Tempted by a Lady’s Smile (15 page)

“You disapprove of the marquess?” she ventured hesitantly, pulling her focus away from Lord Westfield.

There should be something affirming in having all her own thoughts these years about that very gentleman carefully echoed by her brother. Yet, what would he say to the truth that she’d gone and fallen in love with another? A man who’d seared her lips forever with the memory of his kiss.

“Do you know what, Gemma?”

Pulled to the moment, Gemma silently shook her head.

“He will make any lady a perfectly fine husband, but you are not any lady.” He downed the contents of his glass and dangled the empty flute between his fingers. “You are my sister. And I would have you with a gentleman who notices you and not a rogue who takes three years to see that you are there, Gemma.”

Her throat worked and she leaned up on tiptoe. Emery stiffened as she placed a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”

Cheeks flushed, Emery waved his empty glass. “Yes, well,” he said, giving his throat a clear. “I am going to seek out the card rooms.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Because that is the manner of gentleman
I
am.”

A laugh bubbled from her lips and she swatted him. “Go.” She stared at his swiftly retreating form. He moved with the speed of a man who’d been granted the king’s pardon. There was no more loving brother and, yet, he’d never been one for those shows of emotion. Which is why his words resonated.

Her smile faded. Emery spoke of her finding a man who’d noticed her and, yet, Richard, who’d swiftly captured her heart, had noticed another and for it, he would only and forever see that woman. Gemma could not compete with the illustrious figure he’d held aloft.
I want to, though. I want him to see me…and only me…

Just as her brother had said. After years of being invisible to every single lord at every infernal ball and soiree, she wanted to be appreciated and noticed for who she was. And Richard was the man to give the lady who owned his heart that strident devotion. Alas, there had been another before her. A faceless woman Gemma could have never hoped to compete with for Richard’s sheer connection to that lady.

She stilled. Her skin burned with the feel of being watched. She did a sweep and found him. Richard stood at the pillar on the opposite end of the ballroom, staring at her with a burning intensity. And this was not a man who did not notice her. This was a man who, even with the distance separating them, pierced her with the heat of his stare, stirring a wild fluttering inside her belly.

Gemma cocked her head. Or rather, she thought he was staring at her. She peeked around, looking about for the other person who might have secured his focus. Looking back to Richard, she found him smiling—very much, at her. Nor was his the jaded, cynical grin, or the cocksure half-grin she’d come to expect. This was a sincere expression captured in honesty. She returned his smile. She cast a furtive look about, looked back and lifted her hand in a faint greeting.

Richard held his fingers up.

There was such an intimacy to their stolen exchange that felt more scandalous, more intimate, than any of the bolder, more passionate embraces they’d shared. Her heart doubled its beat. And for a gentleman who’d only seen one woman, and pined for her enough to carry that flask, he stared at her…as though there was only Gemma. Then, with a single-minded purpose, he walked the perimeter of the ballroom. Occasionally the kaleidoscope of twirling dancers separated them and with each step that brought him closer, a breathless anticipation filled her.

Gemma pressed her warm palms against the smooth column, feeling nothing but the thrumming energy inside. Two years earlier, she’d attended a lecture at the Royal Academy. On display had been the Leyden jar which kept electricity contained inside. With lords and a smattering of ladies yawning about her, Gemma had perched on the edge of her chair, transfixed by that clear, crystal container. How was it possible for energy to be so contained? As energy thrummed inside her—she knew.

Her heart thumped as he continued his forward path, his powerful stare not leaving hers. It was odd how even separated by more than thirty paces with a crowd of guests between her and another being, she could feel by the fix of his eyes and the sweep of his lashes that mesmeric connection.

Then Lord Westfield stepped into his path and the magical pull died a jarring death.

As Richard slowed to a stop, he slid his attention from Gemma to the future Duke of Somerset. From her cover behind the pillar, Gemma’s heart sank. She hovered in her hiding spot. With her blatant attention, she was not unlike every lady present now eying those two converging gentlemen. Except, where so many of the others studied one with a single-minded purpose, Gemma fixed on the other. She’d not been unlike those other ladies; raising the Marquess of Westfield to an illustrious status, seeing a paragon and not a man. Not unlike the way Richard had elevated his Eloise to a lofty status to which no woman could dare aspire.

Now, with the two gentlemen side by side, she could not help but compare them. One gentleman, who by his birthright had been born to near royalty, and the other, who found himself born a second son and who’d subsequently built an existence with his skill and intelligence. That was the manner of man she’d spend her life with.

The two men sketched bows and then moved in opposite directions. Lord Westfield did a quick sweep of the room, but she looked away, instead seeking Richard. She wrinkled her nose. Blast and blazes. Where was he?

“Miss Reed, we meet again,” Richard’s voice sounded over her shoulder and with a gasp, she spun about.

“Mr. Jonas,” she whispered. Of their own will, her eyes caressed the increasingly familiar planes of his harshly beautiful face. How singularly odd. To have come to the duke’s summer party with one intention, only to find her world so singularly upended in just five days. It defied the logic, reason, and sense she’d lived her life by. It made a mockery of time and, instead, presented her with a new, unfamiliar, and yet thrilling aspect on life—and love.

In three years, she could place on her fingers and toes the number of sets a gentleman had sought from her. That was, not coerced by her protective and loving older brother.
Ask me to dance. Ask it because you wish it…

And suddenly, she who’d hovered on the fringe, awaiting a gentleman to show some proverbial interest to her because he’d been so moved, tired of it, at last. “Do you dance, Richard?”

He furrowed his noble brow.

“Dance,” she said slowly, motioning to the dancers now taking to the floor for the next set.

Confusion receded and Richard winked. That slight, seductive movement set off another round of fluttering in her belly. “Do you think because I breed horses that I’m unable to dance a waltz?” There was a dry teasing to that inquiry and, yet, layered within that question, hinted a vulnerability that came from his birthright as spare to an heir.

How could he not fully know a man was defined by more than his title, but by his strength of character and wisdom?

“No.” Leaning up on tiptoe, Gemma shrunk the distance between them. “I believe because you haven’t asked me to partner you that you’re unable to dance.”

*

By God, the lady had shamelessly challenged him.

Nay…

Holding her bold-eyed stare twinkling with mischief and merriment, Gemma Reed had done something more. She’d, in a roundabout way, asked him to dance. At her uncompromising commitment to saying the words she wished to speak and not cowing to Society’s strictures, she rose all the more in his estimation. His throat worked as he accepted that safe description of how the young woman had buffeted his world.

At his continued silence, she waggled her eyebrows in a teasing manner. “Well?”

He could easily make light of her question and present an equally teasing response. He could make his excuses and turn on his heel and run as far and fast as was safe. And given his friend’s revelation last evening of his intention to ask for Gemma’s hand, well, if Richard was at all honorable, he’d reject the unspoken request.

But he was a bastard and a miserable excuse of a friend.

Wordlessly, Richard extended his elbow and Gemma automatically placed her fingertips on his sleeve and allowed him to guide her from the tucked away corner she’d found herself this evening. “So tell me, Gemma,” he began as they took their places among the other dancers. “Do you make it a habit of lingering on the sidelines?” First the copse and now the edge of the ballroom.

She lifted her hand to his shoulder and he placed his at her trim waist. “Yes.” A surge of heat burned through her satin gown, singeing his gloved hand, and he ached to yank the glove off so that small barrier between them was gone.

“Yes, what?” His voice emerged a garbled cough.

With a maddening, but equally sobering, nonchalance, Gemma rolled her eyes. “Yes, I do prefer to hover on the fringe.” As he set them into motion, twirling her in the meticulous, requisite circles, Gemma nibbled her lip. A contemplative glimmer glinted in her brown eyes. “I’ve never craved, nor desired, to be noticed by Society.”

Yet, with her marriage to Westfield and her ascension to the role of duchess, she’d be vaulted forevermore into the realm of Society’s notice. That statement of truth hovered on his lips. To utter that deterrent to her quest for Westfield’s hand would be the height of selfishness. He was a bastard. He was not, however, that much of a selfish bastard.

So instead, he asked a question that only deepened this useless bond between them. “What do you crave?”

At his soft whispered words, her slender body tensed in his arms. She raised stricken eyes to his. “No one has ever asked me that.”

His fingers curled reflexively about her waist and her full lips trembled apart. “Then, that is a great travesty, Gemma Reed.” And there in the midst of the ballroom of his best friend’s home, and Society surrounding them, Richard dipped his head. “Because you matter,” he said gruffly. “You matter more than the match you might make or the approval of Society. You matter because you are a woman so wholly different than any other,”
I’ve known
. “Here,” he stumbled over that word. Only, she was so very much unlike any he’d ever known. Even Eloise.

A shuddery gasp slipped out and floated to his ears. It was that faintly breathless admission that said nothing and everything, all at the same time. The most significant in that moment being that he was going to hell for wanting her as he did.

The long, graceful column of her throat moved. “I want to be loved,” she said on a tremulous whisper and he went taut. “I want to be loved for who I am by a gentleman who has no desire to change me.” Only a fool would attempt that useless feat. “I want to be with a man who will speak with me about things that matter and who won’t expect me to be nothing more than a pretty arm ornament.”

I could give you all that.

And he would have. If he’d but seen her first. Richard worked his gaze over her face. If he’d been the gentleman three years ago to attend that same blasted ball Westfield had and instead of the marquess rescuing her, it would have been Richard there. Then what would this moment be even now?

But it could not have been him. Because three years ago, he’d pined for the dream of a woman who was never meant to be—not for him. For that useless absorption in another, he’d failed to enter the living and see who was before him.

“You deserve that, Gemma Reed,” he said solemnly. “And I have no doubt you will know that love with a deserving man.” He spoke with a matter-of-fact truth that came from a genuine knowing. Westfield would care for her, and respect her, and not stifle her the way most of the mindless dandies scattered around this very ballroom would.

Gemma opened her mouth, but no words came out. She closed it and then opened it again. “I would speak to you. Alone.” As soon as the scandalous admission left her mouth, her face exploded in color.

His muscles went taut. “Regarding West…what brought you to Somerset,” he swiftly amended. Oh, God, she’d enlist his support with Westfield. If it weren’t cutting him open inside, he would be laughing at the comedy of errors his life had become in five days.

She hesitated and nibbled at her lower lip. “Yes. It is about Westfield.”

“Westfield,” he repeated dumbly. At his audible utterance, Gemma stole a frantic look about.

“Yes.” A wave of coldness invaded every corner of his being, chilling him from the inside out. When Eloise had chosen first an earl and then, after that gentleman’s passing, Richard’s own brother, over Richard, there had been a melancholy regret. For what could have been, but would never be. How could Gemma’s disregard cut to the quick so that he could not even string together two rational thoughts to form a sentence. “In a way,” she swiftly added. “I thought as we’d become…friends, that you would honor me that meeting.”

Friends
. “I see,” he said flatly. So they’d moved from needling strangers, to passionate embracers, to…friends. No doubt she wished to ask questions about Westfield and ways that she might win the gentleman’s favor. His lips twisted in a pained grimace. Of course, she could not know that with a too-quick, but not erroneous decision, the marquess had already settled on her for his future duchess. A growl stirred in his chest, until he wanted to toss his head and spit and snarl like an enraged beast. Bloody hell, he wanted so much more. By the prodding in Gemma’s eyes, she expected him to say something and, coward that he was, he wanted to escape. “Meeting in private,” any more than they had, “would not be prudent,” he managed. It was a desperate appeal to the fates to kill a private meeting that entailed her singing the deserved praises of Westfield. For that was vastly safer and preferable than uttering the truth.