no good way for a man to answer the question?’ He lifted his eyebrows and pierced her with a direct look. ‘This afternoon was a most pleasant revelation. I’ve discovered I can speak French and you, Claire Welton, are a wild soul indeed. Only one question remains: where shall we go tomorrow?’ That was a lie. There were more questions that needed answering, like the one he’d asked her before the shopkeeper had interrupted them.
‘I shall have to think about that,’ Claire replied, her eyes dancing, her earlier mortification giving way to the hilarity and adventure of the situation. ‘It’s not every day a girl gets expelled from a bookshop for kissing Jonathon Lashley. I can’t imagine what sort of encore would top today’s excursion.’
‘I can, if you’d let me show you.’ It was a bold, wicked thing to say, but then again she’d kissed him. He was not the only interested party. ‘Will you promise me something? Save me two dances tonight and we can discuss it then.’
Claire raised a cocky eyebrow, willing to play the game. ‘Tomorrow’s excursion or the pleasure of kissing you?’
‘Both. I don’t recall saying they were mutually exclusive.’ He gave her a meaningful look. ‘Two dances, Claire. There will be no more running out on me.’
Two dances! He’d pledged the little bitch two dances. Cecilia fumed with angry tears smarting in her eyes from the sidelines. She’d caught sight of Claire’s dance card quite by contrived accident earlier in the evening when they’d passed in the retiring room. Claire’s card was fuller than usual, but that hadn’t been the surprise. The surprise had been seeing Jonathon’s name in bold letters printed on the card not once, but twice!
Twice! Twice was the maximum dances a gentleman could offer to a lady. It was the number Jonathon reserved for her. To offer that many dances to Claire somehow made Claire, an adequately dressed wallflower, equal to her, Cecilia Northam, a diamond of the first water, a woman destined to be the next Countess of Oakdale. Heaven forbid! It was not to be borne. Jonathon was hers and he needed reminding of it. Claire did, too.
Just look at them! She couldn’t help but notice the pair of them flying by on the dance floor, Claire in a lovely lilac and a beatific smile on her face, Jonathon laughing down at her as if the little wallflower had said something witty. He looked as though he was enjoying himself. Immensely. There was an easiness, a tenderness when he looked at Claire. Maybe Anne was right and he had kissed her, after all. She’d prefer to believe Anne was just being spiteful with her news. But seeing them like this, it was hard to dismiss Anne’s comment as complete heresy.
She twirled her champagne glass between her fingers. Signing up for two dances was one thing. Getting both of those dances was another. Lilac was a lovely colour, but it showed water stains. Badly.
* * *
‘Have you decided?’ Jonathon whispered, swinging her through a turn. ‘Where shall our next adventure take place?’
‘The French market tomorrow near Fitzrovia.’ She’d decided that afternoon, not long after he’d dropped her off. He would have a chance to barter and argue. Haggling with the vendors would force him to think on his feet. There could be no script like today. Anticipating the conversations would only get him so far. His wits would have to do the rest.
‘I like the challenge of that.’ Jonathon smiled his approval and she nearly melted. She didn’t tell him the rest—that there would be handwritten signs at the stalls, just a few words at the most at a time. She was hoping to trick him into reading without thinking in the hopes that the spontaneity and informality of the setting would break through what was left of his performance anxiety.
‘Good.’ She beamed up at him. ‘I’ll bring a shopping list and a basket.’
‘And our other adventure, Claire? I would like to walk with you in the garden tonight.’ His voice dropped, husky and private at her ear, his hand tightening on her back to draw her closer.
She didn’t feign ignorance. She knew precisely what adventure he meant. She’d thought of nothing else since he’d first uttered his rather provocative suggestion: that he could show her great pleasure. ‘You know that’s the very sort of invitation our mothers counsel us to reject.’
‘Only because they fear you will be ruined.’ He appealed to her intellect, her sense of logic. ‘What if I told you I could give you the pleasure and leave your honour intact? There would be no risk to you.’
‘Except discovery.’ There was always a risk.
‘I would never allow that to happen, Claire.’ He whispered his potent arguments with the skill of Lucifer in the garden. It would be so easy to believe him because she wanted to believe him, wanted—how had he put it?—to see what lay on the other side of this. Not just because she was curious and untried, but because it was him doing the asking. She wanted to see what was on the other side of this with him.
She lowered her lashes and flirted. ‘Why, Jonathon Lashley, I never imagined you as a rake.’ She felt alive with him, like she was once again her true self—a woman who spoke her mind, a woman who reached out for what she wanted.
‘That makes two of us.’ His voice was warm at her ear. ‘I never imagined you a wallflower. When you were younger, you were always too vibrant, too alive for that. I thought for certain you would take the ton by storm, too much for any man.’ His lips brushed her ear. ‘Will you come alive for me, again, Claire?’
The dance was ending. She had to make a decision. He had quite deliberately manoeuvred them to finish the dance near the French doors leading outside. ‘We need only to slip outside, Claire. The night is warm, the stars are bright.’ To walk, to talk, to kiss, to touch, to rekindle what had flared to life between them in the bookshop. What if this was her only chance? What if the urgency which had driven him to her side was also the urgency that sent him to Vienna too soon?
Claire seized her courage with a smile. ‘I would very much like to go outside with you, Jonathon.’
It might have been magical, the stars might have been as bright as he suggested, the air as warm. She wouldn’t know. A blonde vision in exquisite ice-pink silk stood before the doors, blocking the way like the sword-wielding angels at the gates of Eden. Her message was much the same. Access to the garden was being denied.
‘Lashley, there you are!’ Cecilia swept forward with a brilliant smile, champagne in one hand, her free hand going around Jonathon’s other arm in a charming act of possession. ‘It’s so good of you to look after dear Miss Welton.’
Jonathon stiffened and Claire was assailed by myriad emotions competing for her attention. Old Claire wanted to give in to being cowed by this dazzling, confident young woman who could have any man in any room. Part of her felt guilty. She didn’t want to steal another’s beau. That had never been her intention. But the logic of guilt wouldn’t hold, not quite. Jonathon wasn’t Cecilia’s just because Cecilia wished it to be true. But neither was that logic entirely intact. It was much like a dam threatened by flood waters, weakening in places. Jonathon had paid Cecilia some attention. Enough attention to set the gossips speculating. Just as he had her. The realisation broke the dam.
Claire cast a glance at Jonathon. Had he walked in the gardens with Cecilia? Had he promised her protected pleasures? Had that been the reason Cecilia felt so confident in her claims? I never imagined you the rake. Perhaps she should have. Perhaps this wasn’t the first time he’d played such a part. He’d already freely admitted the man he was in the ballrooms was a façade.
Behind that veneer was a man who had seen war, who had seen the world and the worldly things in it, and a man who had participated in those things as a man often does. He’d been ready to lead her down that worldly road and she’d been ready to go, thinking she knew Jonathon Lashley when nothing could be further from the truth.
She was so engrossed in the horrible train of thought she didn’t see Cecilia move. ‘Oh!’