Wild Lily (Those Notorious Americans Book 1)(15)

What is wrong with me? For God’s sake.

He never ogled a lady. Not since he’d been a randy twelve-year-old.

Still, he stepped to one side in the box so that Lily had a choice to sit next to him or insult him and walk to the other side where the only other seat was open. She checked his gaze, glancing away as if their eyes had never met. But she sat beside him.

He let out his breath, relieved. The others took up the gilded red damask chairs and he settled in his own, congratulating himself like a lovesick fool that he could bask in the glow of the lovely American. She had more than beauty, too. He crossed one leg over the other, suppressing his satisfaction. She had wits enough to turn his mother’s insult to a compliment.

Then Lily faced him.

He locked on to those remarkable blue eyes. She searched as if she rummaged for some lost treasure. He wished he knew what it was. He’d give it her in a second if only she’d remain forged to him. “Can I get you champagne from The Glacier?”

“No, thank you. Perhaps later.”

Very well. What else might we discuss? “Did your fitting with Monsieur Worth go well?”

“It did.”

If she were any other woman, she’d be heaping him with details of fabrics and colors, shoes and bonnets. Instead she gave him silence. How was he to get on?

But she raised her face. Dear God. Her perfect oval face and the eyes that spoke of banked blue fires. Was that interest in him? Or not?

He despaired of ever learning.

Frustrated, he removed his gloves. Her gaze fell to his hands, drifted away and returned. She seemed troubled, flexing her fingers. “How was Madame le Comtesse when you took her home? Better?”

“Remy did the honors. But when I left the carriage, she seemed quite…bubbly.”

Lily’s tension collapsed and she wore a grin. “She loves champagne.”

“Shouldn’t we all.”

“You don’t?”

“It depends on my mood.”

“So. When you are happy, what do you drink?” she asked, playing with him now.

He arched a brow. “A burgundy with beef. A white from the Loire with scallops. A Scots whiskey when I am happy.”

“And when you’re sad?”

“A Scots whiskey.”

She let out a laugh.

Had they overcome the tension? “And what do you like when you’re happy?”

“Beer.”

He guffawed and others in the box shot him a look.

She leaned close and he inhaled her alluring scent. “Do you?”

“Like beer?” He loved the look on her face, open and accepting, full of humor. “I like to drink it with good friends.”

“Me, too.”

Oh, he was undone. By her naturalness. By her lack of guile. “Then you and I must become friends and enjoy fine beer.”

She turned away, swallowed hard and opened her fan. Whipping the thing so that the air around them grew crisp with tension, she raised the hope that he might have unnerved her as she did him.

Good.

The others spoke, conversed. Remy was fully engaged with Mrs. Roland. Carbury with Elanna. His mother chatted with Killian Hanniford and damn, if she wasn’t smiling, almost cooing to the American.

And Julian felt like a dimwit. Here he sat, silent. Undone. By the beauty of an American. A girl. Young and effervescent.

So much so, he had to admit to his great dismay, that he had lied to himself. Greatly. She was not forgettable. Not in looks or manner.

True, he liked all he saw. The elegant line from her ear to her shoulder. The delicate tendons along her nape. The way wisps of her hair fell, one by one, while she moved her head in tiny increments to or fro. The way she tipped her head when the orchestra struck up a chord that roused her. The unblemished expanse of her appealing décolleté.

He tore his gaze away, musing that he examined her like an artist memorizing his model. Remy, the true artist, would laugh at him.

He shook his head. Hot, bothered, he dug the program from his inner coat pocket. With blind eyes, he perused it. But he thrust it aside. He did not care a whit who sang. Or what. Or when. He lived only for the view. How she sat, her long arms swathed in formal white gloves. Her hands resting, cupped in each other. Her back arching, her shoulders rising, her derriere flexing.

He shifted in his own chair.

He was besotted. He sat in a crowded opera house with two thousand others, lusting for a woman to whom he’d spoken ten words.

He breathed deeply, casting about to find some other enchantment. What he saw were two gentlemen examining her, too. One man with a pair of binoculars in the box opposite them. Another man in the audience looking up in pure intoxication. Julian had no idea who they were. They had good taste. But no chance with Lily Hanniford. Not tonight. He was here to shield her from adventurers and charlatans. To throw a mantel of English correctness over the upstart Americans. To bestow on her, by his very proximity, a legitimacy and a value to Parisian society.

He crossed his arms and stared the two men down. Oh, yes. Nothing like the medieval glory of the Seton duchy to assure acceptance whether here or in London.

Whatever possessed him, he had no idea. But he reached over and took one of her hands to place on his knee.

She went to stone.

He smiled in irony. He’d been hard as a rock for the last hour.