with me,” Colonel Howard said.
“You do not think the waltz inappropriate, surely?” Mr. Masterson appealed to Lady Alice.
“Certainly not! Indeed, ’tis my hope—oh, but of course, Colonel Howard did—” her aunt stuttered.
“Good,” Mr. Masterson inserted with a grin. “To accommodate the colonel, I promise to return the lady before the next set begins.” After a quick bow to her aunt, he took her arm and urged her onto the floor.
“Are you kidnapping me?” Gwennor protested, laughing.
“Nothing so violent. But there didn’t seem a tactful way to suggest that though Colonel Howard may not feel up to a waltz, I am quite capable.”
His delicacy in preserving the colonel’s pride further impressed Gwen. “That was most kind.”
Mr. Masterson’s smile deepened and his green-eyed gaze fixed on her with notable warmth. “Besides, I’ve dreamed all week of waltzing with you in my arms.”
Mercifully, the music began, since Gwen was too flustered to reply. Acutely aware of his hands at her waist and shoulder, she let him sweep her into the dance.
Her enthusiasm at the prospect of dancing soon soothed her agitation, and she gave herself up to the delight of swirling with the music.
As they came to a halt at the end of the dance, their position and proximity inevitably called up memories of an even closer embrace that had progressed to a much less proper activity…one in which she’d also participated with great enthusiasm. Her face heated guiltily.
She half stumbled in her eagerness to quit the dance floor, as if by leaving the spot that had invoked them she might banish the disturbing recollections.
“Miss Southford, are you quite all right? You seem fatigued,” Colonel Howard said as they returned. He cast Mr. Masterson an aggrieved glance.
“’Twas a bit warm,” she replied, seizing that excuse to explain her overheated cheeks.
“Let me get you a glass of wine,” Mr. Masterson said.
“Colonel, if you do not mind, could we postpone our dance? I believe I would like a glass.”
While the men squabbled over who would bring wine and who the lobster patties and tea cakes, Gwennor took the colonel’s arm, glad for the respite.
The interlude in the refreshment room did much to restore her calm. She was able to dance several sets, and even welcome engaging in a second waltz with Mr. Masterson. He really was a very pleasant gentleman, she concluded as she listened to him expound on his plans for enlarging the horse-breeding operations at his estate.
Horse breeding. Parry would love that.
Dreamily contemplating her brother passing his days crossing bloodlines to produce steeds of particular colors or attributes, at the termination of the waltz she followed Mr. Masterson off the dance floor. And nearly ran into him when her escort suddenly stopped.
“At last!” he exclaimed. “Miss Southford, you must allow me to retain you a few more moments. My good friend Gilen has just arrived and I wish to introduce you.”
Gwennor murmured her assent, smiling a little to think how delighted Aunt Alice was going to be if this friend turned out to be another eligible gentleman. Curious, as Mr. Masterson led her forward, she scanned the people crowding the room beyond the dance floor, but out of the press of guests she could not discern which particular gentleman he seemed to be seeking.
As it happened, the man they approached had his back to them. Mr. Masterson reached out to touch his shoulder.
“Gilen! I was beginning to think you’d not attend after all! Miss Southford, allow me to present my dear friend, Viscount St. Abrams.”
The tall blond man turned. “Ah, Miss Southford—how delightful to meet you at last.”
Those dark blue eyes. That chiseled jaw. Gwennor’s knees nearly buckled as she sank into a curtsey with more speed than grace. When Lord St. Abrams reached to grasp her suddenly nerveless fingers for the obligatory salute, a wave of dizziness swept her. For one awful moment she thought she might faint.
About to bow over her hand was the taunting, tempting stranger she’d kissed at the gypsy camp.
Chapter Six
So this is Jeffrey’s new love, Gilen thought, despite his friend’s description of her, still a bit surprised as he inspected the woman curtseying before him. This tall, slender lady, her bowed head displaying a luxurious tangle of thick ebony curls, her long dark lashes in sharp silhouette against the porcelain of her face, was not the sort of gazetted beauty to whom his friend had previously lost his heart.
Nor—mercifully—upon Jeffrey’s announcing his name and rank, had she latched on to his arm with an effusion of ingratiating chatter, as had happened on several uncomfortable instances in the past when Jeffrey had presented him to his inamorata of the moment.
Lovely rather than stunning, and pretty-behaved besides, he concluded as he reached for her hand. Perhaps she might do for Jeff.
His favorable impression of genteel beauty did not prepare him for the jolt of awareness that hammered his nerves when his gloved hand touched hers. That lingered, pulsing through his veins, while he hastily brushed his lips to her fingertips and released them.
She’d felt it, too—his shocked mind noted her gasping intake of breath, the slight tremble of her hand. It, he concluded as he tried to reorder his scrambled thoughts, being an intense, immediate and entirely unwelcome attraction to the lady who’d won his best friend’s admiration. Damn and blast, he cursed under his breath.
“Lord St. Abrams,” she murmured, her face still demurely lowered.
“Isn’t she splendid?” an exuberant Jeffrey mouthed to him over her head. Reclaiming the lady’s hand with covetous zeal, he motioned Gilen to follow them. “Come along, St. Abrams. I’ll present you to Miss Southford’s aunt, Lady Alice, and some of her friends.”
After spending a moment staring in befuddlement at his hand, as if that appendage had betrayed him, Gilen started off a few steps behind the couple. Which, as they crossed the floor, gave him a good view—all too good a view—of Miss Southford, her graceful glide of a walk, that temptation of thick curls balanced on the arched perfection of her neck, the shapely arms beneath the flutter of dark sleeves. Much as he tried to rein it in, to his disgust his body was as enthusiastic as Jeffrey in appreciating the lady’s charms.
There was no question of proceeding down that path. His goal was only to protect, as much as it was possible to protect a man who’d reached his majority years ago, his vulnerable friend from unscrupulous husband hunters.
He dragged his eyes from watching for tantalizing hints of the trim posterior beneath her silk gown and fixed them firmly on his friend’s back. The fact that she was making no attempt to flirt with Gilen, who wherever he traveled seemed to be instantly identified by every unmarried female in the vicinity as a prime matrimonial prize, was both a relief and a promising sign.
Or perhaps it was just that his reputation as being impervious to female wiles had also preceded him, and Miss Southford
