tried to save you from harm?’ His voice was silky soft as those silver eyes glittered down at her in warning.
‘After you have manhandled me, sir!’ Caro was unrepentant as she tried to bring some semblance of order to the tangled ebony curls, all the time marvelling at how the jewelled mask and ebony wig had managed to stay in place at all. ‘Your own anger a few minutes ago seemed to imply that you believe I am to blame for what just took place—’
‘You are to blame.’
‘Do not be ridiculous!’ Caro gave him a scornful glance. ‘Every woman knows that men—even so-called gentlemen—will find any excuse to fight.’
She might very well be in the right of it there, Dominic acknowledged as he remembered Osbourne’s glee before he launched himself into the midst of the fighting. But that did not change the fact that this particular fight had broken out because Caro had refused to see the danger of flaunting herself night after night before a roomful of intoxicated men.
As it was, Dominic had no idea whether to beat her or kiss her senseless for her naïvety. ‘I have a good mind to take out the cost of this evening’s damages on your backside!’ he grated instead.
Her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed a fiery red even as her chin rose in challenge. ‘You would not dare!’
Dominic gave a disgusted snort. ‘Do not tempt me, Caro.’
Caro gave up all attempt to bring order to those loosely flowing locks and instead removed the jewelled mask in order to glare at him. ‘I believe you are just looking for an excuse to beat me.’
Dominic stilled, his gaze narrowing searchingly on her angrily defiant face. Just the thought of some nameless, faceless man ever laying hands on this delicately lovely woman in anger was enough to rouse Dominic’s own fury. Yet at this particular moment in time, he totally understood the impulse; he badly wanted to tan Caro’s backside so hard that she would not be able to sit down for a week! ‘I assure you, where you are concerned, no excuse is necessary,’ he growled.
‘Oh!’ she gasped her indignation. ‘You, sir, are the most overbearing, arrogant, insulting man it has ever been my misfortune to meet!’
‘And you, madam, are the most stubborn, wilfully stupid—’
‘Stupid?’ she echoed furiously.
‘Wilfully stupid,’ Dominic repeated unrepentantly as he glared back at her.
Caro had never been so incensed. Never felt so much like punching a man on his arrogant, aristocratic nose!
As if aware of the violence of her thoughts those sculptured lips turned up into a mocking smile. ‘It would be most unwise, Caro.’ His warning was silkily soft and all the more dangerous because of it.
Sea-green eyes clashed with silver for long, challenging moments. A challenge she was almost—almost!—feeling brave enough to accept when an amused voice broke into the tension. ‘I came to tell you that Butler and his heavies have thrown out the last of the patrons and are now attempting to clean up the mess, but I can come back later if now is not a convenient time … ?’
Dominic was standing directly in Caro’s line of vision and she had to lean to one side to see around him to where a tall, elegantly dressed man leant casually against the wall of the hallway. His arms were folded across the width of his chest as he watched them with interest, only the ruffled disarray of his blond and fashionably long hair about the handsomeness of his face to show that he had only moments ago been caught up in the thick of the fighting.
‘I believe our earlier assessment of the … situation to have been at fault, Blackstone.’ The other man gave Dominic an appreciative smile before turning his dark gaze back to pointedly roam over the unblemished, obviously pox-free skin of Caro’s beautiful face.
It was a remark she did not even begin to understand, let alone why he was looking at her so intently! ‘To answer your earlier question, sir—I believe Lord Vaughn and I have finished our conversation.’
‘Not by a long way.’ One of Dominic’s hands reached out, the fingers curling about Caro’s wrist like a band of steel, as she would have brushed past him. ‘I trust not too many heads were broken, Osbourne?’
The blond-haired man shrugged. ‘None that did not deserve it.’ He straightened away from the wall. ‘Care to introduce me, Blackstone?’ A merry brown gaze briefly met his friend’s before he looked at Caro with open admiration.
‘Caro Morton, Lord Nathaniel Thorne, Earl of Osbourne,’ Dominic said coldly.
‘Your servant, ma’am.’ Lord Thorne gave an elegant bow.
‘My lord.’ Really, did every man she met in London have to be a lord and an earl? she wondered crossly as she pondered the ridiculousness of formally curtsying to a gentleman under such circumstances.
‘If you were thinking of leaving too now all the excitement is over, Osbourne, then by all means do so,’ Dominic said. ‘I fear I will not be free to leave for some time yet.’
His gaze hardened as he glanced down pointedly at Caro Morton, his mouth thinning as those sea-green eyes once more stared back at him in silent rebellion.
She broke that gaze to turn and smile graciously at the other man. ‘Perhaps, if you are leaving, I might prevail on you to take me with you, Lord Thorne?’
To all intents and purposes, Dominic recognised impatiently, as if she were a lady making conversation in her drawing room! As if a fight had not just broken out over who was to share her bed tonight. As if Dominic’s own property had not been destroyed in that mêlée.
As if she were not standing before two elegant gentlemen of the ton dressed only in a ripped gown, and with her ebony wig slightly askew!
Dominic gave a frustrated sigh. ‘I think not.’
Those sea-green eyes flashed up at him with annoyance before Caro ignored him to turn once again to Nathaniel. ‘I would very much appreciate it if you would agree to escort me home, Lord Thorne.’ A siren could not have sounded or looked any more sweetly persuasive!
Dominic easily read the uncertainty in his friend’s expression; a gentleman through and through, Osbourne never had been able to resist the appeal of a seeming damsel in distress. Seeming, in Dominic’s estimation, being a correct assessment in regard to Caro Morton. The woman was an absolute menace and had become a veritable thorn in Dominic’s side since the moment he’d set eyes upon her.
‘I am afraid that is not possible,’ Dominic answered smoothly on the other man’s behalf.
Those delicate cheeks flushed red. ‘I believe my request was made to Lord Thorne and not to you!’
Dominic allowed some of the tension to ease from his shoulders, aware that he had been in one state of tension or another since first meeting her. ‘Lord Thorne is gentleman enough, however, to accept a prior claim, are you not, Osbourne?’
Osbourne’s eyes widened. As well they might, damn it; Dominic had as good as denied all knowledge of this woman earlier tonight, a denial that had been made a complete nonsense of the moment Caro had launched herself into his arms and, in her agitation, called him by his given name.
Hell and damnation!
‘I believe you were quite correct in your assertion earlier, Blackstone,’ Osbourne’s drawled comment interrupted Dominic’s displeasing thoughts. ‘Personally I would say exquisite rather than beautiful!’
Dominic nodded irritably. ‘Just so.’
‘That being the case, Blackstone, I believe I will join Butler and Ben and enjoy a reviving brandy before I leave. My respects, Miss Morton.’ Osbourne gave a lazy inclination of his head before leaving the two of them alone.
Caro blinked at the suddenness of Lord Thorne’s departure. ‘I do not understand.’ Neither did she have any idea what tacit agreement