Then Comes Seduction

6

KATHERINE had come to the ball with her brother and eldest sister despite considerable misgivings. What if he should be there too? She had no wish whatsoever to see him ever again. But such an attitude was cowardly, she had decided. Was fear to keep her cowering at home? After three years? She could not remain at home throughout her stay in London or avoid the capital for the rest of her life. It would be ridiculous.

Besides, even remaining at home had not protected her from encountering him, had it? He had invaded her home-or Stephen’s, to be more accurate. He had been standing in the library as if he had had every right to be there. As he had, of course-Stephen had invited him.

And besides again, she wanted to attend the ball. Though she did not come to London often and did not crave all the myriad entertainments a Season had to offer, she did enjoy a taste of them now and then.

So she had come tonight, telling herself that it was not the type of event that would attract Lord Montford. And sure enough, when she arrived with Meg and Stephen, he had been nowhere in sight.

But then, just when she had felt assured of his absence, Stephen had mentioned that he was in the card room and that he hoped to entice him out of there long enough to present him to Meg, who had not yet met him. He was a particular friend of Constantine’s and therefore of Stephen’s.

It had all been very provoking. For how could she have protested and begged Stephen to leave him in the card room where he belonged? He would have wanted to know why. So would Meg.

She had been rather proud of her behavior when Lord Montford had eventually arrived with Stephen. She had remained aloof and slightly frosty without doing or saying anything that might catch her brother and sister’s attention. Meg had been unable to accept his offer to waltz with her since she was to dance the set with Lord Allingham, Stephen had gone off to find Miss Acton, Katherine had expected Mr. Yardley to appear any moment to claim his set, and the ordeal was all but over.

She had acquitted herself well.

Why, then, was she now standing on the dance floor facing Lord Montford, about to waltz with him?

It all defied rational explanation.

She found herself enveloped in a scent so startlingly familiar that she almost expected to see Vauxhall Gardens spread about her instead of the Parmeter ballroom. It was something expensive and musky and utterly masculine-his shaving soap or his cologne. It was a smell that evoked memories of temptation and unbridled passion and humiliation, none of which powerful emotions she had experienced with such intensity either before that night in Vauxhall or since.

And none of which she had the slightest wish to experience ever again.

Lord Montford was just as handsome as she remembered him, with his tall, slim, elegant figure, his dark hair and arrogant eyebrow and lazy eyelids shading keen, mocking, intelligent eyes. Just as handsome, and just as attractive. And just as dangerous-if she were any longer susceptible to that sort of danger.

Which she was not.

The waltz was about to begin. The musicians had readied their instruments, and a slight hush had fallen on the dancers, who were taking their positions.

Lord Montford’s right arm circled her waist, and his hand came to rest against the small of her back. It felt as if it were burning a hole through the satin of her gown. His other hand took hers in a firm, warm clasp. She tried to keep her fingers from touching his hand, but inevitably they curled inward to rest against the back of it. His shoulder beneath her other hand was all solid muscle-as she remembered its being the last time she touched it.

She felt half suffocated with the physicality of it all.

She had never really enjoyed waltzing. She had always found it a little disconcerting to be in close proximity to one gentleman for all of half an hour, and a little tedious to have to make polite conversation exclusively with him. Of course, she had always guessed that with the right partner the whole experience could be gloriously romantic.

Lord Montford was definitely not the right partner.

She glared at him, as if he had just verbally claimed that he was.

“I suppose,” she said, “your intention is to lead Stephen astray while he is still young and foolish?”

Both his eyebrows arched upward.

“And make a degenerate rake of him?” he said. “But of course. Why else would I have befriended him? It could not possibly be because he is the cousin of one of my closest friends, could it? And is Merton foolish as well as being young? That does not say much for the upbringing your eldest sister has provided for him.”

She had walked into that trap with wide open eyes.

“I ought to have chosen my words with more care,” she said crossly. “I ought to have used the word impressionable rather than foolish.”

“But is there any real difference?” he asked her. “Is not an impressionable man a foolish man? A weak man? Can I possibly corrupt your brother if he is determined to be incorruptible?”

“I do not know,” she said. “Can you?”

He could easily have corrupted her.

It seemed that not a muscle in his face moved. But his eyes smiled suddenly and wickedly from beneath his heavy eyelids, a change that had an immediate and quite unwelcome effect upon her knees.

“But why would I wish to?” he asked. “Have you made me into the devil incarnate in your imagination, Miss Huxtable?”

“Is it imagination?” she asked him.

He chuckled softly. “But you have already admitted to having found a modicum of decency in me,” he said. “The devil is surely incapable of anything remotely good. It is a contradiction in terms.”

She was saved from having to frame a suitable reply when the music began at last and they started to waltz.

Ah.

And ah again.

Her mind was incapable of any coherent thought for the next few minutes.

She had not expected him to be graceful, to move as if he had been formed specifically to waltz. Though she might have guessed it if she had ever paused to think about it. Such a man would always see to it that he did everything to perfection-riding, fighting, dancing, dicing, making lo-

There! She was thinking, after all.

But only deep down, where unconscious thoughts dwelled. The rest of her became the music and the rhythm and the swirling colors of gowns and candles and the sound of voices and laughter and the smell of a masculine cologne and the smile of lazy dark eyes.

And she had been perfectly right. The waltz was gloriously romantic when danced with the right m-

Thought was intruding again.

And with it came the rather horrifying suspicion that for several enchanted minutes she had not removed her eyes from his. And that her lips were curved upward into a smile. And that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shining.

And that for several minutes she had been enjoying herself quite mindlessly and quite totally-enjoying waltzing and enjoying the company of a man who danced and twirled her about the ballroom just as if there were no floor beneath their feet.

A dangerous man.

Lord Montford, no less.

And she no better than the green girl she had been three years ago.

She let her smile fade and lowered her eyes. How could she possibly have been enjoying his company? What was she thinking?

She remembered him telling her quite bluntly and insolently and dispassionately about that ghastly wager.

And she wondered again, as she had a thousand or more times since that evening, why he had not completed what he had started and claimed whatever prize there was to claim. She had never wanted to believe-she still did not-that there might be some decency in him, that perhaps he was a man with some conscience. She preferred to believe the explanation he had given at the time-that she had been too easy a prey to be of any real interest to him. Would that have mattered, though, when there was a wager at stake?

“You still hate me,” he said softly.

His voice sounded abject-suspiciously so. There was also surely the suggestion of humor in it. She amused him.

“Are you surprised?” She raised her eyes to his again.

“Not at all,” he said. “You informed me on a certain infamous occasion that I had disappointed you. How can one not hate the person who disappoints one in such a way?”

He was definitely laughing at her. But her effort to think of some suitably cutting retort was thwarted when he twirled her about one corner of the ballroom, using fancy footwork that somehow persuaded her own feet to match it. She laughed with delight before she remembered that she was not delighted at all.

“I could teach you not to hate me, you know,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows.

“Would that not be doing you a favor?” he asked.

“On the assumption,” she said, “that if I did not hate you, I would be indifferent to you and would not glare at you every time we met? That would be convenient to you, no doubt.”

“Indifferent to me?” He drew her to a halt for one of the brief pauses between waltz tunes but did not release his hold on her. “Miss Huxtable, I doubt even I have the power to make you indifferent to me.”

Her stomach was performing a somersault again. She could not seem to look away from those lazy eyes.

“I suppose not,” she said with a sigh. “Dislike is not indifference, is it?”

He smiled openly and chuckled aloud.

“I could teach you not to hate me or dislike me,” he said, speaking very low since the music had not yet started again. His eyes dipped to her mouth. “I could teach you to love me if I chose, Miss Huxtable.”

She was startled almost speechless.

“Ha!” was all she could manage to say. It was half exclamation, half question.

“Was that agreement?” The music had begun again, a somewhat faster tune this time. He twirled her several times before she could answer. “You admit, then, that I could do it?”

“Never in a million years,” she said when she could command her voice. It shook with indignation. “Never in a billion years.”

“Would it take a billion and one, then?” he asked her. “How very tedious! And how very firm-minded of you. But I believe you underestimate me, Miss Huxtable.”

“And you underestimate me!” she retorted so vehemently that the couple dancing by them both turned their heads to look. “You are about as likely to persuade me to love you, Lord Montford, as I am to persuade you to love me.”

He did not answer. Which was horrible, really, as her words seemed to hang between them and follow them about the dance floor as they waltzed in silence to an exhilarating rhythm, and the growing heat between them made her more and more aware of him physically and more and more uncomfortable.

She quite understood why the waltz was considered fast among a large segment of society. Fast as in not quite proper, that was. It was quite the most improper dance ever invented. It was… it was nothing short of lascivious.

Their hands, clasped together, had turned hot and damp.

The faster tune did not last long. Soon, almost without a pause, the orchestra began playing something far slower and more… romantic.

Still they danced without speaking-until eventually he broke the silence between them.

“It does seem like an impossibility when phrased that way,” he said just as if five minutes or so had not elapsed between her words and his answer. “I have never been in love, Miss Huxtable, and I never expect to be. Lust is far more amusing and satisfying. My falling in love is an absolute impossibility, I am afraid.”

“As it is for me,” she retorted hotly. “An utter, complete impossibility.”

“It is so mutually impossible, in fact,” he said, “that it sounds quite perfect for a wager, does it not?”

“A wager?” She looked at him with a frown.

“Oh, I know,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “A refined lady does not lay bets. And anyone who wagers against me, male or female, inevitably regrets it anyway. I never lose, you see.”

“Except once,” she said tartly.

He raised his right eyebrow. It half disappeared beneath that errant lock of hair.

“Except once,” he agreed. “How obliging of you to remind me, Miss Huxtable. Though we both know, do we not, that I forfeited rather than lost that particular one.”

“What wager exactly are we talking about now?” she asked him after a short pause.

Was it her imagination, or were they dancing somewhat closer together than they had been a little while ago? She tried to edge backward, but his hand was as firm as a wall against her waist.

“A sort of double wager, I suppose it would have to be,” he said. “An interesting prospect. That I can make you fall in love with me for my part, that you can make me fall in love with you on yours.”

“Ha!” she said again. “There is no way on this earth that you would win your part of the wager even if you were given a thousand years. Or a billion.”

“And no way in this universe that you would win yours,” he said pleasantly. “It is a wager made in heaven, Miss Huxtable, I do assure you. The only wagers worth taking on are the ones impossible to win, you see. All others offer no worthy challenge at all.”

“As I did not in Vauxhall?” she said, and could have bitten out her tongue.

His eyes grew very lazy indeed, though a smile lingered in them.

“I told a shocking fib on that occasion,” he said. “That was not the reason I stopped, Miss Huxtable, and ignominiously lost my wager.”

“Oh?” she said. “What was?”

“Perhaps,” he said, and his eyes mocked her again, “I was afraid I might fall in love with you.”

“Ha,” she said for the third time though it was a word-or a syllable-not normally in her vocabulary. Her stomach was into its tumbling act again.

“I could not take the risk, you see,” he said, and grinned again.

“What nonsense you speak,” she said crossly. “You just claimed never to have been in love and to be quite incapable of loving.”

“Perhaps,” he said, moving his head a little closer to hers as they turned about a corner of the room again and for a fleeting moment Katherine saw Margaret smiling up at the Marquess of Allingham, “I have been in danger once in my life, Miss Huxtable, just as I have lost a wager once. Perhaps you found a chink in my armor that evening and can now find a way through it to my heart.”

She stared at him.

“If I have one,” he added. “I must warn you that I do not believe I have. But you may find yourself challenged by such a disclaimer.”

“Nonsense!” she said again.

“You will not know,” he said, “unless you try.”

“But why would I want to?” she asked him. “What does it matter to me whether you have a heart or not? Or whether you are capable of love or not? Why would I wish to win such a ridiculous wager? Why would I want you in love with me?”

“Because,” he said, “by the time you admit that you do want such a thing, Miss Huxtable, you will be in love with me. It will be of the utmost importance to you to know that your love is not unrequited.”

He had the most wickedly sinful eyes. They could smile even when no other part of his face was doing so. They could even laugh. They could mock. And they could penetrate all her defenses until she would swear they could see into her mind and even deeper than that.

“If we both succeed,” he said, “we can then proceed to live happily ever after. Reformed rakes are said to be the most constant of husbands, you know. And the most skilled and excellent lovers.”

“Oooh!” She drew back her head and glared indignantly at him. “You are trying to seduce me even now.”

He winced theatrically.

“I would really rather you did not use that particular word, Miss Huxtable,” he said. “I tried it with you once, and you vanquished me.”

“I did not!” she retorted, and blushed to the roots of her hair when she realized what admission she had been drawn into.

“Ah,” he said, both eyebrows raised, “but you did. I did not proceed to the main feast on that occasion and thus have remained forever famished. We are straying from the point, however. Do we have a wager?”

However had she been drawn into such a conversation-with Lord Montford of all people? But then no other man could possibly talk thus.

“Of course we do not,” she said scornfully.

“You are afraid, Miss Huxtable,” he said. “Afraid that I will win, that you will not. And that you will go into a permanent decline and die of a broken heart, your family weeping inconsolably about your bedside.”

She glared at him-and then laughed despite herself at the ridiculous mental image he had conjured.

“That,” she said, “is something you really must not flatter yourself into dreaming of, Lord Montford. You would be doomed to certain disappointment. I would not waste such an affecting deathbed scene on you.”

He laughed too.

“And what if I were to agree to such a preposterous suggestion?” she asked him. “And what if I won my wager? You would never admit to being in love with me, would you?”

His eyebrows shot up. He looked astonished-and affronted.

“You are suggesting that I could ever be a liar, Miss Huxtable?” he asked her. “That I am not an honorable gentleman? But even if I did lie, you would soon know the truth. You would be able to watch me sink into a deep depression and become a mere shadow of my former self. I would sigh constantly and piteously and write bad poetry and forget to change my linen.”

She could not stop herself from laughing again at the mental picture of Lord Montford in love.

“I would be perfectly honest and admit defeat in the unlikely event that it were true,” he said. “Are we speaking hypothetically, though? Are you still determined to be craven and to refuse to engage in the wager?”

“Lord Montford,” she said as they twirled again and the light from the candles in the wall sconces became one swirling band of brightness, “let me make myself clear. Despite my agreeing to waltz with you this evening and to engage in this quite improper and absurd conversation with you, I am not the green girl I was three years ago. Although I will be polite to you whenever I encounter you for the rest of the Season, and indeed for the rest of my life, I really have no wish either to see you or to converse with you again. Ever.”

“Do I understand,” he said after a short pause, “that that was a no?”

She looked at him, exasperated. Why was she finding him ever so slightly likable? Why was she finding his company more stimulating than that of any of the worthy gentlemen she knew?

“It was a no,” she said.

“You are a coward,” he told her. “I shall be forced to engage in a unilateral wager, then-that I can bring you to love me… ah, let me see, before the summer is out. Before the first yellow leaf flutters to the ground.”

Her nostrils flared.

“If I should hear,” she said, “that there is another bet concerning me in any of the infamous gentlemen’s betting books-”

“Ah, no,” he said, smiling with sudden warm charm. “This will be a private wager between you and me, Miss Huxtable. No, pardon me-between me and me since you are unsporting enough to refuse to participate.”

“I see,” she said testily. “I am to be harassed, then, am I? For your private amusement? You must be very bored indeed, Lord Montford.”

“Harassed?” He raised one eyebrow. “I would call it being wooed, Miss Huxtable.”

“And left with a broken heart if you succeed,” she said. “Which you will not, I am happy to say.”

“But I might be left equally brokenhearted,” he told her, moving his head slightly closer to hers as the waltz tune appeared to be coming to an end. “The other half of the wager is that you will cause me to fall in love with you.”

She clucked her tongue.

“I would not waste my time even trying,” she said. “Not even if I wanted you in love with me. Which I do not. In fact, it is the very last thing I want.”

They had stopped dancing. So had everyone else. The dance floor was slowly clearing.

“But just imagine how it would be, Miss Huxtable,” he said, his voice low, eyelids drooped over his eyes, those eyes fixed keenly on hers, “if we were both to win. We could have a grand wedding at St. George’s in Hanover Square with every member of the ton in attendance and then proceed to a lifetime of sleepless nights, making babies and passionate love, not necessarily in that order.”

Her nostrils flared again at the same moment as her knees threatened to disintegrate under her. Oh, how dared he?

“And how do you know you will not win my wager?” he asked her. “Many ladies have tried to woo me-or rather my position and wealth-and have failed. Per haps not trying will have better success.”

“If you choose to amuse yourself with such foolish delusions, Lord Montford,” she said, turning away from him, “I cannot stop you. Nor do I have any interest in doing so.”

“Ah, cruel heart,” he said, taking her hand and setting it on his sleeve to lead her across the floor in the direction of Meg and Stephen. “Mine is already in danger of shattering into a million pieces.”

She turned her head to look up at him and found him smiling down at her just as if they were engaged in the most trivial of social conversations.

Gracious heaven, had she really just been having such a conversation with Baron Montford ? After all these years of demonizing him in her mind, had she just been almost enjoying matching wits with him?

He was going to lay siege to her heart-merely for the pleasure of doing what she had told him was quite impossible.

It was impossible.

As impossible as it would be to capture his.

Ooh, if only it could be done. If only she could make him love her and then spurn him, laugh in his face…

“Was not that a lovely waltz?” Meg said as they came up to her. “You dance it very well, Lord Montford. So does Lord Allingham.”

“It is possibly,” Lord Montford said, “the most romantic dance the world has ever known, ma’am, especially when a man is privileged to dance it with one of the two loveliest ladies at the ball. Allingham danced with one, I with the other.”

He spoke with warm charm and not a trace of mockery, but with enough humor not to sound ridiculously fawning. Katherine looked up at him reproachfully, and he took her hand from his sleeve with his free hand, bowed over it, and carried it briefly to his lips.

Sensation licked up her arm, down into her breasts, and on down to pool between her thighs. Well, she had never tried to deny to herself that he was impossibly attractive, had she? That did not make him lovable.

“Merton,” he said to Stephen, who was grinning from one to the other of them with open good humor, “would you care for a hand of cards in the card room? But no, of course you would not. There are too many young ladies demanding your attention here. Stroll that way with me anyway.”

He released Katherine’s hand and did not look at her again as he walked off with Stephen.

“Oh, Kate,” Margaret said as soon as they were out of earshot, “what a very charming gentleman Lord Montford is. And exceedingly handsome. I do not believe he took his eyes off you even once while you danced.”

“I have it on the most reliable authority,” Katherine said, “from Constantine, in fact, that he is a shocking libertine, Meg. And is the Marquess of Allingham still devoted to you? How many times have you refused his hand?”

“Oh, only once,” Margaret protested. “And that was three years ago. He does not seem to hold any grudge against me, though. He is a very amiable gentleman.”

“Only amiable?” Katherine pulled a face.

They smiled rather ruefully at each other before having their attention taken by the arrival of their partners for the upcoming set of country dances.