A Dangerous Man (3 page)

It concerned him he had been so gauche as to have been caught staring. If even Richard had noted his interest, he must have been near goggle eyed.

“Well?” Richard prompted.

“I don’t know who she is,” he answered in a tight voice.

“You don’t?” Richard asked.

“No,” Hart clipped out. “I know it was mannerless of me to … watch her so intently”—he refused to say
stare
—“but I do not claim the acquaintance of every woman I chance to spend a few seconds regarding.”

Richard waved away his words. “No. No. It’s not because you were staring that I thought you
knew her. She’s as pretty as a newborn filly. Lord, I’d stare at her myself if I weren’t so devoted to Fanny.”

Somehow, Hart thought, he must convince Fanny to break Richard of his bucolic cant.

“—It’s because she’s been asking after you ever since she arrived this morning.”

“What?”

Richard nodded vigorously. “It’s true. Heard her asking the Dowager Duchess myself. ‘Has Lord Perth arrived?’ she asked, clear as spring water. Fanny said she’d heard her ask another lady, too, and a gentleman.”

“Who is she?”

Richard did not trouble masking his exasperation. “I don’t know. That’s why
I
asked
you.”

Hart frowned. “Well, since the lady is so eager to make my acquaintance, I mustn’t keep her waiting.”

“Too late, old boy.” Richard clapped him on the shoulder. “She’s just left. Ah, well, you’ll see her soon enough. She’s probably some nabob’s daughter or the wife of one of your old calvary chappies.”

Wife
. She didn’t look like a wife. For some reason that thought was even more disagreeable than the notion of having a woman he had never met asking about him.

“Might as well enjoy the mystery while it lasts,” Richard continued, blithely disregarding Hart’s scowl.

“I,” said Hart tightly, “do not like mysteries.”

Chapter 2

“S
he’s an American,” Richard said triumphantly, returning to Hart’s side after a short trip around the room.

The evening festivities had begun. Hart had come down from his guest room a quarter of an hour earlier, the thought of the unknown woman having driven him here earlier than he would have normally arrived.

He did not pretend to misunderstand Richard. “Well, that explains her demeanor,” he said.

“How so?”

Hart shrugged. “American women: undisciplined, impulsive, intractable.”

Richard’s homely mien took on a pensive, troubled expression. “I don’t think she has given any cause to support such an estimation—”

“What is her name?” Hart broke in. He’d had experience with American women. Richard, kind-hearted as he undoubtedly was, had not.

“I don’t know. The few people I know well enough to ask are as in the dark as we. Can’t ask a stranger about a stranger, now, can I? Would seem forward. If Annabelle’s to be a duchess I’d best start behaving properly.”

“What did you find out?”

“She was apparently added to the guest list at the last minute at the Dowager Duchess’s behest. It’s all the thing, you know. Adopting American gels and chaperoning them about society. Quite the rage.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Anyway, the thing is that none of the chappies I know have been presented to her yet. They’re all anticipating that privilege. Fetching little piece.”

“I see,” Hart said, forcing the American girl from his thoughts. “Is Fanny not coming down?”

Richard colored. “She can’t. This heir-producing thing has her most indisposed. Most. Poor little thing.”

Hart studied Richard carefully to see if he was attempting a jest at his sister’s expense. Fanny, though handsome and dear, was in no way “little.” She was tall and buxom and round. “I’m sure she’ll survive,” Hart said.

“Oh, doubtless, doubtless. Just wish she needn’t be so wretched doing so. Poor old Fan,” Richard answered miserably. “I say, here’s your mystery woman now.”

Hart looked up. A few feet away “his” woman paused at the threshold of the room.

Dark red. Her hair was deep, dark red. The
color of an autumn deer’s coat, rich and vibrant and sleek. The sumptuous pine-green dress she wore acted as a foil for it. Her locks spilled over the soft velvet like rare strands of gleaming garnet laid out for display.

She turned and her gaze found his. They might as well have been alone. Leaf-green and gold, he thought, her eyes sparkled like a sun-dappled woodland pond. Shifting pale amber lights bedded between dark, mahogany-colored lashes; curling lashes, long lashes. So thick that from a distance they had made her eyes look dark.

She paused and lifted her chin above the glistening silk net shawl draped around her shoulders. It was a trifling movement, but it made the slender column of her throat look longer. It made a man want to measure its length with his hands.

“As the Dowager Duchess is acting as her chaperone, and she has yet to arrive,” Richard whispered, “I’m afraid we’ll simply have to wait before an introduction can be made.”

Hart would have thought he’d be adept at waiting by now. For years he had schooled himself in patience, never jumping the gun, always awaiting the most opportune moments to act. But now he didn’t want to wait for the Dowager Duchess. The woman was flirting with him, her gaze drifting deliberately over him, a languid perusal followed by a question in the form of a dark, arched brow.

“Damnation,” he muttered. “Someone
must
know the chit’s name.”

“True. But I’ve never seen her before. Acton
and I hardly travel in the same set, you know. Maybe Beryl knows.”

“And where the deuce
are
Beryl and Annabelle?”

“Delayed,” Richard said. “Meant to tell you. Had a note waiting for me in the room. They’ll be arriving tomorrow.”

No Fanny, no Beryl, no Annabelle. He might as well go back upstairs himself and save himself the interminable evening of scrutiny and speculation his brief appearances in English society always provoked.

But then, he wouldn’t be able to solve the enigma of the American woman.

With that odd, liquid swiftness, she moved past him, walking toward the library. There she stopped, turning and looking him directly in the eye. She lifted a hand, brushing it forward along the edge of her shawl in a open invitation for him to join her. Alone.

She glanced about, a circumspect and rapid survey of the room. Satisfied that no one was watching, she pinned him with one more compelling glance and slipped into the darkened library, closing the door behind her.

Hart’s eyes narrowed. Occasionally women, challenged by their fool notion of him as some sort of cold-blooded eunuch, tested his purported impassiveness. He appreciated the irony. Right now, his body was reacting as aggressively as that of a buck in rut. He was amazed by the force of his longing. It had been years since the talons of sexual
desire had pierced his control over his thoughts and body.

“Think I’ll go get a plate of something to take to Fan,” Richard was saying. His tone was innocent. “A custard or some toast and tea. You’ll excuse me?” He didn’t wait for an answer, leaving Hart studying the library door.

He lasted less than a minute before he went to her.

He told himself he was going to discover how she knew him. But it was more than that. There was something about her boldness that quickened his pulse. Some elemental attraction, an imbalance of humors or blood, that must be accountable for the sudden awakening of his benumbed body. If he found her eager for a tryst, maybe this time he would let down his guard and oblige.

After all, she was obviously an American adventuress. She could do no real harm to his reputation or, more important, his sisters’ expectations. A quick tumble—which she was highly unlikely to report—and back she went to New York, or Boston, or San Francisco, or wherever the hell she came from, and he would have assuaged this unaccustomed urgency in his loins.

He opened the door and, once inside, closed it behind him. He didn’t want any distractions. He was distracted enough.

She was standing beside the window. The gaslight from the wall sconces picked out sepia highlights in her hair, burnishing the satiny smooth curve of her cheek. She straightened as he approached pulling,
her shawl closer about her as though cold. Her green-gold eyes held his.

“You know me?” he asked.

“Yes.” Definitely American. A husky, low-pitched voice. Her lips, plum-stained and plush, trembled. Was she trembling with eagerness—or was she afraid? Abruptly, he stopped, disappointed and suddenly weary. It was just another game. This was no true desire, no honest attraction. He was just a challenge she’d set herself.

“You want something from me.”

“Yes.”

“What?” He would make her say it.

She swallowed, took a deep breath. Her hands, clutched in the netting at her throat, looked white. “Your … cooperation.”

He closed his eyes. She sounded anxious, not passionate.

“Why?”

“Your reputation, I want—”

Well, there was honesty
. “No,” he said in a low voice.
“You
do not
want
. You do not know the first thing about want.”

Her creamy complexion paled even further. Despair touched him with pity. She had not done anything a dozen other women in a half dozen past years hadn’t. It was not her fault she had aroused him where those others hadn’t.

“Leave,” he said softly. He didn’t want to hear her, didn’t want to see her trying to wrap herself against his legendary coldness with her pitiable shawl. “Leave now. Tell yourself it wasn’t worth
the price. Tell yourself I was as coldblooded as a serpent. Tell yourself anything you like. Mark it all down to experience.”

“I don’t understand.”

She frowned. The scowl did not cause the faintest line to traverse her smooth forehead. Perfection.

“Just leave,” he said, his frustration growing in measure with each moment of unslaked desire. “Please.”

“I won’t go. Not yet. Not until—”

He was on her in a second, moving so swiftly and silently that she gasped. She raised her hands to ward him off and he took hold of her wrists, jerking her face within inches of his.

He cursed, revolted by his impulsive brutality. He’d never used physical force to dominate someone as weak as she. It sickened and angered him. And it made him angrier still that she didn’t seem to realize how trifling her strength was, how effortlessly he could snap one of the delicate wrists his hands encircled, could
take
what she’d so carelessly offered.

“Until what?” he asked in a purposely deadened voice. “Until you get a little thrill?”

“No!” she said, twisting. He couldn’t let her go. Not yet. This close, he could see a pale white scar high on a silk-textured cheek, feel each agitated breath fan his mouth. He stood, impaled by want, denying himself for no other reason than some misspent notion of honesty.

He’d thought—God help him—he’d thought
she wanted
him
. For some damnable reason it hurt that she hadn’t.

“Until what, then?” he demanded, giving her a little shake.

Anger flashed in her eyes. She bared her teeth and with a feral little growl wrenched around, twisting free of his grasp. Her shawl caught in his signet ring and was jerked off her shoulders. In the sudden silence the shimmering net drifted down between them, the lost plumage of an arrow-struck bird. He stared at her.

A few inches above her low décolletage, beneath the jointure of arm and shoulder, a circular pucker of old scar tissue the size of a pence marked her pale skin.

He heard her voice, as if from a long distance. “Not
until
you have heard what I have to say—
Duke.”

Chapter 3

“M
ercy Coltrane.”

“You remember my name,” Mercy said, surprised. His mouth, a sensualist’s mouth that had been refused its natural expression, nearly curved. Nearly. But then the curve flattened and his remote, impassive expression returned.

“Well, I haven’t shot all that many young girls,” he said. His voice was the same as she remembered: a deep, even tenor crafted with an elegant aristocratic accent.