That, and watching Imogen work through her full dance card on legs made increasingly unsteady by the bottomless glass of champagne that seemed threaded to her fingers. Cole wasn’t the only one to notice. The men who held her in their arms for the waltz took liberties with her that no one would dare with a countess in control of her wits. Their bodies pressed too close, their hands slid too low on her waist, shaping the delicate swell of her hip. They charmed and cajoled her, praised and appreciated her, and she seemed to treat each one with more interest than the last. She clung to them, using them to hold her aloft as she spun and danced and laughed.
All the while avoiding him like he had some form of leprosy.
It was enough to make his hand twitch with provocation. It hadn’t been so long since he’d broken bones with nothing but his brute strength. How he longed to do it now. Here. Every finger that trailed along her waist, every arm that pulled her in close. It would be but nothing to snap them, a few deft movements, really. Practiced and relished. The sounds wet and sharp.
Oh yes, this was a pleasant fantasy. A violent one, granted. But it filled him with an odd sort of delight.
Two more dances. Two dances and she’d be his. Even though he was her escort, custom dictated that he dance with her but once. Only courting couples waltzed twice at the same social gathering, and a third turn about the floor was tantamount to declaring marital intentions.
And how could he possibly have any intentions toward her, when he’d spent the previous week searching for another woman?
He’d found that Devina had been taken by her lover to Paris. He’d dispatched someone after her, but a reply could take weeks. Blackwell had reported that Ezio del Toro had died of natural causes a few months prior, and further investigation had revealed no one of Ginny’s age or description in residence at his villa, or in his employ. In fact, his mistress had been a robust Russian woman who’d robbed him blind by the end.
He’d like to say that it was his conversation with Argent that had spurred another manic sweep of the isles and beyond for Ginny, only to be frustrated at every turn.
However, if he was honest … he had to admit that it had been the kiss he’d shared with Lady Anstruther in that tiny dark room belowstairs.
There had been power in that kiss. Something that had alternately awakened his beast, and soothed it. To Cole, it had felt as though they’d somehow transposed parts of themselves to the other through the searing contact of their lips. She’d reacted to his passion with a fire he’d not anticipated, with a wildness he’d not known she’d possessed. For his part, his animal desperation had been tempered by a curious tenderness. A sense of warmth and familiarity he’d not thought to find. He lusted after Lady Anstruther from the first moment he’d seen her, he could admit that now. However, the description of his regard for her had suddenly become quite obscure. It went beyond the physical now, past the temporal. He … respected her. Enjoyed her, even when they were in disagreement.
Which was most of the time.
She stimulated him, body and mind. When she didn’t provoke him utterly, she comforted him. His arrogance and bitter guile was met with patience and also strength, if not sympathy.
Imogen spent as much time standing up to him as she did encouraging him. Surely that was … admirable.
Admiration. There was an applicable word. There was so much to admire about her. Indeed, some of the things he’d initially found infuriating now seemed to stoke his approbation. Her courage and pluck. Her ceaseless optimism. Her apparent disregard for policy and convention. All traits the Talmage family would have scorned and scoffed at had they still abided with him in Trenwyth Hall.
His father would have pitied her for her ignorant idealism and low birth. His mother would have accused her of smiling too openly and speaking her mind too often. His sister would disparage her flagrant style and her nerve to marry above her station.
And he’d done all of those things, hadn’t he? Every one. Because he’d been raised to believe thusly, and because he’d needed reasons not to like her.
But Robert … dear Robert. His elder brother, his most ardent enthusiast and faithful friend. The true and deserving heir to the Trenwyth title …
He would have loved her.
Introverted and circumspect, Robert had been drawn to all things bold and beautiful. He’d had the heart of an artist. Abstract and soft. The soul of a philosopher. Fair and contemplative.
Lord, they’d have been perfect for each other.
A curious ache gathered in Cole’s throat as he followed the vibrant crimson blot Imogen had become through a suspicious film that obscured his vision. Had life not taken Robert from him, had grief not driven him into Ginny’s arms, had Cole not been broken in a foreign prison … would he and his brother have competed for the lovely widow Anstruther’s attentions? Possibly.
Probably.
Who would have won?
“I say, Trenwyth, you look a little peaked.” The colonel interrupted his reverie. “Are you quite all right?”
“Just fine, Colonel,” he muttered as something in his mind clicked soundly into place. “Excuse me.” He stepped around the man, intent on only one thing.
He’d investigated Lady Anstruther, as well, in these days they’d spent apart. She’d been born Imogen Pritchard to a comfortable childhood in a firmly middle-class building off Sloane Street in the city. Then her father, overloaded with debts, had moved his family to Wapping, where their circumstances had continued to decline. He hadn’t been able to figure how she made her way through nursing college, but she’d worked for St. Margaret’s for only a handful of years before meeting Lord Anstruther. By all accounts, until becoming a countess, her life hadn’t been that extraordinary.
She’d spoken of darkness, though. Of tragedy and disappointment. Not like someone who’d lost a little money, but someone who’d had a great deal else taken from her.
But what? And by whom?
A mystery, she was. A mystery wrapped in crimson silks. One he intended to uncover.
Until now, Imogen had been little more to him than an alluring nuisance. A needling temptation. An unwanted distraction.
But circumstances weren’t improving in that regard. Indeed, the prior night he’d dreamed they were in that crimson room, back there in the Bare Kitten. And instead of a pale, waifish, raven-haired Ginny, shyly blossoming to his touch, there had been Imogen. A golden-red lioness. A strong, lithe, and wild thing. A huntress in her own right, sun-kissed freckles and wanton lips.
In his dream, she’d claimed him. Scorched him with her kisses. Seared him with her touch. When he’d awakened, his seed ready to burst from him, it had taken barely a brush of his hand to find a sharp and aching release.
It had felt like betrayal at the time. Perhaps because of the startling inevitability the dream had validated. He desperately searched for Ginny one more time.
One last time.
Perhaps Ginny had been the Kitten name of poor Flora Latimer. Perhaps she’d died violently and he’d not been there to save her. His soul shriveled and bled at the thought. There was the chance that she’d moved on, somehow. That she’d created a new identity and a new life for herself. And if that was the case, it meant she didn’t want him to find her.
God knew, he’d searched everywhere. The Americas, the Continent, here in London.