‘I won’t allow masculine superiority as a defence, just because the rest of the world suffers from the delusion it actually exists, your lordship. To claim it, you’ll have to prove you possess it,’ she challenged him and finally managed to meet his silver-green gaze as if it cost her nothing but a coolly ironic smile.
‘I’d be delighted to do so, when you finally manage to screw up sufficient courage to risk defeat at my hands, Miss Alstone,’ he replied, making no attempt to mask a heat in his look that echoed the wolfish, challenging smile on his suddenly very tempting masculine mouth.
Feeling as if she’d already suffered a loss when her wildest fantasies centred on his lips as if they could unlock the secrets of the universe, Kate clenched her fists resolutely at her sides. Seeing the threat of an easy victory in his intent and suddenly very green gaze, she made herself hold it steadily, as if doing so cost her no effort at all. Hopefully only she knew her fingernails were threatening to bite through her kid gloves and into her soft palms as she clamped down on her more primitive instincts in the hope they might give up in the face of bleak reality.
‘Don’t flatter yourself, my lord,’ she warned him softly.
‘No need, when you’ve done it for me by refusing to pick up any of the challenges I cared to throw out in the past.’
‘I am not a coward, and you’re the one who retreated from the fight.’
Suddenly the air was crackling with something more than the slightly bitter teasing of two people who’d once had such promise of linking and entwining their lives, yet failed to take that vital step together. Kate’s mouth felt inexplicably dry and her pulse was racing, but she made herself meet him glare for dare. Half-conscious they were in all too public a space for such a contest of wills and wishes, she still couldn’t let her eyes fall modestly and step away from him. Giving an involuntary sigh as she continued to hold his jade-and-steel gaze without flinching, she allowed herself the small concession of licking her lips to slick their inexplicable dryness and marvelled at the feral heat that flared in his eyes as he changed from confident, taunting challenger to offer a darker and deeper world of sensual threat instead.
‘I think you’re going to miss the first waltz if you don’t hurry, my dears.’ Eiliane intruded a little too brightly on their silent, too-significant struggle for some victory Kate didn’t even understand wanting to achieve so desperately in the first place.
‘And what a shame that would be,’ she managed to say as acerbically as everyone seemed to expect her to, even if her lips felt numb and her tongue oddly stiff in her parched mouth.
‘Have you already promised yourself to someone else, Miss Alstone?’ Edmund asked relentlessly, for some reason best known to him refusing to do what she fully expected him to and walk away to find the pretty little miss he’d been talking to earlier.
‘No, but I dare say you have.’
‘You’d be wrong and not for the first time then, so perhaps you’d best hurry up and join me for it, before we attract even more attention to ourselves,’ he replied.
‘I never dance with noblemen who order me to do so, attention or otherwise.’
‘Then pray do us both the favour of joining me on the dance floor, before the tabbies make all sorts of mistaken assumptions about our tardiness, Miss Alstone,’ he demanded more than asked.
Seeing that he was right and they were attracting far too much notice for comfort, she took his offered hand and let him lead her onto the floor, as if she could imagine nothing more pleasant than to dance with the rude, contradictory, disturbing man. Instead it felt as if he’d just snapped the tethers of the polite pretence that should have held them both in check and left them perilously adrift in a world where she had no bearings or familiar landmarks to chart it by.
‘Why do you suddenly seem to hate me, my lord?’ she heard herself ask as soon as they were launched into the dance. She was silently cursing herself for agreeing to be held so close to him, so curiously in sympathy considering their new antipathy and the odd fact that he’d never affected her like this in the past, when he’d just been a skilful partner who didn’t tread on her toes.
‘I don’t hate you, Kate, would that I could,’ he answered her with no hint of a smile to soften his hard-eyed scrutiny of her upturned face.
‘Perhaps it would be easier,’ she agreed rather wistfully.
‘For you or for me?’
‘For both of us.’
‘Then you are a coward,’ he murmured, but still he held her as if she was precious and their steps harmonised with such ease it felt as if they’d been born to dance together.
‘How so?’ she managed to murmur, fighting a stupid urge to lay her head on his shoulder and dream her way through this waltz, as if all that mattered was being held so close to him nothing could come between them. At least imagining how that shocking spectacle would appear was enough to stiffen her spine and make her set a little distance between them.
‘If you ever find the courage to really look into that guarded heart of yours, Miss Alstone, you might find your answer to that question and a few others as well,’ he informed her even as he twirled and confused her in time with the dance.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, wishing she was in a position to cross her fingers against that uneasy lie, for she was beginning to wonder herself.
‘I know, that’s the pity of it all,’ he responded rather grimly and they spent the rest of the dance in uneasy silence.
Their waltz was over too soon and not soon enough, so they could step away from each other at last with more than just physical space yawning between them. Kate marvelled at herself for being such a fool as to have refused to marry him so often in the past, even as the guarded part of her drew back and whispered he’d always ask too much of her, however many times he asked and she said no. She told herself to be grateful he’d had the sense to slash through whatever bonds bound them to each other three years ago. Yet it didn’t feel right that they should now go their separate ways as if they’d never once mattered to each other. She hesitated ridiculously when he offered her his arm so distantly at the end of their dance, as though he were about to conduct someone he barely knew and didn’t much like back to her chaperon.
She laid her fingers on his immaculately tailored coat sleeve and did her best to look undaunted and serene while a flash of hot and confusing warmth shot through her at the feel of such latent power beneath her fingertips. It was utterly ridiculous to feel intrigued by even so light a touch on his muscular arm, when she’d been more or less immune to his physical allure on first acquaintanceship. She was still struggling with this odd twist to their relationship that now left her more conscious of him than he was of her when they were rudely interrupted.
‘What a delightful display that was, don’t you agree, my love?’ Lady Tedinton greeted them with apparent laziness as Kate and Edmund unwarily stepped off the dance floor and straight into her path.
‘Oh, they’ll need to practise for a few more years yet before they’re even half as good at it as you are, my dear,’ her husband replied and Kate could see how little her ladyship relished being lumped in with those who were accomplished and experienced, but no longer young, even if her husband seemed oblivious to her quick frown of displeasure.
‘Practice makes perfect, don’t you agree, Lord Shuttleworth?’ the lady responded, avid hunger brazenly obvious in her heavy-lidded eyes as she ran them over him, as if testing his power as a lover and liking the idea of taking him as her current one a little too well, whatever their past relationship might be.
‘Only until that perfection is achieved, my lady,’ he said with a supremely elegant bow Kate thought was more an attempt to distance himself from the woman than offering her even a hint of encouragement.
‘But if it’s not properly maintained, even perfection can fade away from lack of application,’ the lady murmured and Kate wondered at