He heard Clara Farquhar leave. He thought he also heard her laugh as she passed the drawing room door, too, but he didn’t call out and stop her. Nigel Farquhar had warned him she was in high spirits over dressing his wife, and Max knew enough about Clara’s high spirits to be wary.
In the distance, the bell tolled seven. They were to meet the rest of the party in the supper box Dalway had reserved. It was most fashionable to go by yacht, but given the nature of the evening, Max had chosen to take the carriage most of the way. They would take a launch from Westminster to cross the river.
“I’m ready to go,” said Bianca behind him. “What do you think?”
Max looked up—and almost pitched forward onto his face in amazement.
She wore a dress from the time of the Tudors, hanging in heavy folds of gleaming black brocade over a brilliant scarlet petticoat, visible in front. Her waist was impossibly narrow, girdled by a golden chain, and her breasts were barely contained by the rigid bodice. Ropes of pearls hung in crescents down her front, glowing amidst the gold lace that framed her bosom and face.
Dimly he remembered seeing Louisa Carswell in that dress a few years ago. She’d worn a wide red ribbon around her neck and told everyone she was Anne Boleyn, with her head restored for one night. He suspected she’d been just as faithful that night as the ill-fated queen, but Harry Carswell hardly cared. Max had seen him disappearing into the gardens beyond the grove with two young women clad in very little. Prostitutes, he suspected. The Carswells had always been like that.
But Bianca didn’t look like a licentious queen; she looked like a goddess of the night, come to torment him to madness.
At his silence she came a step closer, and took a deep breath. Max’s gaze veered involuntarily to the plump swells of her breasts above the black satin. “Clara said it would be very striking, but I was astonished by how much so,” she said with an awkward little laugh.
His brain was fixated on her breasts. He was sure if she inhaled like that again, her rosy nipples would pop out of the tight bodice. Louisa was slimmer than she, and it showed in the dress. He could barely breathe, watching, waiting, hoping...
Max wrenched his gaze away from her bosom, back to her face. There was the sensible Bianca he knew, his wife, and she was looking at him expectantly—and warily. “I’ve been struck dumb by how beautiful you look,” he said truthfully.
“Truly?” Her eyes lit up. She placed her palms on her stomach, unconsciously displaying her compressed figure. “I had doubts...”
Max’s doubts centered on whether he would survive this evening. “Are you not comfortable?”
“Well,” she confided, “it is laced rather tightly.”
And like that he pictured undoing those laces, hearing her sigh in his arms, feeling her smooth, warm skin under his hands. He mustered a smile, hoping it didn’t look as strained as it felt on his face. “I shall carry a knife,” he said, “in case you need to be freed.”
Idiot.Now he’d think about shredding that dress off her all night long.
He cleared his throat. “Shall we go?”
A smile, uncertain but growing stronger, bloomed on her lips. “Yes.”
They took the carriage across town to Westminster stairs. Bianca kept peering out the window, remarking on various landmarks they passed. Max had to smile. At the landing, he handed her down and made arrangements with the coachman for the return.
“Why did we not go with Serafina and the others by boat?” she asked as Max helped her down to the wherry.
To avoid being marooned at Vauxhall until the early hours of the morning.“I shall have to spend the entire evening in Dalway’s company, and you want to subject me to a boat ride with him as well?” He shook his head with a softtskand settled onto the seat beside her. The boatman pushed away from the dock, setting the lantern on the hook above his head swaying. “Unkind, Your Highness.”
Bianca started. “Highness?”
Curse it. Of course Clara and Serafina wouldn’t have told her she was Anne Boleyn, scheming wife of a faithless husband and dispatched to the block for treason and infidelity. “Are you not a young Queen Elizabeth?” Max asked lightly, thinking quickly.
“Oh.” She seemed pleased by the thought. “And what are you?”
Max raised her hand to his lips for a kiss. “A lowly courtier, Highness.”
She laughed. “Truly? Why did you not dress as something adventurous?”
“Lack of imagination, I suppose,” lied Max. “No one shall notice me in any event, once they set eyes upon you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She gave him one of her frank, appraising looks. It was not the first time; Max had always met her gaze boldly, quietly, unflinchingly, letting her look her fill. He thought she liked what she saw, even if she never betrayed it by even a flicker of her lashes. Let her stare at his legs or wipe a drop of coffee from his chin. Every fraction of an inch was that much closer to his goal of winning her over.
Tonight, though... he could feel the flames of desire licking at him as her gray eyes moved over him. Tonight he didn’t feel like the relentlessly focused, patient man he’d become, but more like the reckless, scandalous rake he’d been...
“You don’t look like a lowly person of any kind,” she said in a low voice. “You look dangerous and wicked—and not easily denied.”
She saw him too well, apparently. “Nothing of the sort,” Max tried to say, when he could speak. They had reached the Vauxhall stairs, and the boatman’s efforts tying up the craft bought him a moment to recover from the thunderbolt of shock her words had caused.
