It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers #2)(53)

The crowded ballroom seemed to disappear, and she felt as if they were dancing alone, far away in some private place. Intensely aware of his body, the occasional touch of his warm breath on her cheek, Lillian drifted into a curious waking dream …a fantasy in which Marcus, Lord Westcliff, would take her upstairs after the waltz, and undress her, and lay her gently across his bed. He would kiss her everywhere, as he had once whispered…he would make love to her, and hold her while she slept. She had never wanted that kind of intimacy with a man before.

“Marcus…” she said absently, testing his name on her tongue. He glanced at her alertly. The use of someone’s first name was profoundly personal, far too intimate unless they were married or closely related. Smiling mischievously, Lillian turned the conversation into a more appropriate channel. “I like that name. It’s not common nowadays. Were you named after your father?”

“No, after an uncle. The only one on my mother’s side.”

“Were you pleased to be his namesake?”

“Any name would have been acceptable, so long as it wasn’t my father’s.”

“Did you hate him?”

Westcliff shook his head. “Something worse than that.”

“What could be worse than hatred?”

“Indifference.”

She stared at him with open curiosity. “And the countess?” she dared to ask. “Are you also indifferent to her?”

One corner of his mouth curled upward in a half smile. “I regard my mother as an aging tigress—one whose teeth and claws are blunted, but who is still capable of inflicting harm. Therefore I try to conduct all interactions with her at a safe distance.”

Lillian gave him a mock-indignant scowl. “And yet you tossed me right into the cage with her this morning!”

“I knew you had your own set of teeth and claws.” Westcliff grinned at her expression. “That was a compliment.”

“I’m glad you told me so,” she said dryly. “Otherwise I might not have known.”

To Lillian’s dismay, the waltz ended with one last sweet drawn-out note of a single violin. Amid the ensuing currents of dancers moving off the main floor, with others coming to replace them, Westcliff stopped abruptly. He was still holding her, she realized with a touch of confusion, and she took a hesitant step backward. Reflexively his arm hardened around her waist, and his fingers tightened in an instinctive attempt to keep her with him. Astonished by the action, and what it betrayed, Lillian felt her breath stop.

Checking his impulsiveness, Westcliff forced himself to release her. Still, she felt the force of desire radiating from him, as penetrating as the heat drafts of an entire forest on fire. And it was a mortifying thought that whereas her feelings for him were genuine, his might very well be the whimsical result of a perfume’s aroma. She would have given anything not to be so attracted to him, when disappointment or even heartbreak was a foregone conclusion.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked huskily, unable to look at him. “It was a mistake for us to dance.”

Westcliff waited so long to reply that she thought he might not. “Yes,” he finally said, the single syllable roughened with some unidentifiable emotion.

Because he could not afford to want her. Because he knew as well as she that a pairing between them would be a disaster.

Suddenly it hurt to be near him. “Then I suppose this waltz will be our first and our last,” she said lightly. “Good evening, my lord, and thank you for—”

“Lillian,” she heard him whisper.

Turning from him, she walked away with a brittle smile, while goose bumps rose on the exposed skin of her neck and back.

The rest of the night would have been a misery for Lillian, had it not been for a timely rescue in the form of Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent. He appeared beside her before she could join Evie and Daisy, who were sitting together on a velvet bench.

“What a graceful dancer you are, Miss Bowman.”

After being with Westcliff, it seemed awkward to look up into the face of a man who was so much taller than she. St.Vincent stared at her with a promise of wicked enjoyment that she found difficult to resist. His enigmatic smile could have been offered to a friend or an enemy with equal ease. Lillian let her gaze slip downward to the slightly off-center knot of his cravat. There was a hint of disarray in his clothing, as if he had dressed with a bit too much haste after leaving a lover’s bed—and meant to return there soon.

In answer to his easy compliment, Lillian smiled and shrugged a bit awkwardly, remembering too late the countess’s admonition that ladies never shrugged. “If I appeared graceful, my lord, it was because of the earl’s skill, not mine.”

“You’re too modest, sweet. I’ve seen Westcliff dance with other women, and the effect wasn’t nearly the same. You seem to have patched up your differences with him quite nicely. Are you friends now?”

It was a harmless question, but Lillian sensed that his meaning was multilayered. She replied cautiously, while she noticed that Lord Westcliff was escorting an auburn-haired woman to the refreshment table. The woman was glowing with obvious pleasure at the earl’s interest. A needle of jealousy stabbed through Lillian’s heart. “I don’t know, my lord,” she said. “It’s possible that your definition of friendship does not match mine.”