recently. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, I would very much like to dance with you.” She bit her lip, shocked at her audacity. She couldn’t imagine speaking like this to anyone else, but with Ashby she had nothing to lose. It was just them, and she had already made the worst possible blunder with him.
Humor touched his eyes. “I’m beginning to think you are a hoyden. Does Stilgoe know you call on single gentlemen and ask them to dance?”
And with that he slew her good humor. Why hadn’t she learned her dratted lesson and kept her mouth shut? “I will take that as a ‘no,’ my lord.”
He put a finger beneath her chin, forcing her to look at him. “This is not an affront to you.”
“Of course it isn’t. Don’t be silly.” She deflected his hand with a composed smile.
“I mean it,” he breathed. “My not going into Society has more than one drawback.”
“What is it this time?” she asked, her annoyance with herself overriding her mortification.
“Not being able to dance with you.”
A welter of feelings twisted her insides. If he asked her to dance, she would hum a tune for them to dance to, if necessary. “What is your Christian name?”
He drew back. “My name has expired.”
“Expired?” She saw him picking up a twig from the grass and snapping it in two.
“No one used it in over thirty years. Then yes, it has expired.”
“Thirty years? How is it possible?”
“Thirty-one years, to be exact.” He shrugged dismissively. “I became ‘my lord’ or ‘Lord Ashby’ when I was four, and ‘Ashby’ when I attended Eton. The French had gaudier names for me.” He smirked blackly. “I suppose at some point my Christian name lost its meaning.”
“How awful.”
His gaze shot to hers. “Why?”
“Because…your name is a part of who you are. It defines you.”
“Good God, I sincerely hope not.” He eyed her with interest. “How does your name define you, Isabel Jane?” His soft enunciation of her first and middle name drew her attention to his lips; they had a slight, natural, tempting pout to them that simply begged to be kissed. Of course that was what had gotten her in trouble with him years ago.
“I don’t know how precisely, but it does. Names have meanings.”
“Pity.” His kissable lips twisted sardonically. “Mine is distinctly unflattering.”
To keep her gaze and her thoughts from lingering on his mouth she pulled Danielli into her lap and offered her another biscuit. “Well—” she smiled “—should I try guessing it?”
His tone was brittle. “I just explained—”
“Peter? Paul? Percival?” She sent him a speculative glance. “Pierce? Philip? Peregrine?”
He grinned wryly. “Who told you it begins with a P, minx?”
“You did. You signed your card PNL. Lancaster is your family name, is it not?”
“Uh-hmm. How did your brother and his wife come up with Danielli’s name?”
She stroked Danielli’s fair plume. “Her name is Daniella Wilhelmina Aubrey. We also call her pudding, puppet, precious…”
He ignored her poorly veiled hint. “William Daniel Aubrey. You named her after Will.” He playfully tugged at Danielli’s biscuit, eliciting lilting laughter from the little girl.
Isabel’s heart expanded at the spectacle: the big, bad, rakehell wolf gadding with a toddler. She had an insuppressible desire to gad with him too. “Colonel Ashby, don’t be squeamish,” she cooed sweetly, imitating that awful flirt Sally Jersey while batting her long, curling eyelashes at him. “Tell me your name.”
“Squeamish?” With a pulse-quickening grin, he lunged at her. Laughter filled her throat as she put out a hand to stop him. His chest was steel swathed with fine fabrics. “Take it back.”
“No. Why else would you keep mum about it? Is it a military secret?”
“It ought to have been. I can well imagine the quips I’d have gotten from my men had they known my first name.”
Supposedly keeping him at bay, she kept her hand on his chest and fought the urge to slide it over his silk waistcoat in a slow caress. It was awful how she couldn’t stop touching this man. “Did Will ever ask what your first name was?”
He shook his head. “Some women I knew did.”
The rapt look in his eyes made her heart flip-flop. “And did you tell them?”
“No, I did not tell them.”
Inadvertently she dampened her lips, a gesture that instantly drew his gaze to her mouth. She felt his heart thumping against her hand, and it was all she could do to keep from grasping his waistcoat and pulling him closer for a kiss. Stop it, a stern, inner voice rebuked her. She must not allow her emotions to spiral down that pit again. Nothing good would come of it. The man had said so himself, a moment before admitting to the chief drawback of his isolation.
Bored with the two of them, Danielli scrambled to the grass. She knocked Isabel’s hand off Ashby’s chest, putting more distance between them. “She is the sweetest thing,” he observed, watching her niece try to feed one of her dolls to Hector. “Everything is good in her little world.”
Tentatively, Isabel studied his masked profile, noting the wistful look in his eye. He had lost his parents when he was so young, but instead of finding a wife and making a real home for himself, he shunned the world. “Do you remember your parents?” she asked quietly.
“It’s difficult to know for certain, growing up with so many portraits and stories as I have. I remember my mother’s hands and eyes. She had beautiful blue eyes, full of light.” He looked at her. “Like yours.”
His gaze sent her heart aflutter. One moment he treated her as a child, the next he aroused her deepest emotions. “What happened to them?”
“A horse riding accident. They were dead on the spot.”
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.” She covered his large hand with hers. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it had been like for him to find himself alone in the world at the tender age of four. Like Danielli, she grew up in a doting, protective family that made her the center of the universe.
“So am I.” He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a soft, searing kiss to her knuckles.
She felt the heat of his lips spreading in her veins. “Which relative took you in?”
“I don’t have any. My mother was an only child. My father was a second son. His family
