Devil in Spring (The Ravenels #3)(13)

“What plans?” Gabriel asked. How could a girl of her position, with her looks, make plans that didn’t include any possibility of marriage?

“That’s none of your business,” she told him smartly.

“Understood,” Gabriel assured her. “There’s just one thing I’d like to ask: What the bloody hell were you doing at the ball in the first place, if you don’t want to marry?”

“Because I thought it would be only slightly less boring than staying at home.”

“Anyone as opposed to marriage as you claim to be has no business taking part in the Season.”

“Not every girl who attends a ball wants to be Cinderella.”

“If it’s grouse season,” Gabriel pointed out acidly, “and you’re keeping company with a flock of grouse on a grouse-moor, it’s a bit disingenuous to ask a sportsman to pretend you’re not a grouse.”

“Is that how men think of it? No wonder I hate balls.” Pandora looked scornful. “I’m so sorry for intruding on your happy hunting grounds.”

“I wasn’t wife-hunting,” he snapped. “I’m no more interested in marrying than you are.”

“Then why were you at the ball?”

“To see a fireworks display!”

After a brief, electric silence, Pandora dropped her head swiftly. He saw her shoulders tremble, and for an alarming moment, he thought she had begun to cry. But then he heard a delicate snorting, snickering sound, and he realized she was . . . laughing?

“Well,” she muttered, “it seems you succeeded.”

Before Gabriel even realized what he was doing, he reached out to lift her chin with his fingers. She struggled to hold back her amusement, but it slipped out nonetheless. Droll, sneaky laughter, punctuated with vole-like squeaks, while sparks danced in her blue eyes like shy emerging stars. Her grin made him lightheaded.

Damn it.

His annoyance drained away, displaced by a rampage of heat and delight. His heart began to thump with the force of his need to be alone with her. To be inside all that energy. Everything in him had just ignited like a bonfire, and he wanted her, wanted her, with all the reckless, self-indulgent desire he usually managed to keep contained. But it made no sense. He was a civilized man, an experienced one with sophisticated tastes, and she was . . . holy God, what was she?

He wished to hell he didn’t want to find out so badly.

Pandora’s amusement faded. Whatever she saw in his gaze caused a soft scald of pink to spread over her face. Her skin turned hot beneath his fingertips.

Gabriel drew his hand back reluctantly. “I’m not your enemy,” he managed to say.

“You’re not my fiancé, either.”

“Not yet.”

“Not ever.”

Gabriel wanted to pounce on her. He wanted to haul her into his arms and kiss her senseless. Instead, he said calmly, “Tell me that again in a few days, and I might believe you. In the meantime”—he reached into his coat for another engraved card—“I’m going to give this to Trenear.”

Deliberately he gave her a mocking glance, the kind that had never failed to drive his siblings mad . . . and held the card in front of her.

As he’d guessed, Pandora couldn’t resist the challenge.

She grabbed for the card. Gabriel made it disappear, seemingly in midair, before she could touch it. As a boy, he’d learned sleight of hand from cardsharps during his visits to Jenner’s.

Pandora’s expression changed, her eyes widening. “How did you do that?”

Deftly Gabriel made the card reappear. “Learn to ask nicely,” he told her, “and I may show you someday.”

Her brows lowered. “Never mind. I’m not interested.”

But he knew it was a lie. The truth was in her eyes.

She was interested, no matter how she fought it.

And God help him . . . so was he.





Chapter 3




Two nights after the Chaworth ball, Gabriel practiced at the billiards table in the private apartments above Jenner’s. The luxurious rooms, which had once been occupied by his parents in the earliest days of their marriage, were now reserved for the convenience of the Challon family. Raphael, one of his younger brothers, usually lived at the club, but at the moment was on an overseas trip to America. He’d gone to source and purchase a large quantity of dressed pine timber on behalf of a Challon-owned railway construction company. American pine, prized for its toughness and elasticity, was used as transom ties for railways, and it was in high demand now that native British timber was in scarce supply.

The club wasn’t the same without Raphael’s carefree presence, but spending time alone here was better than the well-ordered quietness of his terrace at Queen’s Gate. Gabriel relished the comfortably masculine atmosphere, spiced with scents of expensive liquor, pipe smoke, oiled Morocco leather upholstery, and the acrid pungency of green baize cloth. The fragrance never failed to remind him of the occasions in his youth when he had accompanied his father to the club.

For years, the duke had gone almost weekly to Jenner’s to meet with managers and look over the account ledgers. His wife Evie had inherited it from her father, Ivo Jenner, a former professional boxer. The club was an inexhaustible financial engine, its vast profits having enabled the duke to improve his agricultural estates and properties, and accumulate a sprawling empire of investments. Gaming was against the law, of course, but half of Parliament were members of Jenner’s, which had made it virtually exempt from prosecution.