“There’s no reason for you to leave the party,” she said. “I’ll find a fiacre to take me back.”
“The party is boring,” he said. “You’re the only interesting thing in it. You’d scarcely left before it deflated, audibly, like a punctured hot-air balloon. I heard the sigh of escaping excitement behind me as I stepped into the corridor.”
“It didn’t occur to you that the deflation was on account of your departure?” she said.
“No,” he said. “And don’t try flattery. It sits ill on you. In fact, it turns your face slightly green. I do wonder how you get on with your clients. Surely you’re obliged to flatter and cajole.”
“I flatter in the same way I do everything else,” she said. “Beautifully. If I turned green it was due to shock at your flattering me.”
“Then collect your wits before we descend the stairs. If you take a tumble and crack your head, suspicion will instantly fall on me.”
She needed to collect her wits, and not for fear of tumbling down the stairs. She hadn’t yet recovered from the waltz with him: the heat, the giddiness, the almost overpowering physical awareness—and most alarming, the yearning coursing through her, racing in her veins, beating in her heart, and weakening her mind as though she’d drunk some kind of poison.
She started down the stairs.
As the buzz of the party grew more distant, she became aware of his light footfall behind her, and of the deserted atmosphere of the lower part of the house.
Risk-taking was in her blood, and conventional morality had not been part of her upbringing. If this had been another man, she wouldn’t have hesitated. She would have led him to a dark corner or under the stairs and had him. She would have lifted her skirts and taken her pleasure—against a wall or a door or on a windowsill—and got it out of her system.
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