Georgie lifted her brows. “You think they—”
“Failed to contain it?” Emmy chuckled. “Oh, come on,lookat them. Ofcoursethey did.”
“So, what went wrong?” Georgie asked. “They’re clearly at odds now. Do you think Seb got bored? Is that tiara his idea of a parting gift?”
Alex shook his head. “He hasn’t lost interest, believe me.” He sent Benedict an amused glance over Georgie’s head. “He’s been like a bear with a sore head all week. Whoever said ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ was way off the mark. In Seb’s case, absence makes the heart grow moody and irritable.”
“Poor Seb,” Emmy chided. “You could be a bit more sympathetic.”
Alex stifled a snort. “‘Poor Seb,’ my arse. He did nothing but take the piss out of the two of us when we fell in love with you two. He deserves everything he gets. It’s about time someone gave him a run for his money.” He caught Benedict’s eye again. “Do you remember what he said to me at Manton’s?”
“What?”
“He said he wanted to strangle her.’”
Emmy looked mystified. “Is that a good thing? It doesn’tsoundlike a good thing.”
Alex slid his arm around her waist and drew her into the cradle of his body. “Oh, it is, my little thief. It most definitely is.”
Georgie and Emmy shared a look.
“Men are incomprehensible,” Georgie declared.
“We think the same thing about you women.” Her husband chuckled. He glanced over at Alex and raised his brows. “The question is, of course, whether the stubborn idiot is going to do anything about it?”
Chapter 33.
Anya’s heart was beating painfully fast as she and Wolff swirled around the dance floor. His proximity was playing havoc with her composure. Even his slightest touch enflamed her. Part of her resented it. Whyhim? Why not someone less complicated, more suitable?
Still, she savored the sensation of being in his arms, even at such a frustratingly polite distance. The scent of him teased her nostrils, and her fingers tightened involuntarily on his shoulder. His muscles were reassuringly solid beneath the exquisitely cut coat.
The warmth radiating from him sent tremors of recognition through her, and a blush rose in her cheeks as she vividly recalled the feel of his body within her own—the heat and abandon, the exquisite combination of friction and glide. His strong body shuddering in ecstasy.
She wanted her gloves gone so she could feel the heat and the texture of his skin. She wanted to slide her hand up the slope of his neck, to thread her fingers through his hair and tug him down for a passionate kiss.
She wanted to lead him out of this stuffy, overcrowded ballroom and into somewhere dark. A room, the moonlit garden, anywhere private, to slake the thirst and hunger she had for him.
He caught her eye and gave her one of his lazy, intimate smiles, as if he guessed the direction of her thoughts. The strength of her own desire shocked her. It was something primitive, uncivilized. It came from somewhere deep within, a place where she was not a princess, but simply a woman.
She couldn’t believe he’d had her tiara remade. Did he appreciate the enormity of it? Did he understand what it meant to her to have her family’s history restored? In one fell swoop, he’d erased her past misdeed in destroying it and had given her a new symbol of hope to pass down to future generations.
She thought perhaps he did comprehend it. Then she reminded herself not to read too much into his gesture. He enjoyed beautiful things. Perhaps having the tiara reconstructed was no different from him demanding culinary excellence from Lagrasse or ordering the finest pair of dueling pistols from Manton.
The music came to an end on an uplifting series of chords, and she forced her hands down to her sides. She tried to think of something to say, but words completely deserted her. She, the queen of polite small talk, who’d spent years making effortless conversation with everyone from cardinals to courtesans, could think of nothing to say to this man who’d come to mean far too much to her.
She stepped back, instantly regretting the cool distance that swept between them. “I… Excuse me. I need some air.”
His dark bows lowered into a frown. “You can’t leave the house. Don’t even venture into the gardens. Not until we know where Petrov is.”
She nodded and slipped away through the crowd, employing his tactic of pretending not to hear those who hailed her. She needed a moment of quiet to process the jumbled feelings churning in her chest.
The tiara was giving her a headache. She gave a half-hysterical laugh at the irony. Wasn’t it one of Shakespeare’s kings who’d bemoaned, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”? The weight of her position was quite literally pressing down upon her.
She nodded to Mellors, who was guarding the corridor that led into the private wing of the house, and slipped into the unoccupied pink salon. The noise of the ball dulled as she closed the door behind her and sank into one of the pretty upholstered French armchairs.
She removed the tiara and placed it gently on a side table with a sigh. She’d drawn it from memory, so it wasn’t exactly the same, but it was still remarkably similar to the one she’d crushed in Paris a year ago. Back then, she’d mourned the future Denisov brides who wouldn’t be wearing it to wed, but Wolff had given her a chance to resurrect that family tradition.
Not that a wedding looked to be on the horizon forherany time soon.
