“No need.” Alex crossed his arms. “I’m not dancing.”
She frowned, for the first time taking him seriously. “But you must! You’re the highest-ranking gentleman here. Think how poor Miss Seaton will feel if you refuse to dance with her. And—” She nodded frantically in the direction of the ballroom behind him. “Here comes Seaton now—with his sister.”
Alex turned to follow her wild gesturing, looking past Miss Seaton to survey the room. Damn if he, an earl, wasn’t the highest-ranking peer in attendance and expected to begin the ball. He could refuse, but that would hardly endear him to Seaton and he might yet need to question the man about Dashing. Frowning, he leveled a look at their host—headed directly for him, terrified little sister in tow.
“Don’t scowl,” Lucia whispered. “You’ll frighten her.”
He turned his scowl on her, but her attention was focused on the advancing brother and sister.
“And don’t talk with Miss Seaton too much,” she said through her smile, “or you’ll destroy her reputation.”
“Won’t I ruin it anyway?” he asked, moving out of the alcove.
“No. You’ll merely create some interest in the girl.” She gave him an assessing look. “She’s as likely as not to thank you for it.”
Alex lifted an eyebrow. The Seaton chit looked as though she were preparing to meet an executioner rather than a dance partner.
Lucia moved forward to greet the siblings, placing her hand on Alex’s arm as she did so. “Meet me on the terrace after the second dance.” Before he could even reply, she curtsied. “Mr. Seaton. Miss Seaton. How good to see you again. Lord Selbourne, may I introduce my brother’s dear friend Mr. William Seaton?”
Grudgingly, Alex stepped forward.
The country dance was half over before Alex thought to glance down the row of couples and check on Lucia’s progress with Seaton. It wasn’t that his own partner had captured his attention—the mousy seventeen-year-old hadn’t uttered a single audible syllable. From the look on her face, Alex surmised she was in a state of mortal terror, probably imagining he would offer her a carte blanche any moment.
Alex had spent most of the grueling dance attempting, without success, to pinpoint exactly where life had gone wrong. He figured he had plenty of sins to atone for but couldn’t remember any egregious enough to warrant this hell of the ballroom and this terrified girl, barely out of the schoolroom, on his arm. The sin must have been serious, though, because he was already paying for another of his transgressions by having to deal with his defiant sister-in-law. And Alex was becoming increasingly convinced that, in the case of Lucia, the punishment did not fit the crime.
Damn, what he wouldn’t give to return to France and his work. His thoughts flashed back to the seedy tavern in Calais and his meeting with Pitt. Bonaparte’s plan was ludicrous—impossible. He’d never pull it off.
But if he did . . .
Alex prayed whomever Wentworth had sent in his place knew what he was doing. Right now England needed the Foreign Office’s best men.
And what was he doing for England? Wallowing about London, eating and drinking too much, forced into the company of men and women he detested, and chasing after spoiled sons of peers. Thinking of Old Boney, Alex cursed aloud, startling Miss Seaton a shade paler.
He gave her a terse smile, then a genuine one as memories of the sweet redhead he’d bedded in a seedy Calais tavern just before he’d sailed for England came to mind. While his ship was being outfitted, he spent the better part of his wait sampling her charms. From the redhead, his thoughts wandered to Hampshire and the buxom barmaid at the Horse and Plow—she had certainly kept him diverted.
But since Ethan’s request for help with Dashing and Alex’s arrival in London, there’d been no one. He’d been too long without a woman. That must be the reason for the intense desire he felt whenever Lucia Dashing was near.
He glanced at Lucia again, calculating when the dance forms would dictate that she and Seaton move near him. When they did, he had to restrain himself from reaching out, grabbing her partner, and knocking the man’s teeth out. The look in Seaton’s eye was far from brotherly, and Lucia was actually flirting with him. The devil take him if she wasn’t smiling coyly and tossing her curls. Gritting his teeth, Alex added her propensity for flirtation to the list of items he planned to address with her when they met on the terrace.
Her gown was at the top of the list. He couldn’t conceive how the revealing dress had escaped his notice before. It was cut far too low, and Alex didn’t give a damn that it was modest when compared to the gowns other ladies of the ton flaunted. This was Lucia, not some other woman.
He liked that the dress, Grecian in style, was simple and unadorned. But it also bared the swell of her lovely white breasts to every male eye present, and the thin, shimmery white silk pooled around her in an erotic swirl as she executed the movements of the dance.
He didn’t know what the other men in the room were thinking, but he had the urge to strip the silk off her, to see for himself if that waist really was as small as he imagined, if those hips flared as he thought they would.
He reached up and loosened his cravat. Bloody hell. The room was stifling him.
“Damn,” he swore again, and Miss Seaton’s color went from wan to ashen. “Don’t faint,” he ordered the chit. She nodded, wobbling for a moment before seeming to regain her balance.
Alex let out an impatient sigh and turned his attention back to Lucia.
He had to conquer this attraction. He had no hope of ever touching her. He knew this with unequivocal certainty. So why was that insistent thorn in the back of his mind prodding him to question it? Why was that same thorn pricking him to acknowledge that nothing was impossible, that her reaction to him was sensual, that she wanted him, too?
He finished the last figure of the dance, bowed to Miss Seaton, and promenaded her—rather, held her upright—the appropriate distance around the room. All around him swarmed ladies and gentlemen of the ton’s lower rungs. He scowled at several of the less savory gentlemen. Lucia shouldn’t even be here. She belonged among the refinement of the duke’s ball.
Finally free of the skittish miss, he grabbed a glass of claret—couldn’t expect any gin in a place like this—downed it, and stepped onto the freedom of the terrace. The air was fresh and invigorating compared to the strangling heat of the milling crowds in the ballroom. Gripping the cold stone banister, he peered over the dark gardens. It was a starless night, as most in the city were, and the light from the brassy ballroom spilled onto the terrace, blending with the weak glow from several cheap, colorful Chinese lanterns. Taking a deep breath of the brisk air, Alex ran his hands roughly through his hair. He was just managing to sort his thoughts when he felt a warm hand caress his back.
Lucia.
