“Is your ego so big that you need to convince yourself that every lady will fall at your feet?” she huffed.
“I enjoy your sharp tongue,” he said, echoing a sentiment he had already told her. “Let it speak some more. It excites me.”
“I imagine a great deal excites you?—”
“Youexcite me,” he interrupted. “You, and everything I am learning that you are.”
His arm tightened around her waist, and Elinor didn’t have the strength to restrain her true reaction this time. Her chest heaved with breathlessness, and a small noise of protest left her. Lucien’s face lowered to hers slowly.
“If you have forgotten our kiss,” he murmured, “then I will remind you.”
“What if I like that I have forgotten it?”
“I do not think you do,” he countered. “But I do not believe you have forgotten it, for you cannot stop looking at my mouth as if you are remembering how it felt on yours.”
Elinor held her breath as he continued to get closer, but voices that were concerningly close had her pulling back sharply.
Without his body against hers, she felt oddly empty, but she hurried out of the hedge maze, taking a few moments to collect herself. She distanced herself from the entrance, so it did not look too suspicious when Lucien strode out not long after her.
“There you are,” he called out loudly, drawing the attention of several people gathered near them. “I have been looking for you, my beautiful bride-to-be.”
He flashed her a wide grin, making Elinor realize she was starting to notice the difference in his genuine smiles, opposed to these put-on ones.
His real smile was softer, slow to appear, nothing like the ready, quick smirk he let the ton see, and, as they ventured deeper into the tea party, Elinor could only think of wishing for the true one again.
But more than that, she wished that he had kissed her again.
And she couldn’t untangle the reasoning of that wish.
Chapter Fourteen
Lucien truly did despise ton balls.
Tonight, the annoyance of it all was a little more dimmed as he searched the ballroom below him. Lord and Lady Telford’s townhouse was respectively expansive, but there were so many reflective surfaces that it hurt his eyes to look too hard.
Still, Lucien had done his usual routine: entered later than everybody else, drawing every ounce of attention he could, because that was who the Duke of Fairmont was, but now, the bespectacled lady he was looking for was escaping his notice, and that irked him.
Had her stepmother forbidden her to attend another ball as punishment for their act?
Her displeasure of the engagement was palpable, likely due to the fact that she wanted Lucien to notice Belinda more thanElinor, but even if he were not falsely engaged to Lady Morland’s stepdaughter, Belinda still had not caught his interest.
She was merely a face in a sea of them, all of them blurring into a similar lady that did not excite him anymore.
Not when he had met Elinor.
Not when she truly was different, and he wished to be alone with her to hear more of that difference.
Not when, behind closed doors, she was more herself. Softer, more thoughtful with her words and ideas. Yet, he was starting to enjoy the woman who emerged when he purposefully riled her up. Part of him wanted to give her that space to unleash herself. Likely, Morland House did not give her much chance to do so, and it was clear she had plenty on her mind to say, so, without confessing it directly, he was giving her the opportunity to loosen the tension she would need to swallow every day.
The riling—and the kiss, the very thing he had not been able to get out of his head for the past week.
“Looking for your betrothed?”
Lucien glanced at his side, finding Dominic. “When did you arrive?” he deflected.
“A while ago, but I saw you come in. I was all but prying a lady off my arm so I could come over to you. You are watching thisballroom like a cat hunts a mouse, so if it is indeed Lady Elinor you seek, I half fear for her.”
Lucien tugged up that easy, broad smile he had long perfected. “Perhaps she is my prey. Perhaps she ought to fear my devotion and attraction.”