And Then She Fell(116)

“Good evening, Mary.”

She recognized the deep, drawling, sinfully seductive voice. She looked up—up—all the way up to Ryder Cavanaugh’s ridiculously handsome face. She’d decided years ago that such godlike male perfection was patently ridiculous, certainly in the effect it had on the female half of the ton. No, make that the female half of the species; she’d never met a woman of any class whom Ryder Cavanaugh did not affect.

In exactly that ridiculous way.

She’d made it a point never to allow even the smallest hint that she was aware of his charisma—the attraction that all but literally fell from him in waves—to show.

His late father’s heir, and now the Marquess of Raventhorne, he was considerably older than she was, somewhere over thirty years to her twenty-two, but she’d known him all her life. Nevertheless, she’d been surprised to see his broad shoulders moving about the drawing room before dinner, and to later see him seated a little way along the dinner table on the opposite side, but then she’d learned that he was a connection of the Glossups’ and had attended the dinner as the senior male of his line.

Ignoring the distraction of his gold-streaked, tawny-brown hair, a crowning glory too many ladies had compared to a lion’s mane, not least because it held the same tactile fascination, a temptation to touch, to pet, to run one’s fingers through the thick, soft locks, that had to be constantly guarded against, she fixed her eyes on his, a changeable medley of greens and golds framed by lush brown lashes, and baldly asked, “What is it, Ryder?”

From beneath his heavy hooded lids, his eyes looked down into hers. One tawny eyebrow slowly arched. He let the moment stretch, but she was too wise to let that tactic bother her; she held her pose, and let faint boredom seep into her expression.

“Actually,” he eventually murmured—and how he managed to make his voice evoke the image of a bed was a mystery she’d never solved—“I wondered where you were making for so very doggedly.”

She realized that with his significant height—Ryder would vie with Angelica’s husband, Dominic, for the title of tallest man in the room—he might well have been able to see her making her way through the crowd.

But why had he been watching her?

Most likely he was bored, and her determined progress had captured his peripatetic attention. She’d heard matrons uncounted bemoan the fact that Ryder grew bored very quickly. She’d also heard him described as “big, blond, and definitely no good,” except for his performance in the bedroom, which, by all accounts, was not just satisfactory but exemplary beyond belief.

Yet she’d always recognized the steel behind the languid lion’s mask, and knew he could be as dogged as she if he decided he wanted something—for instance to enliven an otherwise boring evening by toying with her.

Which, she had to admit, held a certain attraction. He was rapier-witted, and his silver tongue held a lethally honed edge, and he was utterly unshockable, yet there was a . . . she’d never been sure quite how to describe it, but . . . a deepness of strength in Ryder that, his ridiculous beauty aside, had always made her shy away from him.

She’d always thought that if ever he was moved to actually pounce and seize, even she would find it impossible to escape.

And she entertained no illusions about Ryder; she might be one of the strongest of ton females, even among the Cynster clan, yet not even she could ever hope to manage Ryder Cavanaugh.

Unmanageable was his middle name.

Given the point along her path at which she was presently poised, having Ryder Cavanaugh, of all the gentlemen in the ton, take any interest whatever in her—no matter how mild and, relatively speaking, innocent—was not just unnecessary but also could prove distinctly counterproductive, and might possibly give rise to unexpected hurdles.

For her, not him.

Given that she’d finally got her hands on the necklace and could now move forward along her path apace, she was even more adamantly disinclined to offer herself up as Ryder’s amusement for the evening.

She’d kept him waiting for her reply; that he had, indeed, waited, not shifting in the least, his hazel gaze locked on her face, meant that every second of further delay risked fixing his attention, a heavy, feline, weighty sensation, distinctly predatory, even more definitely on her . . . she tipped up her chin. “I don’t want to play, Ryder, at least not with you.” He would accept a straightforward—shockingly blunt—dismissal, while anything less definite might further pique his interest, so she held his gaze and simply stated, “You’ll only complicate things. So please, go and chase someone else.”