To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(30)

He glanced at his legs, and his lips quirked. “No doubt she’ll make her opinion known.”

She stared at his face, and a funny thought entered her head. Samuel smiled the same way O’Hare the footman did: with his eyes.

LADY EMELINE CONTAINED herself for fully a minute after entering the carriage, which was a minute longer than Sam had estimated.

“What are you thinking to wear such things?” She scowled at his feet and legs.

“I believe I’ve told you before that they’re comfortable.” Probably she would scowl harder if she knew that he thought the expression was adorable. She wore an elaborately embroidered pale red gown with a yellow underskirt. The colors were gentler than those she usually employed, and although they became her, he preferred the flame reds and bold oranges.

She was an elegant lady of the London ton tonight, far removed from the woman who had accompanied him to a warehouse to inspect pottery. What had she thought of their outing? She’d seemed interested in his business transaction, but was it merely the novelty? Or did she perhaps feel the same communion of mind as he did?

Lady Emeline shook her head at him now, oblivious to the direction of his thoughts. Maybe she was beginning to realize the futility of arguing over his leggings. She turned on Rebecca instead. “Now, remember that you must not dance with anyone I have not expressly approved. Nor may you talk to anyone that I have not introduced you to. There will be men—I do not call them gentlemen—who have been known to break these rules, but you must not let them.”

Sam wondered if she was thinking of himself. She turned a gimlet eye on him, and he was made certain. He grinned back at her, his little ruffled hen. Lady Emeline sat beside her aunt, both ladies ramrod straight, although the older woman was nearly a head taller than her niece. The carriage rattled around a corner, making everyone inside sway. Beside him, Rebecca had wrapped her arms about herself.

He leaned close. “You look splendid. I hardly recognized you when I came down the stairs.”

Rebecca bit her lip and peeked up at him, and he was suddenly reminded of her as a little girl. She had looked at him thus when he’d visit her at their uncle’s house in Boston. He remembered her in a white cap and apron, standing shyly in Uncle Thomas’s dark hallway, waiting to greet him. He’d never known what to say to her when he’d visited—he’d come to Boston once or twice a year. His little sister had seemed such a foreign creature, a girl child brought up in the prim civilization of Boston society. All the things he knew—the forest, hunting and trapping, and eventually the army—were completely strange to her.

He blinked now, realizing that Rebecca had spoken to him. “What?”

She leaned close, her brown eyes vulnerable. “Do you think anyone will dance with me?”

“I’ll have to beat them off with a stick.”

She giggled and for a moment that little girl in the white cap shone in her eyes.

Mademoiselle Molyneux cleared her throat. “We are almost there, ma petite. Compose yourself so that you may present an appearance of gentility.” The old lady sent a sharp look at Rebecca’s skirts. “You have remembered to wear the shoes, yes?”

Rebecca blinked. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Bon. And here is the mansion.”

Sam looked out the window and saw a line of carriages creeping toward the Earl of Westerton’s town house. Lady Emeline was right: This was too grand a ball to be Rebecca’s first. But introducing his sister to society was only part of the reason he’d chosen this particular ball tonight. The other, more important half, was that he was on the hunt.

He waited patiently as their carriage crawled forward in line, listening with only a fraction of his attention to the female chatter within the carriage. Even now, when his entire being strained toward his goal, he was aware of Lady Emeline in particular. Without turning his head, he followed the cadence of her speech, the pauses and dips in tones. He knew when she glanced his way and could feel her puzzled curiosity in her gaze. She still wanted to know why he’d chosen this particular ball. He could tell her. It involved her brother as well. But something within him shrunk from revealing his true purpose.

The carriage door was flung open by a footman he didn’t know, and Sam’s eyes narrowed at the servant. That was a matter he must watch as well. He hadn’t missed how close O’Hare had stood to Rebecca earlier in the hallway. Sam met the footman’s gaze. This man immediately lowered his eyes, something O’Hare had failed to do. Sam admired courage, but he wondered how long a man could last as a servant with such a spirit.

Sam stepped down onto the cobblestones in front of the Westerton house and turned to help his sister and Mademoiselle Molyneux out. Only Lady Emeline remained in the carriage. She hesitated in the doorway, eyeing him suspiciously.

He smiled and held out his hand. “My lady.”

She pursed her lips. “Mr. Hartley.”

But she laid her hand in his, and Sam had the pleasure of wrapping his fingers around hers. She descended the steps regally and attempted to withdraw her hand. Instead, he bowed over her hand, brushing his lips against fine kid, the scent of lemon balm bathing his face.

Then he straightened. “Shall we?”

But her expression had softened somehow in the interval that he’d bent over her hand. He stilled, the people around him, his sister, even the hunt, fading into the background as he stared at Lady Emeline. Her lips were parted, red and wet, as if she’d just licked them, and her eyes were uncertain. Had they been alone, he would have caught her, drawn her into his arms until her body met his, and lowered his head to—