They came apart. He twirled her twice. He circled her wide and then drew her close. His dancing was impeccable, as well he knew.
“Are you forgetting you don’t like me? You believe I’m one of those lying conniving Smiths.” She forced a smile but spoke with a soft savageness she hoped would wound him the same way he’d wounded her.
“Believe me…I like you more than well enough.” He regarded her mouth as his thumb furtively stroked the top of hers.
She felt the intimacy of his touch through her glove. Needles of pleasure spread throughout her like heat on flesh numb from cold. The resurgence of feeling relief, joy and pain.
Before she embarrassed herself by doing something as silly as wilting to the floor, the dying strains of the cello signaled the end of the dance. Saved.
“Shall we?” Derek proffered his right arm. She accepted, momentarily grateful to have something solid to keep her upright.
Her crutch proved to be the very thing she required a crutch for. But she didn’t remove her hand. More of that gluttony she suffered from.
For the area skirting the dance floor, standing room was at a premium. Derek handled the swell of guests with ease, maneuvering them expertly until the press of bodies thinned, where one could breathe.
They passed a surprisingly well-dressed Lady Danvers, who refused to meet her gaze, which was odd as Elizabeth had never seen the dowager looking so ill at ease. Since the evening in the garden, the dowager had cornered her at several events slyly inquiring about the upcoming announcement. The dowager had been like a cat toying with a mouse certain that one of her swipes would draw blood.
Elizabeth wasn’t quite certain when she realized Derek was leading her farther and farther away. Where guests no longer surrounded them but were now voices at their backs, and the surroundings weren’t so brightly lit. But once she realized, she halted.
She’d once tread this perilous path before. It had landed her behind a hedgerow with a charming lord. The same path had had her giving away her innocence, the consequences, hers and hers alone to bear. This was the path her sister had taken and forever lived to regret. She’d be three times the fool to tread down it again.
Chapter Eleven
Elizabeth dropped her hand from his arm. “I’m going back to the ball.” Her voice wasn’t all that strong but her will was.
“Elizabeth…. Please” It wasn’t his tentative touch on her arm that halted her mid-stride but the entreaty in his voice. She felt scalded by it.
If she had any sense at all, she’d leave. But he’d never spoken to her like that before. As if he’d yearned for her from a distance and now she was within reach. So she stayed because when it came to her dealings with Derek Creswell, rational thinking sprouted wings and flew out the front door, attaining heights far out of mortal reach.
She was just a flesh and blood woman.
She turned and peered up at him. He even looked different. The way he looked at her; it was softer, wistful almost. As if she was no longer that Elizabeth Smith of Penkridge, Staffordshire, somehow connected to all that was treacherous and wicked in the world.
“What is it you want from me, Derek?” He’d made it clear he wasn’t going to marry her, so perhaps he thought to have her as his mistress.
And foolish foolish girl that she was, she didn’t know she would refuse him.
“Not here.” He glanced around. “Let us speak in private.”
The hallway was dimly lit and empty save them, but the entrance to the great room was within sight. Anyone could venture out and see them.
She hesitated a moment before relenting with a nod.
Taking her hand in his, he led her down a narrow hallway that branched from where they’d been.
“It seems you know this house intimately,” she murmured, not exactly accusing him of other intimacies with one of the female occupants she couldn’t bear to think of.
“I played here as a child. Lord and Lady Templeton are as close to me as family. I practically grew up with their son,” he responded, with a brief look down at her.
With those words, Elizabeth no longer wanted to hang the very lovely Marchioness of Templeton in effigy. His explanation certainly explained the easy familiarity between him and the lady of the manor. “Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere no one will interrupt us,” came his cryptic response.
She nearly pulled back then. Interrupt them from doing what? Did he intend to…do anything untoward? Here of all places? The thought did not arouse her or fill her with wicked anticipation.
He must have taken her hesitation as trepidation for he tightened his hold on her hand, angled his head down slightly and whispered in her ear, “Trust me.”
Trust him as much as he trusted her? That was reason enough for her to leave that instant. But she didn’t. She stayed because, ironically, she did trust him.
Seconds later, he pushed open the door to a room and ushered her inside. A quick glance around revealed a room really the size of a rather large closet furnished with a small writing desk, one solitary bookshelf, a cushioned armchair and a reading gas lamp. The lamp was unlit but light poured in through a passageway from the adjoining room. Elizabeth gathered this was the antechamber to the study or library.
Derek released her hand, removed his gloves and quickly lit the lamp. With deft efficiency, he fished into his jacket pocket and pulled out a key, which he used to open the desk drawer. The contents of the drawer now had Elizabeth’s focused attention. She watched as he picked up a sheaf of papers—no more than four in number—and handed them to her.
In dull surprise, she looked down at the papers filled with bold masculine scrawl now clasped in her hand and then back at him. “What is this?” she asked.
His mouth curved and his eyes seemed to light from within. Elizabeth didn’t think she’d ever seen anything quite as beautiful as his smile.
“With that report you are ensured Lady Danvers will never breathe a word of what she witnessed that evening in the garden. She will in fact never be a threat to your reputation whether you marry or not. I will even go as far to say she could see you prancing about as naked as the day you were born and would never speak a word of it.”
The individual words, Elizabeth understood, but together they colluded to confuse her and send her mind into a tailspin. And not because she was daft but because the notion didn’t seem possible. “What did you—? How could you have—? Do I even want to know?” She stared blindly down at the papers in her hand. Her mind registered dates and Italy and the name Vincent.
He laughed softly and smiled tenderly.
“Let us just say Lady Danvers is anxious that a certain Vincent Trifoli remain in Italy. He has more than a passing resemblance to her son and heir, Steven. They became acquainted forty-five years ago, just ten months shy of the earl’s birth.”
“The Earl of Danvers?” Elizabeth asked in a hushed voice.
Derek nodded.
And the dowager had had the nerve to lecture her on morality? It was beyond the pale, yet somewhat satisfying to know that the dowager couldn’t lord the incident over her anymore.
But that meant… She furrowed her brows. Why had he gone to the trouble of digging up the dowager’s past?
“But why would you do that? You never intended to marry me. I thought you wanted to see me ruined.”
He flinched at that. Reaching out his hand, he grasped her wrist and pulled her inexorably closer. In silence, he slowly peeled the glove from her hand and dropped it on the desk beside his. He then did the same to the other.
“I’m sorry. I was wrong,” he said, his voice deep and low. He drew her into his arms.
Elizabeth went stiff. He had been wrong about so many things. “Wrong about what precisely?”