didn’t even bother trying to look penitent. Instead, she, whoever she was, flashed him a smile that dazzled even in the dark of the corridor. “Are you always this arrogant? How could I come looking for you if I didn’t know you? It would be impossible to tell if I’d found you. I could have dragged any impostor back with me if that was the case. In fact, I still don’t know you.” Well, this was certainly new. The hostesses usually didn’t send the fun ones. Jocelyn winked and leaned close to her ear. “Well, not, biblically, anyway, not yet.” There was a faint hint of summer roses about her, a slightly sophisticated scent like the woman herself, a woman who flirted as she did wasn’t entirely an innocent. He was starting to enjoy this, especially if Lady Martin-Burke hadn’t sent one of her husband-hunting minions for him. This chit didn’t seem like Lady Martin-Burke’s sort. She was far too bold.
“You presume too much, sir.”
Jocelyn grinned in the dark. She wasn’t truly mad. He could hear the laughter in her voice along with the required censure. A good flirt knew how to mix the two. She was proving to be adept at the art.
Jocelyn gave an honest laugh. “And yet you’re the one who has commandeered my arm and my attentions.” Had a walk in the dark ever been this interesting? Most walks he took in the dark had certain predetermined outcomes. There were no surprises. There hadn’t been any surprises for a very long time. Yet there were surprises here aplenty.
“Your attentions? Have I? That sounds very promising. Do you suppose there might be a dance for me in that?” She was asking him for a dance.
They’d reached the ballroom where it would be natural to go their separate ways. His duty to see her back to the safety of the crowd and light had been fulfilled. He was required to do no more. She’d realized this, proving that his little interloper was an astute negotiator as well as a flirt. He had nothing against either. Both made for interesting conversation, both could keep a man on his toes and Jocelyn liked a good game. What had promised to be a tedious evening filled with the usual suspects was most definitely looking up. “What do I get in return?”
“Why, my company, of course, and the bonus that I am an exceptional dancer.” Jocelyn wondered how exceptional. Did she know what she implied? Lucifer’s balls, he’d become quite a cynic. His thoughts were perpetually jaded.
Even so, she was infectious, Jocelyn decided as they took their places in line for the next set. Even in the dim corridor there’d been a potency to her, a charisma. Charm was too weak of reference to describe her pull, potency perhaps too masculine to describe the laughter that frothed just beneath the surface of her conversation. In the bright light of the ballroom, she was stunning. Rich red hair devoid of the usual orangey hue, lay artfully coiffed at the nape of her neck. The art was in the long braid of it, coiled so that a man had difficulty thinking of anything else but pulling out the pins one by one and watching it fall.
Blue eyes met his, sharp, dancing eyes that supported his belief that laughter lurked in her every word, as she took her position across from him. The music started and they came together for the first pattern. She hadn’t lied. She was a superb dancer, her movements confident and graceful. There was something supple, fluid even, about the way she danced the simple quadrille, something uniquely erotic.
He must be going crazy. The quadrille was not an erotic dance, it was quite sexless, in fact, unlike the waltz, when done right, any good rake knew was just publicly condoned sex on a dance floor. It was common knowledge among his set that anyone good at the waltz had a better than fair chance of being decent in bed. He had it on good authority that he was one of London’s finest waltzers.
Yet, here he was, fighting the early signs of arousal, in the midst of le pantalon, his blood firing at the sight of her swaying gracefully from partner to partner until all he could think of was getting a waltz with her. Jocelyn supposed he could blame the dress. The ivory of her gown was nearly a seamless complement to the ivory of her skin. It was almost like seeing someone naked. Only the seed-pearl trim of the bodice separated the one from the other, the satin “sleeves” at her shoulders so negligible as to be nothing of substance.
His initial reaction was that whoever her guardians were had dressed her outrageously, yet when he studied the dress he found nothing outrageous about it. It was cut no lower than any other young woman’s gown, and the color was certainly not questionable. In fact, on its own merits, the gown was perfectly decorous. It was the woman in it who gave the dress its scandal.
The dance ended, for which Jocelyn was both thankful and regretful. He’d have to wait a decent interval before he asked for a waltz but he was loath to let her go. “How about some of that company you promised me?” He took her arm, not waiting for an answer. “I am told the Martin-Burke garden has been specially decorated for the evening.” A walk was precisely what he needed. He’d rather take one with her than to walk alone and risk being pounced upon by a rabid matchmaking mama. He would be thirty-one next month and London’s mamas had decided it was high time he marry. So had his father. His father the earl had informed him he’d had eleven years to sow his wild oats on the town.
It wasn’t that he was opposed to marriage. He did plan to marry at some unspecified point in the future, just not the near future. There was the league to consider at the moment. D’Arcy’s departure this summer had left the league exposed and Jocelyn would not abandon Channing Deveril, founder of the league, in his hour of need. After the new year, when the scandal surrounding the rumored existence of the league settled, perhaps then, he’d contemplate a wife. Right now, he was far more interested in contemplating the woman beside him.
The air outside was crisp, a beautiful late-autumn night and probably one of the last. One never knew what the weather gods would do in November. In celebration, the Martin-Burkes had fitted the garden with little fires placed at intervals where guests could stroll and stop to warm themselves from the evening chill. Jocelyn rather liked the idea, but it seemed others were skeptical. The garden was sparsely populated tonight.
“I think fall is my favorite time of year.” She looked up into the night sky, the firelight skimming her profile, her throat exposed. He had the sudden urge to want to kiss that long column. “The air is sharp, not sweet and heavy like it is in the summer, or soft in the spring, or biting like the winter. There’s possibility in the sharpness.” She took a deep breath that lifted her breasts, although she seemed unaware of it. Then she laughed. “It’s all nonsense, of course, the air isn’t a round of cheese.”
“No more than the moon, and look how often we’ve made that comparison.” Jocelyn laughed with her, liking her wit. He hadn’t enjoyed himself like this in ages. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been with a woman who hadn’t hired him, who didn’t know who he was, and he was quite sure this one didn’t know. They were simply being themselves and it felt wonderful, a pleasant deviation from the tedium his life had become.
Her fingers clenched softly on his arm where they lay, a gesture that seemed out of character for this bold creature. “I have a confession. I wasn’t looking forward to coming tonight. I don’t know anyone in town and I was worried, but you’ve made it better than I thought.”
I could make it better still. Good Lord, desire was riding him hard tonight for a change. Usually, it was the other way around. He rode it. He kept true rampant desire on a very tight rein. On his behalf, though, she had caught him unawares. He hadn’t time to steel himself against such a reaction and, in truth, the sensation was not a distasteful one. Rather, it was something of a novelty, which was as good of an explanation as any for this curious feeling.
“Then I’m glad we met.” The strains of a waltz were beginning in the ballroom and the garden emptied as people went to claim partners and spaces, leaving them alone with the fire pits. Jocelyn let the conversation between them
