Royal Regard

Chapter Six, Part 4

Now he could see the attraction of the bright red blush. He made himself nearly drunk on the color rising, the white of her teeth against her lower lip.

"You have quite a high opinion of yourself. My husband would shoot you dead if he heard how you speak to me."

"Then you must be sure to tell him, so I'll stop."

He pulled himself a half-step back from her, still in perfect tempo. "The music is nearly over now, and you mustn't look sad to see it end."

She made a good show of hiding her disappointment, and when the music stopped, they weren't but a few steps away from her husband, so Nick delivered her without delay. She tried to give the impression Nick was tiresome, annoying, insignificant. She didn't entirely succeed, but Nick was pleased she made the attempt. He was also thankful her false disregard seemed to fool her husband, too gullible for his own good.

Nick's public behavior with her was immaculate outside the dance they shared, even while he engaged in speculation with her husband about the new cargo ship he had just agreed to buy outright. He left so little room for suspicion that he could see her wondering the rest of the night if she had dreamed his outrageous proposals. He didn't touch her arm or shoulder, didn't bring her ratafia, didn't try to find himself alone with her in a corner or on the terrace, and he spent no more time with the Huntleighs than his other acquaintances in attendance. She might as well have been a hundred-year-old dowager for all the notice he took while in public.

But when she sought him out at the end of the evening, with no reason but to say she and Lord Huntleigh would be leaving soon, he blocked her husband's view, then everyone else's, half-hidden behind a pillar, just on the right side of proper. While she kept her eyes from his face to make sure no one was watching, he gently tugged the glove from her left hand.

"I shall return this to you one day soon," he said, placing it in the pocket of his tailcoat, "and until I do," he ran his fingertip over the back of her hand, then dragged his fingernails across her palm, "you might consider what skin you next want to bare to me." She gasped. "I have ideas of my own, of course, but I would hate to disappoint if you were longing for me to touch you elsewhere."

Her face lost both its color and its objections, so he pushed his luck, moving his light contact from wrist to forearm to elbow, "How I wish it were your stocking I had just removed, and the back of your knee inviting my kiss, not the crook of your elbow." She looked as though the breath caught in her throat might keep her from speaking the rest of her life.

Nick turned then, feeling Huntleigh's eyes on them from across the room, and whispered, "Be careful, my dear. Everything you are imagining is all over your face." He bowed properly above her gloved fingers, arranged her shawl to cover the hand he had denuded, then walked her calmly to her husband, speaking of nothing more volatile than the price of tea as they strolled across the room.

Nick's speech to Huntleigh was designed to give Bella every reason to remain wordless and mortified from the tips of her toes to the top of her head; her husband would be suspicious had she not.

"I know how protective you are, Huntleigh, so I will put it to rest. I have done my very best to convince Lady Huntleigh to run away with me: offered her every shilling of my fortune, my undying devotion, the very cockles of my heart, and she would have none of it. My rotten luck she loves her husband. I shall have to muddle along a poor old bachelor another decade or two, I suppose, before anyone comes up to the mark again."

Nick placed Lady Huntleigh's gloved hand on her husband's arm, and she shyly tucked her face into Huntleigh's shoulder. Her bare hand hidden in her gathered skirts and scarf, her eyes roamed Nick's body, even as he kept his face open and friendly, no more or less formal than he had been with anyone else.

"You have been most indulgent this evening, Lady Huntleigh, allowing me to monopolize your husband with business, then listening to us go on all night. I am sure we are both deadly dull."

Nick was assured entrée with Bella as long as he had entrée with her husband, which was really only a question of money.

I have to stop thinking of her as Bella before I say it aloud, Nick thought, followed by, I wonder how Nick will sound when she whispers it in my ear. Better yet, moaning. Screaming. He couldn't remember the last time he had so wanted to render a woman mindless with pleasure.

He invoked the kings of England to keep his thoughts about the back of her knee from becoming obvious in his trousers: Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee, Harry, Dick, John, Harry three, he recited to himself until he managed to bring his physical reactions back under control. He hadn't been embarrassed by his own body since Eton, and wasn't planning to begin anew in the ballrooms of London. He was an Englishman, for heaven's sake, not a hot-blooded Latin.

The superiority wafting off her husband relaxed Nick to a certain extent; the man thought his wife had proved immune to the infamous Duke of Wellbridge, preferring Humdrum Huntleigh to the globe-trotting Lothario who stole a new man's wife every Season. Nick knew Bella—Lady Huntleigh—would be more appreciated at home in days to come, and might even receive an apology from her husband for whatever it was he'd said in the carriage to make her angry.

If nothing else, one dance with a duke would ensure too much interest from other men, including her husband. Nick would wait to send flowers until she had other admirers—most likely of her prospects, not her person—when her husband would be less likely to notice among other bouquets. He planned sonnets and sestinas in her name, delivered with orchids and gardenias to demonstrate in floriology his rising passion for her. If Lord Huntleigh knew a language of flowers even existed, Nick would eat Old Rowley's hat.

When Bella reached up on tiptoe to give her elderly husband a sweet kiss on his cheek, Huntleigh puffed up with satisfaction, outright smug when she whispered it was getting late and she would prefer to be safe and warm at home than out gallivanting all hours with rapscallions and rogues. Huntleigh won the battle, since he would take Bella home in his carriage. He didn't understand he'd lost the war as soon as he agreed to let Nick dance with her.