“I was hoping you’d be here.” He nodded to where Rosy was happily dancing with another gentleman. “I don’t suppose her brother would allow her to dance with me. Grenwood has to be around someplace.”
Lord Winston had been a handsome man at twenty—with black eyes, raven hair, and a tall, lean figure. But at only twenty-eight he’d begun to look more . . . hardened, as if he’d been to the well so many times that his thirst couldn’t be quenched by mere water. Tonight, however, under Almack’s famous wax candles, he appeared more youthful.
Diana stared hard at him. “What is your interest in Rosy?”
“She’s . . . different from all the other girls having their débuts.”
She eyed him askance. “How would you even know? You met with her only once before.”
“Romeo met Juliet only once and fell in love.”
“And died for it, not a fate I’d wish on either of you.” She lowered her voice. “Are you saying you’re in love with Rosy?”
“I don’t know. I can’t even explain it, because I don’t understand it myself.”
Diana sighed. “You don’t need to explain.” She looked for Geoffrey but didn’t see him. He must have already gone to the stairwell. “Rosy and her brother are both different from people you and I are likely to meet in society.”
“They don’t belong.” He continued to gaze at Rosy, the way an artist might assess how to paint a portrait. “More importantly, they don’t want to belong. It’s rather . . .”
“Intoxicating.”
“Disturbing.” He cast her a rueful look. “Throws everything one believes into question.”
“That it does.” The clock began to ring the hour. “Forgive me, Winston, but I was just on my way to the retiring room. We should have a chat sometime soon, however.”
“Of course,” he said with a nod.
She started to hurry off, then paused. “If you wish to dance with Rosy, now would be the time to ask her. I . . . um . . . heard Grenwood say he was going to the tearoom.”
When Winston brightened before hurrying away, she wondered if she’d been unwise to encourage him. But she didn’t stay to find out. Besides, his interest in Rosy helped her as much as him, because it meant he could truthfully tell prying people she had gone to the retiring room and Geoffrey to the tearoom.
Ifanyone happened to notice, which they probably wouldn’t anyway.
She went out toward the retiring room, thankful she saw no one in the hall. Passing by its entrance, she headed for the stairwell and managed to slip into it before anyone saw her. She’d barely entered when Geoffrey melted from out of the dim light to hold his finger to her lips. Then he led her downstairs and through a door to a part of the building she’d never been in before.
While she knew the building was home not only to Almack’s assembly rooms but to various lodgings, she hadn’t thought about what they must be like, so she was surprised when he unlocked the door to one and led her inside.
The room was fully furnished, which took her by surprise. “Whose lodgings are these?”
“Mine. That’s how I got the floor plan of the building. I told the owner I wanted to rent a furnished room for a private gathering of my bachelor friends next week, and he insisted upon my renting it for a month. So here we are.”
“But you can’t . . . I don’t think . . . Doesn’t anybody know you’ve rented it?”
“No one but you and me. And the owner, of course, who’s delighted to have a duke as a tenant.” He took her gloved hand and kissed it, which somehow felt more intimate than when he’d kissed her lips before. The lighting was low, and they were alone. It was wonderfully forbidden.
And when he kissed his way up her arm to the bend in her elbow, it became even more so. He tasted her there . . . actually tasted her with his tongue, and that shot a current of excitement through her.
“Geoffrey,” she said in a soft voice. “I–I thought we could . . . talk.”
“Later,” he rasped.
Later?Oh dear.
Now he was holding her loosely about the waist so he could kiss the part of her breasts showing above her bodice, and she couldn’t breathe for the thrill of it.
But if they were caught... “How much later? We . . . we have to return before eleven . . . when they serve supper.”
“I heard the supper isn’t that good,” he murmured, thumbing her nipple through her gown.