butler hastened up to the fray, but the mysterious guest merely amiably punched the servant in the shoulder.
Laughing, openly amused, the gentleman refused to budge. To Grace’s shock, she saw his head turn and his gaze slide over the crowd. Toward her. She was staring, but so was everyone else. There was no reason he should feel her curious gaze out of the hundreds of others.
Polite decorum decreed she should look away, but she could not stop watching him. His skin was golden bronze, close in color to his luxurious hair. He was obviously a man who exposed his body to the sun. Even bathed in the light of a chandelier, he stood too far away to reveal the color of those penetrating eyes, but she guessed they would be blue.
A silly fancy. She forced her gaze to move demurely away. But she was still aware of him; it was as though the music had stopped and the dancers had whirled away into the night, and there was no one in the ballroom but the handsome stranger and her.
The strangest sensation gripped her, along with a heat that threatened to set her skin on fire.
She’d desired Lord Wesley, but she’d felt nothing like this—
Every forbidden erotic picture, every one of her father Rodesson’s erotic drawings—those she’d secretly looked at—spilled through her heated mind.
She wanted this man, this powerful, compelling stranger. She wanted to know what it would be like to lie underneath him and part her legs and take him inside her. She wanted to know how his skin would taste to her lips and her tongue. To know if he would be rigid and big and if he would fill her completely and make her scream in pleasure. She wanted to see him naked, taste him naked, and make love to him until they were both sweaty and senseless—
He was staring at her.
Grace felt it. Felt an answering fire rush over her skin.
Preposterous! How could he even see her? But she glanced up, enthralled by the moment, knowing their gazes would lock—
Or was he looking at Prudence? Wouldn’t that make more sense?
He was not looking at either of them. Abruptly he turned on his heel and strode out through the gilt and ivory doors.
Her fan was in tatters beneath her fingers and her heart felt two sizes too big for her chest. Her throat was tight and dry. Her drawers were indecently wet.
She had to know. It was like a sudden addiction. “Who was that?” she cried.
“My half brother.” Prudence’s voice shook with…anger? Fear? An emotion Grace could not quite define.
“You have a half brother?”
“He’s a bastard,” Prudence continued, her voice contemptuous, using a word she should not. “My father’s by-blow. His first-born child, in fact, and my father is stupidly fond of him.”
Grace shook at the revulsion on her friend’s face. She was a bastard. Would Prudence feel the same way about her if she knew the truth?
Suddenly Grace felt as though she stood on a tightrope, balancing over a pit of wolves. No, this was the ton. Not wolves—mocking jackals with slavering jaws.
“He should be hung,” Prudence spat. “He’s a highwayman. Can you believe he is so bold as to come to this house? He’s probably robbed half the people here! And he was a pirate. Why the British Navy did not kill him, I cannot imagine. He’s a murderer, a scoundrel, and…” Prudence took a shaky breath.
Grace moved forward, startled by tears in her friend’s eyes.
“And our father loves him best!” Prudence cried and stamped her foot.
Grace hugged her friend. “Of course not!”
Prudence pulled out of the hug, shaking. “He does. His mother was a love affair, ours a duty marriage. Of course, he loves dashing Devlin Sharpe. But I hate him.”
“Why? Because of what he is?” Grace could hardly believe she wanted to press this. Why should she want to hear about the horrors of being recognized as a bastard?
“He murdered the man I loved. If I wouldn’t hang for it, I’d grab one of my father’s pistols right now and shoot him where he stands.”
Grace blinked. “How could he murder a man and escape punishment?”
Prudence balled her hands into fists, and Grace heard her fan snap. “I cannot tell you what happened. Not even you, my dear friend.”
She reached out and stroked Prudence’s arm as her friend turned red-rimmed eyes to her and asked, “Do I look awful? I have to dance with Lord Wynsome next.”
“You look fine.” But a chill washed over Grace as she watched Prudence stroll away. Prudence’s movements were controlled, precise, and lovely, belying her emotional outburst. If her illegitimate half brother had murdered the man she loved, how could he have dared walk into the house?
And even after hearing what a beast he was, she still ached between her legs. She was still flushed and anxious with desire.
She was supposed to meet Lord Wesley at midnight…After feeling all that mad, delirious passion and hunger and need.
She couldn’t bear to stand in this crowded, overheated ballroom one moment longer. She needed to escape.
“You weren’t planning to meet me after all, were you?”
Grace jerked away from the study windows and slowly turned around.
Lord Wesley stood in the doorway, the door closed behind him. There had been a key in the lock before and now it was gone.
His cravat was undone, the snowy-white cloth trailing over his black tailcoat.
He’d guessed the truth. She had not planned to meet him. She knew she couldn’t—for two reasons. Both that mad moment of lust for a stranger and the fact that she could not have intimate relations with any man until she wore his ring. So, she had slipped into the study and poured herself some brandy to take away the frustration of knowing she couldn’t meet him. But she tried to tease, “It is only the hour of eleven. You cannot possibly know that.”
“I can guess, Grace.” His lordship prowled toward her, his hip brushing a gilt table and setting the crystal glasses tinkling upon it. She saw from his unsteady gait that he’d been drinking. But then, so had she.
“I know you are afraid,” he said. “I know what you want.” He brushed back the now unruly locks of his white-blond hair.
“You do?” Brandy was hot in her blood. She leaned back against the arm of the settee. “I don’t even know what I want.”
“Yes, you do. But you deny it.”
“I liked you much better when you were direct. What do I deny, my lord?”
His dark eyes—a stunning blend of violet and blue—held hers. He was breathtakingly beautiful. Much more so than that coarse and bold highwayman who was his half brother. “You deny that you want passion. Heat. Fire. You want lusty, sweaty, passionate sexual
