One Night With You (The Derrings #3)(5)

"Astrid," she began, her gaze darting about the ballroom uneasily, trying to ignore the gentleman not two yards away who leered at her, licking his lips as if she were a bit of dessert he would like to sample. "Where is Lucy?"

"There." Astrid nodded to the dance floor, looking up from her plate briefly. Jane turned, watching as Lucy whirled past in the arms of a pot-bellied Viking. She frowned at the way the Viking clutched Lucy close, his hand skating down her spine, inching dangerously close to her derriere. With admirable composure, Lucy grasped his hand and lifted it higher on her back.

Jane shook her head. This was scarcely what she had imagined when her friends proposed an evening out. Shaking her head she looked away, catching sight of a gentleman at the other end of the table as he fed a woman a morsel from his plate, thrusting his entire finger into her mouth as he did so.

Heat crawled up her face and neck, burning the tips of her ears as the woman suckled his finger as one would a stick of peppermint. Forcing her gaze away, she muttered, "This is not what I had in mind—"

"I warned Lucy you would be frightened."

Frightened. The heat in her cheeks grew scalding at the thought of her friends discussing her possible unwillingness to remain in such a cesspit as somehow a deficiency—a lack of courage. Jane the mouse, her sister had always called her.

Jane inched closer to Astrid as a man wearing a toga slid past, using his proximity to trail his pudgy fingers down the length of her bare arm. Shivering, she tucked her arm close to her side.

"This has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with good sense."

"Hmm," Astrid offered in reply. Jane was uncertain, but the sound may have been in approval of the tea cake she chewed.

Jane propped a hand on her hip and glared at Astrid. "Don't you find this all a little"—she groped for the right word—"unnerving?"

"Unnerving?" Astrid angled her head as if in heavy contemplation. Her dark eyes scanned the crowded ballroom before looking back to Jane. "Is that not a convoluted way of saying frightened?" Shrugging, she took another bite.

"Semantics," Jane snapped, searching again among the throng for a glimpse of Lucy's strawberry blond hair, convinced that talking to her wouldn't be half so vexing. Her gaze skipped over faces. Then she saw… something, someone, a profile of a man— a ghost. Her heart jerked, a painful leap in her chest at the achingly familiar fall of brown hair over a wide brow. Dancers whirled in her line of vision. Gasping, she craned her head, leaned to the side, and tried to catch another glimpse. But he was gone. A name whispered through her head like the flutter of a breeze.

Shaking her head, she shoved the whisper from her head and resumed her search for Lucy, at last spotting her. The Viking trailed his hand down the arch of her neck, catching the fiery curl draped over her shoulder and bringing it to his nose. Even across the ballroom, Lucy's cringe was visible.

Jane felt a pang of guilt knowing that tonight's escapade was for her benefit, so that she could experience a bit of freedom. And her friend endured that jackanape's paws all over her.

"Good heavens," she declared. "Enough is enough. We're leaving." Turning, she set her glass of punch on a nearby table with a decisive thud. Standing on her tiptoes, she craned her neck to signal Lucy.

"Hello, my dears."

Jane swung around and her heart shuddered to a painful stop.

The blood ran cold in her veins. Her mouth went slack as she stared into familiar features—thin lips set in a face bloated and fatigued from a lifetime of overimbibing. Had her thoughts somehow conjured this devil before her?

At his club, indeed. The wretch.

Astrid sputtered on her drink and reached for Jane's arm.

"You all right there?" Desmond asked, patting Astrid's back. Nodding, Astrid pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, the fingers of her other hand tightening about Jane's arm. Her eyes, wide and shocked in her cream-colored domino, collided with Jane's.

Ever so slowly, Jane inched back a step, then another.

Astrid, as though sensing her intent, released her arm.

"Where are you off to, my dear?" Desmond snatched her hand before she could disappear in the crowd and shoved his face alarmingly close to hers. "Something dashed familiar about you." His fingers stroked the inside of her arm in small circles. "Have we met?"

"No," she rasped, heart thundering against her ribs.

His thin lips stretched into a leer. "Must be my heart recognizing its own match, then." Jane swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. "F—forgive me, but I was just leaving," she managed to get out, relieved at the strangled, unfamiliar sound of her voice.

"You can't leave without first granting me a dance," he insisted, tucking her against his side. She opened her mouth to object, and then closed it with a snap, too fearful that he would identify her voice. Stiff and silent, she allowed him to pull her onto the dance floor, trying to shrink into herself and make herself small, unrecognizable.

Through whirling figures, she caught a glimpse of Astrid's dismayed gaze. Lucy soon joined her, and together they watched her with Desmond as though they witnessed some freakish exhibition at a carnival.

Desmond's hand slid lower, urging her closer. Her stomach churned as he rubbed his cheek against hers, his fetid breath hot and moist in her ear.