Her mind went blank. She stood numb, helpless, silently panicking as Race introduced him. She barely took in a word, just stared, trying to think how to escape.
He bowed over her resistless hand, and said “Ah, they’re about to begin the waltz, Miss Benoît. Our dance, I believe.”
“Oh, but I say—” the pale young man began.
“Sorry, but Miss Benoît and I are old friends, and we arranged this earlier,” Reynard said firmly, ignoring the fact that they’d just been introduced in front of the paleyoung man. “Better luck next time.” He took her arm and turned her toward the dance floor.
“No,” Zoë said. “It’s…No, it’s a waltz.” She snatched the excuse out of thin air. “I can’t dance with you. I don’t have permission to dance the waltz.” She wrenched her arm out of his grasp.
“No, my dear,” a nearby matronly lady told her kindly. “This is a private family occasion. It’s only at Almack’s that a young lady needs to seek the permission of one of the patronesses in order to waltz. So go ahead, dance with your young man.” She beamed.
“Yes, dance with your young man,” Reynard said grimly, and led her on to the dance floor.
She glanced up at him as they prepared to take their positions, and the smug expression on his face turned her numb panic into anger. He thought he’d won, did he, manipulating her into this dance? What was he planning to do—expose her? Well two could play at that game.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“Looking for you, of course.”
“How could you? You had no idea who I was.”
“Obviously I did.”
“How?”
The orchestra played an opening chord, and he took one of her hands in his, and set the other lightly on her waist. They weren’t wearing gloves—it was an informal dance—and instantly she was taken back to that moment when they’d been traveling and a pothole had almost caused her to fall off the wagon. His arm had shot out around her waist and pulled her to safety. And had remained there for several minutes until she’d forced herself to move slightly away.
In that moment, all that time ago, she’d begun to fall under his spell.
Well, it wouldn’t happen again. Why hadn’t he asked her for a country dance where he wouldn’t loom over her so much and she wouldn’t have to be so aware of him, dammit?
She placed her other hand lightly on his shoulder, refusing to meet his gaze. But from the corner of her eye she observed the changes in him.
His hair was no longer shaggy and overlong, but was cut short in a stylish masculine crop. She told herself she preferred it long, but it wasn’t true. The new cut emphasized his fine bone structure, the sculpted planes of his cheekbones. They were dancing so close under the glittering chandeliers that she could see the fine-grained texture of his skin now that he’d taken to shaving off his habitual stubble. He was tanned, as few others in the room were. She’d lost her own tan through the dedicated application of a number of lotions.
He smelled wonderful—no, hiscolognedid.Hesmelled like a swindler and a cheat.
“So,” he murmured as they moved into the dance, “Vita from the Latin turns out to be Zoë from the Greek.”
“En français,” she flashed, refusing to meet his eyes, those blue, blue eyes, now so cold and hard, as if the Mediterranean had frozen. She didn’t want anyone overhearing their conversation. In French she continued, “At least it was my real name—or close to it. And what about the vagabond calling himself Reynard? Who does he turn out to be?” She added in a bored voice, “I wasn’t listening when my cousin’s husband introduced us.”
“Julian Fox, Earl of Foxton, at your service.” He tightened his grip on her waist, pulling her closer.
She stared up at him, almost forgetting to dance. “You’rean earl? That makes it even more despicable.” Suddenly becoming aware of how close his body was to hers, she pushed him back.
“What’s despicable?” he asked. As if he didn’t know, the rat.
She glared up at him, but the warmth of his hand on her waist and the way he clasped her other hand was very distracting. She tried not to let her body sway closer to him. Itwas surprisingly difficult. “The way you fleeced those poor peasants. I suppose you have gambling debts or something and try to justify it that way. Well, no matter the cause, I still think it’s quite despicable.”
“Yes, you made that clear in France. And as I said at the time, those ‘poor peasants’ had looted the paintings in the first place, and in any case, nobody forced them to make the trade. They were all quite happy with the replacements, which were paintings of them, not some stiff-faced aristos.”
“Only because they didn’t know the true value of the ones they traded.”
“Ah, but you did, didn’t you, my littlevoleur?”
“I am not a thief!” she flashed.
“So, one of my valuable paintings just happened to vanish mysteriously the very same day you disappeared?Incroyable.” He squeezed her waist as he swept her in a circle.
