She made to step past him toward the ballroom. His hand shot out to grab her wrist, twisting it slightly, hurting her. She froze but refused to allow him to know she was in pain. “Have you something else to say?” she asked, her nostrils flaring. How dare this man accost her in this manner? She owed him nothing.
“Indeed, my lady,” he ground out. “It’s something important, so listen well.”
Annabelle tried to wrestle her wrist from his grasp, but that only served to tighten it. She clenched her jaw and refused to look at him as he brought his mouth close to her ear. “I saw you kissing Elmwood just now,” the marquess hissed. “And I can go straight back into that ballroom and tell everyone who’ll listen, which will all but force you to marry him. Or…”
Fear and anger flared in Annabelle’s chest. Damn this monster. He was about to blackmail her. She closed her eyes, waiting for his next words. “Or what?” she nearly spat.
“Or, you can come back inside and dance with me and finish the dance this time. And you can return my calls, and thank me for my presents, and allow me to take you riding in the park.”
Annabelle clenched her teeth. The man was completely mad. What could he possibly think the result of this scheme would be? “I suppose next you’ll demand that I marry you?” she asked in a voice that was much calmer than she felt.
“All in due time, my lady. For now, I’ll thank you to stop acting as if I’m bothering you. I’ve spent long enough trying to do things the right way.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Annabelle asked, half-afraid to hear the answer.
“Let’s just say I happen to have quite a lot of money riding on the hope that you’ll finally come down off your high horse and marry this Season. Marry me, in fact.”
Her nostrils flared. “You’re insane.”
“No. I’m a man who is tired of being at the beck and call of every simpering debutante who’s named the catch of the Season. Lady Julianna tossed me over last year. I refuse to be humiliated again.”
Annabelle wrenched her wrist from his grasp and this time he let her go. He gave her a tight smile and smoothed his coat front. “I’ll see you back in the ballroom, my lady. And this time we shall dance a full dance.”
Chapter Eighteen
“What is today’s lesson?” David asked the next morning as he stared out the front window of Bell’s town house. He’d heard Annabelle come into the room behind him, but he hadn’t turned around. If he turned around, he would see her, and if he saw her, he’d want to kiss her again, and that was something he couldn’t allow himself to do. Not after her cold reaction last night. Well, to be fair, her reaction had been hot at first. So hot he’d had the passing thought that if circumstances were different, he could have taken her right there on the verandah, with her sitting atop the balustrade, her long legs straddling him, knees hugging his hips, while he slowly pumped into her. Damn. He shook his head. That wasn’t a helpful thought.
Last night when he’d left her outside, he’d been angry, though he had no idea why. Something about the way she’d dismissed his kiss, after obviously enjoying it, had put David out of sorts. Not only had she dismissed the kiss, he’d also seen her dancing with Murdock again later that night. And she’d just told him a few days ago that when a couple danced more than one dance at a ball, rumors of their fondness for one another were soon to follow.
David had briefly considered asking her to dance once more with him, but he’d decided against it. No doubt she’d turn him down, and if she didn’t, well, he hadn’t had the heart to be charming any longer.
They’d ridden home with Marianne and Lady Angelina in nearly complete silence while poor Marianne had attempted to punctuate the silence with an opinion or two on the ball and its guests.
Now he was standing here, in Bell’s town house, refusing to face Annabelle as she stood behind him.
“It’s customary to bow when a lady enters the room,” came her clipped voice.
Slowly, he turned to face her. She was wearing a light blue day dress and white kid slippers, with pearls at her throat and her ears. Her hair was curled into a short bob at the back of her head, and she looked as beautiful as ever, though she wore a decidedly pinched look on her face. Even so, David felt his body’s reaction to her. He turned sharply to the side. “Is it? How gauche of me. I’m obviously in need of more lessons.” He bowed. There. That had been blasé, hadn’t it? Not at all like a man who was even now remembering their kiss so vividly it physically hurt.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “I would say that today I should teach you not to take liberties with ladies on verandahs, but it’s too late for that.”
He winced slightly and turned away from her again, closing his eyes, grateful she couldn’t see his face. “Don’t worry,” he ground out. “I’ve learned that lesson well.”
“So you didn’t kiss Lady Elspeth last night, too?” Her voice went up an octave.
David’s brows snapped together. What the hell would make her think that? Gaining control over himself finally, he turned to face her once again. He put his hands on his hips and cocked his head to the side. “What do you think?”
She moved farther into the room toward the settee, not meeting his eyes. “I’ve no idea what you’ll do one moment to the next.”
“That makes two of us.”
Her nostrils flared. “What is that supposed to mean?”
David shrugged. “I saw you dancing with Lord Murdock a second time. Changing your mind about marriage?”
“That’s none of your affair,” she shot back.
The words stung. Like arrows to the heart. But after he’d absorbed the shock, David realized immediately that she was right. “Indeed,” he said, nodding once, careful to keep any inflection from his voice. He stepped forward and clicked his heels together, standing at attention, like he’d done a thousand times in the army. He wasn’t here on a social call. He was here for a lesson. She’d certainly never given him any reason to believe these meetings were anything more. “My apologies. What am I learning today, my lady?”
The tension drained from Annabelle’s face, and she expelled her breath slowly as if she too realized they’d had an interaction they should never repeat. She turned back toward the door of the salon and said over her shoulder, “Come with me to the dining room. I’ve helped the servants to set up a faux dinner setting. Mama should be back from the milliner any minute. We’ll talk about all the different courses and silverware and the proper etiquette for dinner conversation.”
“Excellent,” he replied, falling in line behind her.
David followed Annabelle out of the salon, down the wide marble-floored corridor, around a corner and into an enormous dining room. It was even larger than the one in his grandfather’s—no, his—town house. Would he ever stop thinking of everything as belong to his grandfather? The coaches, the horses, the town house, the country estate. It all felt borrowed, borrowed by the imposter in a life he was pretending to have. Spending time with Annabelle was just another part of the ruse. Normally, he’d never have had an opportunity to spend so much time with a lady as lovely and accomplished as she was. He’d had no right to kiss her last night. But she’d looked so fetching under the moonlight and she nearly dared him to, by saying that a gentleman would ask a lady for a kiss. Why, the girls he’d kissed in Brighton…he’d never had to ask first. He bloody well knew they were interested. Of course, if they hadn’t been, he’d have immediately stopped. He wasn’t the sort of blackguard who would force any sort of intimacy on a woman, even a mere touch, let alone a kiss. He might not be completely schooled in the ways of London Society, but he knew when a woman wanted him, and he’d seen the look in Annabelle’s eyes last night when they’d danced, felt her hand tighten on his arm, seen the desire in her eyes when she’d looked up at him in the garden, and heard the tremor in her voice when he stepped near, touched her. They wanted each other. Perhaps it was wrong. It was certainly inconvenient. But they were attracted to each other, and there was something in the way that she kept denying it that made him want to test her.