Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [40]
"It must be held up with wires," he said. "Otherwise, your dressmaker has discovered a method of defying the laws of gravity."
"It is lined with a stiffening material and bones, like a corset," she said calmly. "It is horridly uncomfortable, but it is the height of fashion, and I dared not risk your displeasure by appearing a dowd."
"Ah, you were confident I'd come," he said. "Because you are irresistible."
"I hope I'm not so suicidal as to wish to be irresistible to you." She fanned herself. "The simple fact is that there seems to be a farce in progress, of which we are the principals. I am prepared to take reasonable measures to help put an end to it. You set the tongues wagging with the scene in the coffee shop, but I will admit that I provided provocation," she added quickly, before he could retort. "I will also admit that the gossip might have died down if I hadn't burst into your house and annoyed you." Her color rose. "As to what happened afterward, no one saw, apparently, which makes it irrelevant to the problem at hand."
He noted that she was gripping her fan tightly and that her bosom was rising and falling with a rapidity indicative of agitation.
He smiled. "You did not behave, at the time, as though it were irrelevant. On the contrary— "
"Dain, I kissed you," she said evenly. "I see no reason to make an issue of it. It was not the first time you've ever been kissed and it won't be the last."
"Good heavens, Miss Trent, you are not threatening to do it again?" He widened his eyes in mock horror.
She let out a sigh. "I knew it was too much to hope you would be reasonable."
"What a woman means by a 'reasonable' man is one she can manage," he said. "You are correct, Miss Trent. It is too much to hope. I hear someone sawing at a violin. A waltz, or an approximation thereof, appears to be in the offing."
"So it does," she said tightly.
"Then we shall dance," he said.
"No, we shan't," she said. "I had saved two dances because…Well, it doesn't matter. I already have a partner for this one."
"Certainly. Me."
She held up her fan in front of his face, to display the masculine scribbling upon the sticks. "Look carefully," she said. "Do you see 'Beelze-bub' written there?"
"I'm not shortsighted," he said, extracting the fan from her tense fingers. "You needn't hold it so close. Ah, yes, is this the one?" He pointed to a stick. "Rouvier?"
"Yes," she said, looking past him. "Here he comes."
Dain turned. A Frenchman was warily approaching, his countenance pale. Dain fanned himself. The man paused. Smiling, Dain pressed thumb and forefinger to the stick with "Rouvier" written on it. It snapped.
Rouvier went away.
Dain turned back to Miss Trent and, still smiling, broke each stick, one by one. Then he thrust the demolished fan into the fern pot.
He held out his hand. "My dance, I believe."
* * *
It was a primitive display, Jessica told herself. On the scale of social development it was about one notch above hitting her over the head with a club and dragging her away by her hair.
Only Dain could get away with it, just as only he could clear the field of rivals simply by telling them, without the smallest self-consciousness or subtlety, to go away.
And only she, besotted lunatic that she was, would find it all dizzyingly romantic.
She took his hand.
They both wore gloves. She felt it all the same: a thrill of contact sharp as an electrical shock. It darted through her limbs and turned her knees into jelly. Looking up, she saw the startled expression in his eyes and wondered, as his knowing smile faded, whether he felt it, too.
But if he did, it caused him no hesitation, for he boldly grasped her waist and, on the next upbeat, whirled her out.
With a gasp, she caught hold of his shoulder.
Then the world swung away, out of focus, out of existence, as he swept her into a waltz unlike anything she'd ever experienced before.
His wasn't the sedate English mode of waltzing, but a surging, blatantly