“Perhaps,” her companion remarked, eyeing Steve Morgan with an appreciative smile, “he is aristocratic, though if you look at his eyes—” She shuddered deliciously. “So very wicked, those blue eyes, and the way he looks at a woman. Why, it makes one feel disrobed!”
The dowager countess laughed. “I am not so old that I do not recall how it feels to have a man look at me that way, my dear Amelia, and neither are you. Is it true, do you think, that he still has his famous Italian opera singer as mistress even though his wife has just returned? I cannot imagine why he would not be more discreet, though his wife has hardly been very discreet herself. My dear, the most delicious on-dits claim that she actually lived in a Turkish harem, and then there is that painting that hung in the Royal Academy, the one by Alma-Tadema that is scandalously revealing. It is her, I have heard it said.”
A light tap of folded fan against her companion’s arm accompanied the significant glance and whisper. “It is said that the Prince of Wales purchased it from the Academy for his own private collection…. What do you think of that?”
“I think,” the dowager replied with a sniff, “that it is far too obvious there is much mystery and rumor about the ambassador’s wife, and not all of it can be just the latest gossip. Mrs. Morgan has had her own share of admirers, I am told.”
“Oh my, yes! When she first returned to London, she was seen in the company of Herr Metz, the Swiss banker. Much has been rumored about his preference for boys, though it is claimed that he is only a friend of her cousin, Monsieur Pierre Dumont. Very interesting, I think….”
The jeweled fan fluttered more gossip, their boa feathers studded with emeralds and sapphires, intricate patterns of gilt wafting speculation between the women with relish.
“And now Morgan has been appointed as the Mexican ambassador, though I hardly see why it is necessary. There is always revolution in that country, and England should not be involved. Ah, but these politicians must have their intrigues, I suppose. Do you think it true that his wife’s former husband, the Russian prince, was actually killed by him? He does look as if he could do murder, looks very dangerous despite the fact he’s dressed so impeccably.”
As conjecture swirled around them, Steve and Ginny danced a waltz, his arm around her slender waist as he held her against him. His hand spread on green satin the exact shade as Ginny’s emerald eyes, lean brown fingers pressed firmly into the small of her back.
Exotic eyes tilted up at him, and a sparkle lit their depths as she smiled provocatively. “They are all making guesses about us, I am certain.”
“And do you care?” His hand tightened briefly. “Let them talk.”
“Shall we give them something else to talk about?” Her soft murmur was accompanied by a subtle shift of her body, so that he felt the press of her breasts as a seductive reminder against his chest.
He gazed down at her through narrowed eyes, amused by her defiance of public convention. Ginny, his green-eyed temptress, his nemesis, the woman who bedeviled and tempted him, the one woman he had never been able to get out of his mind for long. It was just this sort of thing that made him want her, her unexpected flouting of all the rules society expected to be followed, her fiery nature and passionate little body that he knew so well—yet hardly knew at all.
No matter how many times he’d made love to her in the past, there was always something new and surprising when he was with her.
“Have I told you how lovely you are tonight?” he said in a soft drawl, deftly turning her toward the open French doors at the far end of the ballroom. “And how much I would like to kiss you all over?”
“No, you have not.” Her murmur and the tempting pout of her mouth reminded him once again how sweet her lips were and how long it had been since they’d made love. He had spent their first night together with Ginny in his arms, but not made love to her since then. He knew she wondered why, as he did himself.
There were so many memories between them, so many times they had fought one another, the verbal spats no less vicious than the physical ones. He still bore the scar from where she had stabbed him so long ago, that time in the desert when he had forced her into submission, taking her on the burning hot sands with only a thin blanket beneath them, not caring if she wanted him—until she had shocked him into taking her seriously. Then she had yielded to him, his passionate little gypsy. With the fresh knife wound bleeding in his side, he had taken her again….
Ginny. When the news had been given to him of her death in an earthquake in Cuba, he had thought—known—it couldn’t be true. How could such life, such beauty and passion die without his knowing the exact moment of its death? First a kind of grief, then anger overwhelmed him, until he had moved by rote, living each day because he had no other choice, because he had two children who looked to him for their survival. It had been the children who had kept him from the road to his own destruction, the anguished thought that they were all he had left of Ginny.
So many times in the months he had thought Ginny dead he’d remembered his cruelty to her, her frustration, her fury and, yes, her own brand of vengeance. She knew how
