with absolute deliberation, Leon raised her hand to his mouth and gave the slightest bow of his head. With the same absolute deliberation he let his lips brush the back of her hand, infinitely lightly. He felt it tremble in his.
He relinquished her hand, letting his glance linger on her. He heard her murmur his name—a low ‘Mr Dukaris...’ that was even fainter than her sister’s voice. But Leon could see the colour flaring out along those delicate cheekbones, and that was enough for him. And he saw the speed with which she had clasped the hand he’d just kissed, as if to stop it trembling.
Satisfaction filled him. And something much, much more than satisfaction.
He turned his head now to his guests, the Duke and Duchess. His smile flashed broadly. ‘Champagne?’ he invited.
Expansively he gestured towards the back of the box, where the requisite bottles were nestling in their ice buckets by a little table holding flutes on a silvered tray.
Champagne was exactly what was needed now. He’d never been more sure of that in his life.
Ellie was trying to hold on to the shreds of her composure—but it was impossible, just impossible! She should be used to hand-kissing—it was nothing out of the ordinary in Karylya for a female royal. Old-fashioned, perhaps, and somewhat formal as a deferential greeting. But nothing to set her fighting for composure the way she was now.
But then, never had a man as outrageously attractive as Leon Dukaris kissed her hand.
She gave a silent gulp, hoping her colour had returned to normal.
‘Princess...?’
Their host for the evening, who was paying for the champagne he was now offering her with a polite smile, who was paying for this box at the opera—she dreaded to think how expensive that was—who was paying for the astronomically expensive suite at the Viscari St James, and paying for Ellie dared not think how much more, was standing in front of her, holding a flute brimming with gently beading champagne.
She took it, murmuring her thanks and adopting an expression of extreme graciousness that would have befitted her ultra-gracious regal stepmother. It gave her the protection she urgently needed. She took a sip from the flute, hearing Leon Dukaris speak again, asking her if she was enjoying the opera. His English was accented, she noted, but not much—less so than her father’s.
There was a slight smile on his mouth—beautifully sculpted, with deep lines incised around it—and she felt another silent hollowing of her stomach. The planes of his face were strong, his nose bladed, his jaw edged. There was a toughness, a determination, underlying the relaxed slanting smile that invited her to respond to his conversational gambit.
‘Torelli is as outstanding as ever,’ she replied, echoing her stepmother’s viewpoint readily enough, ‘but the role is hardly endearing. Turandot can’t be anyone’s favourite heroine.’
She was making small talk, nothing more, and had done so a thousand times in Karylya when in princess mode.
She saw a faint frown on Leon Dukaris’s face.
‘No? But she’s a very strong woman,’ he replied. ‘Insisting on not marrying just because that’s what everyone expects her to do.’
Ellie felt her face harden. ‘Strong? She’s brutal! She has her suitors murdered and her rival tortured!’ she bit out.
His rejoinder was immediate. ‘The slave girl, Liu, could have avoided her fate any time she wanted, simply by telling Turandot the name of the unknown Prince.’ There was a sardonic note in his voice.
‘Whom Turandot would then have had killed!’ Ellie shot back. ‘Liu refuses to betray him—she loves him!’
Leon Dukaris lifted his flute to his mouth, taking a mouthful of champagne before he answered her. ‘Much good it does her—he rejects her for another woman who’s a better proposition than a mere slave girl!’
That sardonic note was more pronounced—harder. With something underlying it that for a moment Ellie wondered at. Then she realised that she suddenly had an opening to move the conversation away from a fictitious drama to the reality that she and her family were facing—a reality she must confront, for there was no other option but to do so if she were to protect Marika from an unwanted suitor.
‘Well, yes,’ she murmured, taking a sip of her champagne, pitching her voice carefully, ‘Turandot is a princess—and there are, indeed, men who would like to marry a princess...’
She let her eyes rest on Leon Dukaris, mindful of her expression, nervous after her impetuosity in making so pointed an observation. Would it draw him out—make him say something that could give her any indication at all as to whether Marika’s fears were justified or not?
Almost immediately, his expression was veiled. She saw his long lashes—ridiculously long lashes, inky dark and lush, she found herself noting with complete irrelevance—dipping down over those amazing dark eyes of his, tautening the muscles of her stomach.
‘Well, that depends...’ he replied.
And now there was no trace of any sardonic note in his voice—rather, she realised, with another pull on her heightened awareness of him, a trace of amusement...and, more than amusement, a sensual drawl that did things to her they should not...must not.
‘On the princess in question...’
‘Indeed,’ she returned. ‘And therefore perhaps you should be aware, Mr Dukaris, that my sister is in love with another man.’
She spoke in a low voice, for only him to hear. But even as she spoke she feared she had said too much—assumed too much.
What if Marika’s fears were entirely groundless, the product of fear and distress? Well, it was too late now. She’d all but warned off Leon Dukaris from getting any ideas about her sister—ideas he might never have entertained in the first place.
It took all her training to keep her expression composed, as if she had said nothing out of the ordinary at all.
For a moment nothing changed in his expression. Then, as tension clawed in her, she saw his stance ease, a wash of relaxation go through him, and in his dark, dark eyes glints of sheer gold suddenly gleamed like buried treasure.
He raised his flute and quite deliberately tilted it to touch hers with a crystalline click of glass.
‘I wish her as well as can be expected,’ he said.
There was a carelessness in his voice, and again that underlying sardonic note that Ellie had heard before but had no time now to pay any attention to. For now all she had attention for was the way his eyes were holding hers, the expression in them, the way she could not move in the slightest.
‘But I fear you have misunderstood the situation, Princess. I have not the slightest interest in your sister.’
He paused, and in that pause she could not breathe, for Leon Dukaris was dominating her body space, dominating her consciousness, smiling down at her with that smile that was not a smile, that smile that had nothing to do with humour in the least and everything
