breathless, stood before him.
“Sinclair,” she said, sounding annoyed. “What are you doing here?”
The last thing he wanted was for her to find his romantic and impromptu visit annoying. For a moment he found his old awkward and tongue-tied feelings returning, as they always did when confronted by a woman he was attracted to. And then her scent reached out to him, warm woman and orange blossom, and he tried to draw her into his arms with a groan.
She pulled away. “I’ve rejected your proposal, Sinclair. You must believe me when I say I meant my no.”
“I can’t believe you,” he growled, low and intimate.