The flush touched her cheeks.
He waited for the smile; the flutter of eyelashes that would beckon welcome.
Her eyes scanned his face, the one that held that perfect look, the look that decimated.
And she scowled.
She rolled her eyes and gave a demonstrative sigh.
His face felt suddenly tight. He’d made a mistake. Those glances back at him now held back laughter. That was of no consequence, he made many people laugh over the course of an evening. But…he’d made a mistake in judgement and it mattered.
His goddess muttered; the word ‘parasite’ clearly audible. She looked at her audience then resumed reading as if he had vaporized with her dismissal.
“Yes, said the little bird. And the wolf was satisfied for he knew her secret. Knew what was hidden in her small, feathered form. Knew what she couldn’t possibly know about herself.”
Heads turned back from time to time and he made sure they saw his smile.
He boldly stared at her.
She stubbornly refused to look back; her every movement and tone a rejection.
Magnificent.
His face relaxed as she continued her recital and he listened, listened and didn’t hear anything except the words wolf, little bird; wolf, little bird; as they repeated in rhythms and prose that made the words dance.
Wolf.
Little Bird.
Chapter 2
From her peripheral vision—heart still racing, throat tight, and brain uncomfortably foggy—Seraphina watched him finally leave the room. For a brief second, it was as if every poet’s description of soul deep recognition had come to life. As if a veil lifted and she understood the elusive and sought-after twin-flame connection with another soul. And then his face had fallen into the even, arrogant, and insufferable expression of a rake. A man so confident in his ability to win a woman that he treated her like a predictable little puppet to swoon and paw for the pleasure his look promised her.
Growing up in a house full of brothers, she knew what men thought about women and how they played them. Her deceased husband had given her every placating, mollifying expression, action, and statement imaginable. This man was a pup in comparison.
“Marvelous as always, my dear.” Lord Marsden handed her down from the small diesis where she’d done her reading. “How’s the book coming along?”
Seraphina smiled at her childhood friend. “That’s not what you want to ask.”
He grinned. “I don’t need to ask when I know the answer, sweetheart.”
She raised her eyebrows, she didn’t know. She had no idea what just happened. However, it wouldn’t happen again…not after that look.
It was a half hour later when they made their way to the back room with Fitzy and Gloria, both painters, both mad for each other and both pretending no one else could tell.
The fourth room in the salon was darker. A place you sank into for a myriad of reasons. It had strategically placed tall, voluminous, potted palms, giant greenhouse ferns on wooden pedestals, and Romanesque statues in all positions of nude embrace. Nooks and enclaves for people to slip into under cover of the shadowy light, to be embraced by lush velvet and leather overstuffed chairs, sofas, and ottomans. A place where secrets were whispered, liaisons established, and perhaps even touches and kisses exchanged as promises were made of something more…later…elsewhere.
And there he was, the rake, Prince Vladimir take-her-breath-away.
Women on either side of him giggled and snuggled into his broad chest, playing with the golden epaulettes on his jacket as he sat, arms stretched out along the back of the sofa.
Their gazes met. And again, her body rioted with powerful, alluring sensations.
The man didn’t move, wasn’t even remotely self-conscious of the fawning duo he sported.
His eyes burned into her, promising things that belied his situation. Seph flushed with unwanted heat…with annoyance.
She pointedly rolled her eyes.
Pretended to yawn behind her hand.
The corner of his mouth turned up and his gaze blatantly ate at her lips, her breasts, her waist, her… She turned her body away, ignored the fire he’d ignited with just a look, just a promise of what he would do if he had access to those parts of her.
The Prince stood.
Panic flared.
“I’m bored let’s go back to the front room,” she said and whirled around. Seph didn’t even look to see if they followed, nerves tight.
“We just came from the front room,” Marsden growled at her side. He was most likely getting cabin fever. Knowing him well, there was only so long he could float between rooms, caged, bored, well behaved.
“We could go to Hell’s Hall,” she suggested.
“Seraphina? What are you up to?”
“You’re bored,” she beamed at him.
Marsden’s lips thinned, “I don’t need you to find my entertainment, Seph. I am perfectly capable of doing and going where I want.”
“I’m bored,” she challenged. She suddenly wanted desperately to be somewhere else, somewhere she felt free, wild, exotic, rather than a dreary widowed Duchess who wrote poetry.
They left.
Moved between salons: The Luminous Scroll; Ode to the Wilde; The Blue Room.
At each location Seph feeling as if the Prince would walk in at any minute, and annoyingly disappointed when he didn’t.
Three hours later they left Fitzy and Gloria in The Blue Room, a hive of painters, and much to Marsden’s disapproval, arrived at Hell’s Hall. The large Mayfair house offered a members-only gaming hall that catered exclusively to the richest and the elite. Yet, Seph saw his shoulders relaxing as they were shown into the smoke-filled gaming hall despite his reluctance to bring her.
The converted ball room was hung with opulent chandeliers, filled with dozens of large round tables with black linens and leather tub chairs. Men of all ages filled the room, smoke from their cigarettes and cigars forming a water line high above them as cards were shuffled, dealt, and folded. Money and promissory notes were piled at the center of tables or next to players and tumblers of amber fluid sparkled in masculine hands. There were a few women at the tables, confident in their posture and actions, women Seph saw immediately, who lived as they chose despite social convention.
This was Marsden’s kind of place, where he came to relax.
“Stick close.” Marsden purred over her shoulder as he scanned the room and pointed. “Over there.”
A hand had lifted.
“Baron Von Bauer,” Marsden said. A long-standing friend of Marsden and her late husband.
Seph wasn’t quite tall enough to see who else sat there.
Marsden slipped an arm around her back and propelled her towards the table.
Large, masculine gold-framed paintings hung along the side walls. They depicted battles, dark and full of the cost of glory, images of death, rays of hope piercing through the clouds, bare chested women their mouths open in battle cries alongside soldiers. On the back wall a mammoth mural of an epic Renaissance painting, again a battle, yet painted the full size of the wall bursting with armored knights, rearing war horses, spears held high or protruding from their targets, bodies of the fallen lying in mounds on the ground.
“Is that a copy of a Giulio Romano?”
Marsden nodded, “The Battle of Milvian Bridge. So, what do you think? Disappointed?”