Pursuing Lord Pascal (5 page)

“I hoped to avoid any misunderstandings about
where my thoughts are leading.” He still looked amused. “You’re not
an ingénue, Lady Mowbray.”

The problem was that in most ways that
counted, she was an ingénue. She realized that her hand still lay
in his. The first time he’d touched her, her heart had turned
cartwheels. It said something for how he’d distracted her today
that she’d forgotten they held hands.

She slid her hand free and clenched it in her
lap. “You’re mocking me.”

He frowned. “Not at all.”

“Then why would you say such a nonsensical
thing?”

He cast her a wry glance. “Kinder, please,
Lady Mowbray.”

“You’ll have to forgive my manners.” She
sucked in an annoyed breath. “I’m not used to strangers wanting to
marry me. I wondered if it was some peculiar London joke.”

“You’re a beautiful woman.” He studied her
with a puzzled expression. “You must have men after you all the
time.”

“Hundreds,” she said drily and with perfect
honesty. There was her farm manager, and her tenants, and her
neighbors who, after initial reluctance to accept a woman’s advice
on farm matters, now clamored for her help.

She was startled when Lord Pascal accepted
the answer at face value. “Exactly. So if I’m bowled over, why
should you be surprised?”

“You’re very direct.” She hadn’t expected
that. His extraordinary looks deceived her into thinking this was a
man who would woo a woman in rhyming couplets. “You’re not at all
as I imagined when I was fourteen.”

His laugh held a hint of self-derision. “I’m
a fairly basic fellow. Does that disappoint you?”

She thought back to the buffle-headed milksop
her infatuation had constructed in her mind. “No.”

He brightened. “So I’ve got a chance?”

She stifled a laugh. “No.”

This close, there was no avoiding his
substantial physicality. The arms clasping her in the waltz had
been impressively muscled, and the body next to hers on this cursed
small seat was hard and lithe. And warm as a coal fire.

His hands lay loose on his powerful thighs,
the reins draped over them. Everything about him was perfect. The
idea that he might want a harum-scarum ragamuffin like Amy Mowbray
was outlandish.

But of course, thanks to Sally’s efforts, she
wasn’t that ramshackle bumpkin anymore. At least on the outside. On
the inside, she was still her plain, outspoken self. The knowledge
that if Pascal had encountered her a month ago, he wouldn’t have
spared her a glance increased the feeling of unreality.

“Why?” he asked.

“In any true sense, we met last night. You
know nothing about me.”

“The best part of marriage is all the things
you discover after the vows are spoken.”

She shook her head and clasped her gloved
hands in her lap. “You can’t possibly mean that.”

“Why not?” He seemed content to let the
horses amble along through the dappled sunshine under the trees.
“Anyway, I know more about you than you think.”

“Oh?” She waited for some flippant reply. But
his expression was serious as he studied her.

“You love your family, and you’re loyal to
your friends. You’re very clever. You have a romantic streak, but
you do your best to repress it. You consider yourself a sensible
woman—and most of the time, that’s true. You have a dry sense of
humor, and the ability to mock yourself and the pomposity of
others. How am I going?”

Some women might find it flattering that an
attractive man paid such minute attention. Amy was uneasy. The
woman he described was better than she was, but the resemblance was
unmistakable. It wasn’t her. But it was certainly a version of
her.

“You make me sound as if I have no faults,”
she said gruffly.

His smile conveyed too much affection for a
man who had only met her last night. “I make you sound like you’re
perfect for me. I saw immediately that you were something special.
And I, my dear Lady Mowbray, am a connoisseur.”

She stared back, both fascinated and
appalled. “This is some sort of game.”

“On my honor, it isn’t.” He flicked the reins
at the horses to urge them to a trot. “I begin to suspect something
else about you—you pretend to more confidence than you
possess.”

She cringed. Sally and Morwenna had both said
the same thing. “What on earth makes you say that?”

“Your reaction to my proposal, for one
thing.”

“I’m very good at running my estate.”

“Oh, I’m not saying you underestimate your
brains or competence. But I’m beginning to wonder whether you
realize how brilliantly you sparkled last night. Everyone admired
you.”

She sighed, as the carriage bumped across the
grass. “That was because you made such a fuss about dancing with
me. Every woman in that ballroom envied me.”

“And every gentleman envied me. You may as
well accept we make a fine pair.”

She bit back a laugh, even as what he said
seeped down through chronic self-doubt to settle in her bones.
Perhaps Sally had performed a miracle, transforming the hardy
thistle Amy Mowbray into a fragrant rose. “Which is no reason to
seek a more permanent arrangement.”

He shrugged, not shifting his gaze from the
bays. The carriage emerged from the trees onto the lawns where the
ton gathered to see and be seen. “I’m thirty years old. I’ve been
out in society for more than ten years. I’ve pursued women, and
women have pursued me. I’ve learned to tell the genuine jewels from
the paste, literally and figuratively. You, Lady Mowbray, are a
diamond. A man would be a fool to sit back while some other damned
oaf picked you up and put you in his pocket.”

With the presence of other people, the
intensity between them receded to a bearable level. Even if Pascal
was still talking tosh. On that secluded path, every word had
wrapped around Amy like rope, until she feared she’d never
escape.

Now she burst out laughing. “Lord Pascal, I
appreciate your kindness. I wonder what you’d say if I took you at
your word and had the banns called.”

His wicked smile deflated her returning ease.
“My dear Lady Mowbray, I’d say you’ve made me the happiest man in
England.”

Before she could protest, he was bowing to a
handsome lady and her daughter who drew their carriage to a halt
beside them. The ladies looked vaguely familiar. Amy’s life in
Leicestershire involved meeting the same people over and over. The
onslaught of new faces last night had left her floundering.

What a bizarre world London was. Populous and
bustling. Yet strangely intimate, so one encountered the next day
the people one had met the night before. While she murmured polite
responses to the lady’s questions, her eyes roamed the stylish
crowd. So many familiar faces, some she could even put a name
to.

In the distance, she saw Sally driving a
phaeton with Meg and Brandon beside her. She forced her attention
back to Lady Compton-Browne and was shocked to catch flaring
dislike in Miss Compton-Browne’s eyes.

Amy summoned a smile, but the girl no longer
looked at her, but at Lord Pascal. Her expression betrayed the
misery of a dog drooling after a juicy bone placed high out of
reach.

Ah.

Pascal made his excuses and rolled the
carriage forward to greet more of his friends. That set the pattern
for the next hour, and to Amy’s surprise, she enjoyed herself.
Nobody treated her like an interloper, or questioned her right to
be with this superb man. She even found the confidence to face down
the ladies’ envious stares.

“You’ve made me a social success,” she said
wryly, when Pascal pulled the carriage up with a flourish before
Sally’s front steps.

“Nonsense. You did that yourself.”

“Having you as my escort didn’t hurt.”

“It certainly didn’t hurt your escort. He’s
had a thoroughly delightful couple of hours.”

“So have I.” To her relief, the heavy traffic
on the way home had given him no opportunity to revive that
troubling conversation about marriage. His boldness left her scared
and unsettled and puzzled—and stupidly, dangerously tempted. For
more kisses, above all. Some hitherto unrecognized feminine
instinct insisted that if Pascal bent his mind to it, he could kiss
her to heaven and back. “Thank you.”

Sally’s gleaming black door opened, and a
footman ran down the stairs to hold the horses. Another appeared to
assist Amy to alight, but retreated to stare stalwartly into space
when Pascal shook his head.

“My pleasure. I’m glad the drive wasn’t
nearly the ordeal you expected.”

She released a startled gasp of laughter.
Perhaps he did know her better than she thought, after all. “Oh,
dear, Sally would be disappointed. She tried so hard to teach me to
pretend all of this is a mere doddle to my sophisticated self.”

“You acquitted yourself beautifully, Lady
Mowbray. I told you—I’m paying special attention.”

Just like that, her earlier tumult returned.
Her stomach knotted, and the moisture dried from her mouth. “Lord
Pascal…”

He jumped down from the carriage to come
around to offer one gloved hand. “Don’t fret.”

“Don’t fret?” she whispered with sudden
temper, but too conscious of the servants to give this arrogant,
disturbing—gorgeous—man the set-down he deserved. “Of course I’m
going to fret.”

“Good,” he said, still smiling as if she
wasn’t telling him off. His teeth were as perfect as the rest of
him. Straight. White. And somehow predatory.

“What the devil do you mean by that?” She
placed her hand in his and made a creditable descent from the
carriage. Heat curled up from his fingers and settled in the pit of
her stomach in a most unsettling fashion. Except a woman would have
to be dead not to find Pascal attractive. And however quiet Amy’s
life might have been in recent years, she was far from dead.

“When you fret, you’ll be thinking of
me.”

“Not necessarily with fondness,” she said
grimly. The groom in his bright blue livery ran up the stairs from
the kitchen, bowed to his employer, and settled in the seat at the
back of the carriage.

Pascal laughed again. “Well, I’ll be thinking
of you—and fondly.”

For a searing moment, his gaze focused on her
lips, and she was transported back to those dazzling seconds when
he’d kissed her. She hadn’t scolded him nearly as severely as she
should for that piece of daring. In fact, she had a horrid feeling
she hadn’t scolded him at all.

“You’re engaged for Lady Bartlett’s ball
tonight?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, and realized he still held
her hand. She had to stop doing this.

She pulled away, struggling to ignore a pang
at the separation. She couldn’t stand out in the street, holding
hands with Lord Pascal as if they were sweethearts. The innocent
description seemed incongruous for such a worldly man.

“Will you save me both waltzes?”

Her lips twitched. It was devilish difficult
to cling to anger. Dear Lord, he was a master at these flirtatious
games, while she was a mere novice. “No, I will not.”

When he placed one of those elegant hands on
his heart in a tragic gesture, she giggled. And Amy couldn’t
remember giggling since she’d been a silly chit under this very
man’s spell.

“Cruel beauty.” His blue eyes—that was such
an impossible color—sharpened. “One waltz.”

“Very well.”

“And the supper dance?”

“My lord—”

“Excellent.” Another flashing smile as he
caught her hand and bent over it. She braced for his lips on her
glove, the way she’d await a blow. But the contact never came,
although the way he squeezed her fingers set her giddy heart
racing. “Until tonight.”

He jumped into the curricle and waited as Amy
went inside. Only her conscience knew how difficult it was not to
look back and watch him drive away.

When Amy walked into the house, Morwenna was
writing a letter in the drawing room. “Amy, come and talk to
me.”

Amy took off her hat and coat and passed them
to another of the ubiquitous footmen. Smoothing her fly-away hair,
she went to join her sister-in-law, who had already put aside her
pen and poured her a cup of tea. The room still looked like it held
every flower in London, apart from one bouquet of pink roses which
had escaped to take pride of place in her bedroom.

“Oh, you’re an angel,” she said gratefully,
taking the cup.

“How was your drive with the notorious Lord
Pascal? I do think he’s the most heavenly looking man.”

Amy found herself smiling, although she’d
felt troubled and harried when she’d first come in. “Isn’t he just?
One itches to immortalize him in marble.”

“His name was linked with Fenella’s and
Helena’s, I gather. He clearly has an eye for a pretty girl. Watch
yourself. He has a terrible reputation. One glance from those blue,
blue eyes, and ladies go quite silly.”

“I can imagine.” Amy sipped the tea,
considering what Morwenna said.

All her life, she’d heard gossip about
Pascal. He’d not only flirted with Fenella and Helena, but with
Caro, too. He seemed to have a penchant for widows. Was Amy Mowbray
merely another in a long list?

“So did you?”

“Did I what?” Amy found a seat near the fire.
The day had been warm for March, but as night drew in, a chill
tinged the air.

“Did you go silly?”

For a long moment, she stared into the
flames. When she answered, her tone was thoughtful. “You know, I
think I might have.”

Morwenna laughed in delight and rushed over
to hug her, threatening to spill the tea. “I’m so glad.”

“What are you glad about?” Sally asked,
sweeping in and stripping off her driving gloves. Amy had been
impressed with her friend’s talent as a whip. Even from yards away,
she’d seen that Sally handled a team of horses with aplomb.