Page 26

As she wrapped her arms round his neck and gave him back kiss for kiss, he lost his head a little and pushed her back against the wall, the kiss escalating to something hungry and devouring.

His late-night lewd impulses threatened to break free as desire consumed him in a tingling hot rush.

He was hard, burning and aching with desire.

For her. He tried and failed to stifle a groan in his throat as he ground himself against her belly. Oh, Sarah, I want you!

Her body jerked with what he assumed was alarm, penetrating the fog of desire clouding his mind. He realized with horror what he was doing and pulled back. Damnation! I have no control where this woman is concerned. What in Hades is making me behave this way? He stepped away fighting for composure.

“I’m sorry.”

The dance was drawing to a close, someone was going to notice their absence. And here I have been worrying about Ava causing a scene!

“Please,” he waved to her to leave him. “I’ll rejoin you in a moment.”

She eyed him with a look he couldn’t interpret and slipped from the alcove, leaving him to rearrange his breeches and try to think about bills and agriculture.

Thank God the wedding was only three weeks away.

He was getting eaten up with wanting her and all they’d done was kiss, he’d not touched her anywhere inappropriate .

How the hell am I going to manage the wedding night if I lose control at the smallest provocation?

Thinking about that didn’t help his current predicament. Bills! How many acres can we put under corn by the middle of the year?

A few minutes later, order restored to his breeches, he left the alcove looking for Sarah and spotted her with his mother.

He would not go there right now. He was still shaken by the events of the last few minutes, and he didn’t need his mother’s sharp eyes ferreting out his business.

It was a shock to realize that it was only a few minutes. It had seemed like an eon.

The event felt seismic to him, as if the whole world had shifted around him.

Did I imagine it? He began to wonder. Could he have imagined that moment of connection?

Do I want it so badly I am making things up, or did she feel it, too?

He would have sworn in the moment that she did.

He fervently hoped that it wasn’t his imagination.

The moment seemed so fragile, in retrospect, as if it could be blown away in a puff of wind, destroyed by sound or movement.

By the infinitesimal ticking of the clock.

Or by my blundering passion . . .

Sarah was so innocent; his lack of control frightened her. He was such a beast. And if he started thinking about that, he would have to go behind the curtain again.

*

For the next three hours, Sarah watched Robert prowling round the ballroom avoiding her.

At least she could only conclude that was what he was doing.

Each time she thought he might come in her direction, he veered off somewhere else to talk to a guest, to solicit a lady to dance, to talk to his mother or Ava or one of his brothers, or have a discreet word with a servant.

She was rattled by whatever it was that passed between them on the dance floor and then behind the curtain.

She had felt a surge of warmth in her breast and something that she could only describe as affinity, as if they clicked in some way.

She shook her head, unable to find words to capture the feeling adequately.

She desperately wished she had a friend to talk to, to try to make sense of what was happening.

And when he’d swept her behind the curtain and held her in his arms, kissed her hair and whispered her name in such a reverential tone, she’d just melted against him. It was akin to the magic she had felt when they were at Vauxhall, and yet it was different.

At Vauxhall, everything had felt slightly wicked, but this had felt more divine, almost like the feeling she got in church when she prayed.

And then he kissed her, and things were deliciously wicked again.

When he pushed her against the wall, and she could feel the hard heat of him, his body trapping her, his mouth demanding, taking and giving in a way she’d never experienced before, it exhilarated her.

The heat and tingling pleasure, the press of his body, the invasion of his tongue, the touch of his lips provoked, carried her to a point she had never been before, a state of desire, where she began to understand why women were often lured into a fallen condition.

If Robert had asked her to do something truly wicked just then, she would probably have done it.

Not that she really understood exactly what that meant, only that he could have done anything to her, and she would have let him.

Instead, he’d stopped. Pulled away and sent her away. Logically she knew he was protecting her, being a gentleman, yet it had felt like rejection. And now he was avoiding her. Have I given him a disgust of me by responding so wantonly? She felt wretched. She so wished she had someone to talk to.

Since her falling out with Daphne, that avenue of confidence was closed to her, and there really wasn’t anyone else.

She had no close female friends in London, all her friends were at home.

Not that they would be any use anyway, all her single female friends would be as clueless as she was, and the married ones had all moved away.

The notion of talking to her mama about any of this made her blush with embarrassment.

There was Lady Ashford, she supposed, but really, she was the merest acquaintance. She didn’t feel an affinity with her the way she did with Lord Ashford. Was that wrong?

As if summoned by her thoughts, Lord Ashford appeared at her elbow with a glass of champagne and a plate of food. “Rob is so busy he sent me to feed you,” he said, holding out his offerings.

“Oh!” she said, startled, accepting the glass and plate and finding a seat on a couch against the wall.

Ashford joined her. “Thank you,” she said jerkily.

Her gaze trailed wistfully over Robert, who was standing on the other side of the room, talking to a group of men she knew vaguely by sight but couldn’t recall the names of.

“He sent his apologies; he’s been caught in a political debate. It’s the sort of thing I avoid like the plague, but there is a bill coming up in the house shortly and it’s something Robert has an interest in.”

“Oh,” she said again, realizing that she’d had no idea Robert had political interests, nor what they could be. It wasn’t something they had discussed. One more thing she needed to add to her list of wifely or duchess-ly duties.

Turning her attention to the plate he had brought her, she took a sip of the champagne, set the glass on the side table beside the couch and took up the fork on the plate. “Have you eaten, my lord?”

“Yes,” he said with a smile. “Tuck in, please.”

She forked up a bit of lobster patty for the look of it, although she wasn’t really hungry.

“What’s wrong?” he asked gently.

She looked up, startled. “Nothing!”

Ashford raised a single eyebrow but said nothing. She set the plate aside with a sigh and picked up the champagne glass. She couldn’t confess her premarital troubles with Robert to his best friend. But perhaps she could put a hypothetical to him?

“C-can I ask you a—hypothetical question, my lord? In confidence?”

“Of course. I don’t know that I’ll be able to answer it, though. But I’ll try,” he said with a quizzical smile.

She took a large swallow of the champagne to fortify herself.

“If a lady were to—to kiss a gentleman with—enthusiasm, would that give the gentleman a—disgust of her?” she asked in a jerky rush. Her cheeks in flames, she sat twisting the champagne glass nervously.

“Miss Watson—Sarah, if I may?” he said. She peeked at him and nodded. “If the lady were you and the gentleman were Robert, I can tell you, most unequivocally, no. In fact,” he added, “at the risk of breaking his confidence, he would most assuredly welcome it.”

“Then why is he avoiding me?” she asked wretchedly.

“Ah. I would hazard a guess that he is in duke mode.” He went on carefully.

“Robert is a very private person; he doesn’t share himself easily with other people.

There are but a few of us who truly know the man behind the ducal facade.

It’s a shield of sorts, one he is barely conscious of, I think.

I suspect you have pierced that shield in some way, and he has retreated behind it. ”

“Oh.”

“If the two sides of himself have been brought into conflict in this, a public arena, he would instinctively have retreated into ducal mode.”

She nodded. “I see. That explains why he was so different at Vauxhall,” she murmured. “Wearing a mask, he perhaps felt freer to be himself?”

“Undoubtedly. But to say ‘to be himself’ is probably not entirely accurate. He is the Duke of Troubridge as much as he is Robert Layne. They are two sides of the same coin. He manages them by having one at the fore in the appropriate situation. He runs into trouble when both surface at the same time or one surfaces in a situation that is inappropriate for it.”

“Thank you, Lord Ashford,” she said with a smile, proffering her hand.

He took it in both of his. “Please call me Emrys. There is nothing to thank me for. I am his friend and yours, too, if you’ll have me.”

“Indeed, you are a good friend!”

“He is a good man. Give him a chance, Sarah.”