still can’t see why …’ Miss Alstone seemed about to take over from his wild Kate, so Edmund summarily tugged her into the ballroom and put an end to her nonsense.
‘Good heavens!’ Cromer exclaimed at the sight of a stormy-eyed, very thoroughly kissed Kate on Edmund’s arm and just managed to suppress a grin. ‘They’re quite right about that dangerous moonlight,’ he mumbled as he stepped back to let the company see what it had done to so cool and collected a couple.
‘Good heavens, indeed, and yes, very right,’ Edmund replied calmly.
‘I don’t think they had much to do with it,’ his Kate mumbled tartly and Edmund wondered if he was suffering from shock and hallucinating when she didn’t just tear herself away from him and flounce off. It wasn’t every day a man heard murder plotted, and with Kate pressed so close he’d struggled to listen to a word of it. He’d wanted her so mercilessly and now he nearly had what he’d longed for so deeply within his grasp at long last, what had happened so far tonight almost seemed unreal to him for a few moments.
‘I hope you’ll congratulate us, Cromer, for I refuse to wait any longer after three years of waiting for a yea instead of a nay, even if her former guardian and brother-in-law hasn’t agreed to it yet,’ he said with a possessive look at Kate.
‘Carnwood cutting up rough, is he?’ Cromer asked obligingly, managing to look astonished while his eyes told them he didn’t believe a word.
‘You see? Everyone thinks I’m your ideal husband,’ he whispered in Kate’s ear and felt her tense, as if she might jump away and deny every last truthful hint of how they’d been amusing themselves since they left the ballroom that he was building up so carefully. ‘Try it and I’ll kiss you right here,’ he threatened softly.
‘I hate you,’ she told him between clenched teeth and he met the heat and fury of her furious glare with a satisfied smile.
‘Hate away, my fierce Kate,’ he murmured and heard a sentimental sigh from somewhere close by.
‘Mountebank!’ she condemned in a spitting undertone, but still made no effort to pull away or give his apparent devotion the lie.
Looking as if he was trying very hard to come down to earth, Edmund considered his friend’s previous question. ‘No,’ he replied to the clever lead, ‘but I can’t tear myself away long enough to go up to Derbyshire and ask him.’
‘Should think you’ve obtained his permission often enough in the past,’ Cromer said.
‘So I keep telling Miss Alstone, but it took me until tonight to convince her I can’t endure to wait and be wed with the full fanfare and fuss of a grand wedding. I’ll have to go and beard Carnwood in his lair now she’d agreed at last that our wedding must be soon, then maybe we can get on with being my lord and my lady at long last.’
‘Short notice, gossips bound to twitter like starlings in an apple orchard,’ his taciturn friend warned sagely and Edmund gave an expressive shrug before looking significantly about him at the eagerly whispering throng.
‘I’ve waited long enough,’ he said loudly enough for most to hear him and enjoy a fresh wave of delighted speculation.
He smiled wolfishly at Kate, hoping his eyes conveyed a warning to back him up now this was all but irrevocable. She really had the most extraordinary eyes, they were truly ultramarine, he decided distractedly, savouring the word on his tongue as he almost murmured it aloud. Very blue, he translated, and was in grave danger of falling into the wondrous depths of them and not caring where it took either of them. Most blue, he corrected in his head, and freed himself of their spell just in time to stop himself kissing her passionately in public.
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