Victoria’s eyes were the color of a leaf frozen in ice when they met his.
“Julian worked quickly,” he murmured and glanced again at her fingers draped over Ashcroft’s elegant linen coat. Mine, shot through his mind as he shoved down the savage urge to yank her away from the duke, which would have been entertaining as all hell. A former soldier and chance mercenary when the instance called for it, Ashcroft would pummel him to within an inch of his life if he so much as breathed on him. Finn was an excellent marksman and damn good with a knife but a soldier of fortune he was not.
Ashcroft glanced between them, sensing unrest but looking too poleaxed to do much about it. He rubbed the fingertips of his left hand together, his cheeks ashen. Victoria’s gift was blocking his, as they’d expected, as he’d warned the duke earlier in the evening it might.
How long, Finn wondered, before Ashcroft asked for her hand in marriage? Forget love when your duchess could bring normalcy.
A talent more valuable than the Queen’s jewels for those in their world.
Lady Parchant-Bingman studied each member of the group, searching for a salacious tidbit to impart later in the evening. Ashcroft rose to the challenge, releasing Victoria and turning to the inquisitive lady with a smooth laugh Finn knew to be the height of deceit. Though he considered him a friend, Ashcroft had the temperament of a caged lion and smiled only on the rarest of occasions. Humor was not in his repertoire. “Come, my lady, I have a better spot where you may view the pyrotechnics.”
Finn coughed into his fist. It always amazed him that a man consumed by flames wanted to entertain with fireworks. Of course, a passion for them did explain the blazes that occurred rather often at the duke’s estates.
Ashcroft threw Finn a droll look. “Mr. Alexander is going to escort Lady Hamilton to her companion, who was taken with a sudden bout of sneezing and retired to the resting room.” He slipped his watch from his waistcoat pocket and checked the time. Gave Finn another look, not so droll this one. “Fifteen minutes until the festivities begin if the rain holds off. Lady Parchant-Bingman, will you assist me in gathering everyone on the south lawn? I would appreciate it, and you are well-acquainted with most of those attending, I believe.”
Lady Parchant-Bingman preened, flashing Finn a molten look that said, later, my darling, but I must go, he’s a duke!
He watched them cross the sloping lawn, Ashcroft’s head bent toward the lady’s in resigned consideration, while the lady at Finn’s side stood silent and seething. Knowing no other way to approach the situation, he started with humor and a smile. Idly, he wondered how much the chipped tooth was affecting his presentation. “I neglected to inquire about your travels. Did Humphrey regale you with all the times he’s gone haring off after me? Mad dashes in the middle of the night due to my transgressions? How he’d rather discuss the plague than Julian’s chronology?” He snaked his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “When did you decide you’d rather leap from the carriage than listen to him bemoan his torturous fate for another bumpy mile? That usually hits me before we’ve made it to the end of Harbingdon’s drive.”
Victoria turned to him then, and he got his first good look at her in seventy-two hours. Enchanting in a lavender gown that flowed over her body like a waterfall, hair tucked in a lustrous arrangement she and Agnes certainly couldn’t take credit for, eyes glowing more hazel than green. That star-freckle next to her lip, his weakness, bringing him home like a beacon. She looked young, guileless, a little skittish. More than a shade vexed. Vulnerable, in a way that unwelcomely captured his heart—a verdict that would nurture her ire when she sought to present a vastly contradictory portrait. As he’d come to know her, her troublesome behavior had shown itself to be a way to protect a generous and intelligent heart. A way to prepare for a dismal future, much as he was doing. She was stubborn and impetuous, true, but nothing like Piper’s confident, devil-may-care comportment, which he’d confused Victoria’s with at first.
How could the mistake be helped when he’d never known another female before Piper? Not really, as his clandestine encounters had involved little actual involvement.
Surprising him, as he stood there debating how to lighten the mood since his chipped smile wasn’t doing the trick, she slipped her finger in his cuff and made a very unflattering mewing sound. “Oh, Mr. Alexander, you’re the most handsome man! Dreamy. Simply enough to make me lose my breath…and the microscopic thought contained in my tiny brain.”
Finn stilled, raw heat traveling from the point where kid leather grazed the underside of his wrist straight to his groin. “You’re jealous.” He followed this pronouncement with a bracing laugh that had her snatching her hand back and jamming it against her hip.
No need to mention he’d been jealous as well.
“I am no such thing. It’s the constant attention that’s hard to overlook. At every event you followed me to, my sullied guardian angel, I watched in amazement as people stumbled and fawned and drooled. Not only women mind you. You want to pick out the men with certain proclivities in our society. Simply place you in the room, and it’s entirely evident in five seconds.” She whipped her hand high, pointing at the blustery clouds above. “I think even the birds are entranced. I’m astonished they don’t tumble at your feet, an act of biblical proportion.”
Finn brought his hand to his lips to cover the smile, and the dimple Piper said only made women angrier in tense moments. This was delightful. He hoped Tori would tell him more about how she’d watched him those many months—as he’d watched her. Dreamed of her. Began to hunger, without even knowing what her voice sounded like.
What she was like.
Now, he knew so many things about her, and his hunger was a raging clamor in his mind. If he could only get it out of his mind that she was made for him. His partner for life, should he find the courage to ask her to give up everything, which of course he couldn’t.
“Don’t laugh, you beast. You invite the grotesque attention. You wear blue all the time.”
He looked down at his lapis waistcoat, one that closely matched his eyes, and blinked. Huh. Finding her gaze, he chewed on his bottom lip as the expression on her face circled from irritation to suspicion to something he didn’t want to define. “One question.” Gesturing like a ball bounced between them, he asked with more composure than he felt, “If we’re only friends, how could it possibly matter? My flirting? It’s like breathing, reactionary and with little meaning, as stalwart and automatic a defense as your behind-the-pillar kisses, but still I ask.”
She lowered her gaze, her hands finding her skirt and diving in, twisting the lilac silk into submission. When her shoulders rose with a halted intake of breath and the soft words spilled from her mouth, he was lost. “I don’t know…but it does.”
Her candor—when he’d found no one in his life except his family to be truthful, worthy, endearing—sent a shimmer of fury through him. Catching her around the waist, he backed her into the shadows and brought her up on her toes, tucking her as close to his body as he could without tumbling her to the dewy grass and falling atop her. Where the difference in their height would make no difference at all. Cupping her jaw with fingers that trembled, he tilted her face high. “Is this why you came after me,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Pour ce qu'ils veulent tous,ou est-ce plus?”