The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(67)

She let her skirts fall back into place. “A dance?” she blurted. That is what he’d request.

“A waltz,” he clarified. “And then your secret is your own.”

Cleopatra scanned his sharp-planed features for a hint of mockery. “Foine,” she said finally. “One waltz.” Uneasy with the gent’s urbane charm, Cleopatra took a wide berth around him, making for the door. All the while she kept sight of him from the corner of her eye.

“Oh, and Miss Killoran?” he called out, as soon as her fingertips were on the handle. “Just to clarify, that set will be tonight. The next waltz.”

He’d gathered she intended to sneak off, then. So, he was more clever than she’d credited. “Why do you want to dance with me?” she put to him, curiosity making her bold. Was it on a wager, similar to the kind Penelope had spoken of? Did he revel in flouting society’s conventions?

“Truthfully?”

She nodded. “If you’re capable of it.”

“On occasion, I am.” Where they’d had desperate gents inside the Devil’s Den who stole or attempted to cheat, Lord Landon had never been that man. “I find you refreshing,” he confessed.

Cleopatra snorted. “Oi wasn’t born yesterday.”

He quirked his lips at the corner. “And that is why I do. It is just a waltz, no more, and your secret meeting with me here—”

“You invaded my space first.”

“—shall remain your secret still,” he said over her.

A dance was all he wanted. Lord Landon, though arrogant with a rogue’s smile and a rake’s eye, was offering her nothing more than what she’d wanted for the past three weeks. And yet, as she nodded and fled back to the ballroom, she found it hadn’t been just a waltz she’d wanted after all.

She’d wanted a set with Adair.





Chapter 18

She’d had her dance.

A waltz, to be precise, with the Marquess of Landon, and Adair on the sidelines.

He should be relieved. After all, the roguish lord had spared Adair from suffering through a lesson and then those awkward movements.

So why did he sit in his office, three hours after their return, unable to sleep . . . or even focus on his work for the Hell and Sin?

Because you wanted to be the one to take her in your arms. You wanted to curl a hand about her waist and feel her fingers upon you . . . and instead some other man had claimed that right. Just as some other man would eventually claim Cleopatra as his bride. With a curse, Adair hurled the small stub of his charcoal pencil across the room. It hit the wall with a ping and then clattered unsatisfyingly quiet to the floor.

Nor, if he were being truthful with himself in the dead of night, had it solely been about Cleopatra dancing with another man.

This frustration and annoyance came from within . . . with himself and his own damned inability to dance.

A sharp, painful laugh tore from his lungs. Oh, the bloody irony of it. He’d scorned men who’d wasted their time and energies on such inane activities as dancing, just as he’d made light of Niall and Ryker both learning the rudimentary steps. And now, here he stood, feeling wholly inadequate. For even if his role as proprietor hadn’t kept him motionless, more guard than guest at Lady Beaufort’s affair this evening, his inability to dance would have. He, Adair Thorne, who’d long prided himself on being a master of anything he wished to do, had wanted nothing more in his life than to take Cleopatra in his arms.

Instead, he’d stood as a seething observer.

A light knock sounded at the door. Adair swung his gaze over to the door. It was her. Somehow in the time she’d been here, he’d come to feel her presence. He swiped a frustrated hand over his face. I’m either bloody exhausted or out of my eternal mind . . .

He considered ignoring that rapping. Considered letting Cleopatra believe he was otherwise somewhere else.

The door opened, and Cleopatra ducked her head inside. “I don’t believe for a moment that you didn’t hear me,” she nagged.

Adair sighed. Of course, he should have known better where this spitfire was concerned. She’d take command of any situation and space . . . including his office.

She folded her arms. “Did you just sigh because I’d come here?”

“I yawned,” he mumbled, going to fetch his pencil. He stooped and, picking it up, studied it. His broken pencil. Adair scowled at the tip.

“I know the difference between a yawn and a sigh,” she carried on with her usual temerity. Shoving the door closed with the heel of her foot, Cleopatra wandered over to his desk—just as she’d done so many times since she’d arrived here.

Only these late-night and early-morn exchanges were fleeting. Tonight’s waltz shared between her and Lord Landon was testament to that. He gnashed his teeth, his frustration intensifying as she climbed into his usual seat, her small frame nearly swallowed by the large leather chair.

The sight of her there was deeply intimate, and yet a reminder that they’d only been playing make-believe where their relationship was concerned. Ultimately, she’d belong to another. Mayhap, Lord Landon: too handsome for his own damned good, unscarred, once fought over by the prostitutes inside Adair’s club, and now by Cleopatra’s easy smile that night during their set, charmer of the wary Cleopatra Killoran. A red haze of rage descended over his vision, blinding, and with it spread an insidious jealousy throughout.