Unfortunately, she had liked that very much.
Lord Vaughn was a magnificent catch from any standpoint—Lord Kirke had even endorsed him, she thought with some bitter irony—and if she were to capture his affections, let alone a proposal, her father would probably consider it the gift of a lifetime. He would ultimately die a happy man, knowing she wouldn’t be alone. Knowing that her life would be comfortable and safe and even luxurious.
She so very much wanted to be able to give her father this kind of peace of mind before she lost him.
Suddenly her throat was tight.
Mere days ago, if a soothsayer of some sort had revealed her destiny was to go to London and become some sort of lady, perhaps a countess, she would have been ecstatic. Well, and also a bit nervous. There wasn’t much about being a doctor’s daughter that prepared one for being a countess, but if she could do things like manage a householdbudget and help sew the tip of a man’s finger back on, she was confident she could adapt.
Go to London and make all the young men fall in love with you, her father had said.
But she was afraid now. The things she thought she knew about love were warring with things she had never anticipated.
Like how it felt when a man drew trembling fingers along her throat as though he scarcely believed he had the right to touch her. As though, for that moment in time, she was the precious, beating heart of his universe.
Or a man’s fleeting expression of pain when he’d come upon in a moment of despair, her face in her palms. As if her distress was his distress.
The ways he said her name: urgently, when he’d found her in distress.
And then with wonder... and surrender... against her lips in the carriage.
The way he’d gathered her up and laid his coat across her shoulders.
He not only wanted her.
Hecared.
Didn’t he?
Unlike Lord Vaughn, Lord Kirke had been willing to lay down his life for his beliefs in a duel.
He was willing to offend, he was willing to provoke, he was willing to stand up before the world and do it day after day even as the odds were against him. He wasmadeof passion.
She had never anticipated how much her whole being craved it.
She might never have known if she hadn’t met him, and this unnerved her, too.
But he had held her at a distance from the veryfirst, she was realizing. It was one of the reasons he called her by her last name only.
While she could indeed prepare a household budget, she could not reconcile all of these things in her mind: The lust and the tenderness. His fierceness and his flashes of vulnerability. Her exhilarating fear of him, and her desire to protect him, and the distance he was imposing, and all of the rumors that hovered about him. His intimidating worldliness that never devolved into condescension. The way he listened—with all of his being.
She didn’t know that one person could make the rest of the world seem flat and false by comparison, like so much stage dressing. Perhaps she could put it all down to her own inexperience. Perhaps it meant little.
She had not anticipated coming to London for suffering.
Probably everyone looking at her tonight—and people did indeed seem to be looking at her a good deal, even though her goldenrod-colored silk dress was more than two years old—would think:That young lady hasn’t a care in the world! Look at her dancing with the heir to an earl! Her future is bright and assured.
“I should love to go to your party,” she told Lord Vaughn, who remained gratifyingly ignorant that her thoughts were spinning like the waltz. “Thank you so much for the invitation. I look forward to our duet.”
He smiled at her with his beautiful teeth.
On the second floor of the Coopersmith town house, near an arrangement of large green plants arrayed next to French doors, Kirke smoked andthought in relative quiet. Perverse man that he was, his mood had lightened just a little now that he knew who his enemy was, because Farkie simply wasn’t very bright. He solved problems by throwing money at them.
The prospect of a fight or a problem to solve generally stirred his blood. The need to develop a strategy of any sort generally filled him with zeal. But he was still angry and disappointed with himself at a time when he felt he was fraying at the edges.
Seared on his memory was Keating’s stunned, white face when he’d told her two days ago about his mistress and his house fire. He could not keep his mind from visiting this scene again and again. He still wasn’t certain whether he’d told her more for her own good or his. But it was both.
It was just that he seemed unable to be anything other than baldly honest with her. She had the bravery born of innocence—she hadn’t learned circumspection, or how to be afraid of answers to the questions she was asking—but she also had a fundamental, quiet integrity that was essentially the same as courage. He thought she could probably withstand anything.