Her fancies were running away with her again, but her feet remained rooted to the floor. When he stopped in front of her, he took her hand and bowed over it. Through the layer of her gloves, she ached for the contact of his bare fingers. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were bright with emotion.
“Lady Perdita, may I have the honor of your company for this dance?”
We were not introduced, she thought inanely. Surely the eyes of the ton which were upon them realized they were intimately acquainted. Butterflies took flight in her stomach. After all their discretion in keeping their identities secret, he had found her anyway.
A quick glance around the room showed the astonishment of her friends and also their smiling delight. Perdie had won the wager without trying. Her mother who stood on the opposite side of the ballroom assessed them with a quizzical moue to her lips.
And all she could say in answer to his question was, “Yes.”
* * *
Yes.
The sweetest word that Thaddeus had ever heard in his life. And he wanted to hear it from Perdie’s lips from now until his dying day. He couldn’t believe he’d found her. There was an uncertain shimmer in the shadows of her eyes. Thaddeus did not like to see it there, and he had to remind himself to tread carefully. She had chosen to run from him, deliberately, with little thought to everything they shared on their journey and in that folly. With ruthless willpower, he tempered the passion and hope rising inside of him.
One step at a time.
As she slipped her delicate hand into his, he held it tighter than perhaps was wise. He dreaded that she would disappear on him, like a ghost or the remnants of a dream. She matched her pace to his as he led her onto the dance floor and took up the position for the waltz.
She was a beautiful dancer. He knew that from the grace of her steps, from the bunch of her muscles beneath his palm before she matched where he led, and from the tilt to her chin as she kept her eyes on his rather than watching their feet. As others crowded the dance floor around them, he wanted to pull her ever closer. He held himself in check. They were no longer on the road without witnesses, where they could behave freely. Right now, he was a gentleman, and she was a lady, and he had to comport himself to match.
But that didn’t keep him from leaning his head down to murmur, “I cannot describe to you how I felt to fall asleep next to the woman of my dreams and wake up to find her gone.”
Her eyes widened. The tip of her tongue snaked out to tease her lower lip. His attention seized on that tease of pink flesh. How would she taste right now, in this moment? He swallowed heavily and forced his gaze away from her mouth, waiting for her answer. Color climbed into her cheeks, the only betrayal of her emotions. She continued to dance as if he’d whispered something as innocuous as a comment about the weather.
Then she cast a glance from side to side to check how close the nearest dancers were to them. They had plenty of space yet; no one to overhear if they did not raise their voices. When she spoke, it was so softly that he had to lean in, lest her words become swallowed up by the music.
“We had an arrangement. Neither of us was to reveal our identity. It was all meant to be temporary, and you—”
He turned her swiftly before they stepped into earshot of another couple. She caught her breath but moved with him rather than fighting the unexpected turn. He completed the statement for her. “But I ruined our arrangement when I asked for more.”
He tried to keep his voice level, but part of him burned with outrage. How could she think that he would lie with her and cast her to the wolves? No gentleman worth the name would do it, and that aside from the bond that had developed between them.
She pressed her lips together but nodded.
If anything, that only fueled the frustration inside of him. “You did not expect your husband to be an earl.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “It doesn’t matter what I expected. I expected never to meet again, and now…”
He couldn’t resist settling his hand into the dip of her lower back and towing her the barest inch closer. He could almost feel the heat and softness of her body, details of her that he had not forgotten in the days since they had last touched.
“I did not expect to find you in London. I thought you were running away from society and the ton.”
She looked away. “I was. But I recalled what you said about how devastated you’d feel if your sisters went missing and…” She raised her gaze again; there was steel in her eyes. The grey almost seemed to drown out the hints of blue. “I reconciled with my family.”
He almost faltered in his steps. He was proud of her for facing her demons so fearlessly. However, if she’d returned home, if she’d reconciled with her brother, where did that leave Thaddeus? Had she reconciled with her fiancé, too?
Whoever the man was, he couldn’t be an earl.
Except, if Perdie truly was the sister of a duke, any man her family was willing to tie themselves to might well be an earl. Or even a duke, for all Thaddeus knew. And who was he, really? The recent inheritor of his uncle’s estate, a relative country bumpkin compared to the gentlemen of her acquaintance. He wasn’t used to feeling inadequate, and he didn’t like it.
But he had to know. “What did they say about your broken engagement?” He was surprised at the evenness with which his words left him.
Color flushed Perdie’s cheeks again, turning them a comely shade of pink. “I am not engaged, if that’s what you mean to ask.”
You could be.He bit the suggestion off his tongue, knowing what she would have to say next.
“I have no intention of marrying, for the same reasons I laid out to you before, husband.”