Very much as he was doing now. He ground his teeth together. He should have refused her request. Someone ought to attempt to keep her in her place.
She let go of the shawl and put one naked hand out to take the little cigar. Her finger brushed his, and his whole body quickened with anticipation. In that instant he could have sworn the air around them thickened and began to crackle.
‘The other guests seem to have been very fond of your husband,’ he said, making a bid to mask both annoyance and attraction. ‘All their stories seem to start and end with ‘Lyon.’’
He shifted his weight, ruthlessly ignoring the way her presence pulled at him. He had trouble thinking around her. Everything always spiralled back to a hasty duel, a dead man, and a woman he’d wanted desperately, but couldn’t have. To the husband who’d stood in his way, whom he’d have sworn she’d loved even as heat pooled between them every instant their paths crossed.
‘Everything always did,’ she acknowledged while smelling the cigarito with her eyes closed, a small smile flickering across her generous mouth.
Ivo’s groin throbbed and he quickly took a puff of his cigarito. Why this woman? He didn’t want to be attracted to her. Why couldn’t the reality of her present mode burn out the infatuation he’d harboured for so long?
Why had he brought up her husband? Why was that subject lodged so firmly in the forefront of his mind? It didn’t seem to be in hers.
She wandered away from him to light the cigarito from one of the wall sconces that lined the terrace. She took a short puff, then strolled back to him, her shawl slipping down off her shoulders to trail from her elbows, exposing her chest and shoulders. Light and shadow played across her skin, emphasizing the swell of breasts, the clean line of collarbones, the hollow of her throat.
Ivo risked another glance at the open doors. It had been all he could do not to make a fool of himself since he’d arrived. Even now all he could think of was how it would be to kiss her. To simply drag her down into the garden and do every wicked thing he’d ever dreamt of. To awaken her—engender a response to his own desire and watch it radiate out of those arresting eyes of hers.
If she was going to be a fallen woman, it ought to be with him. Some part of him even felt she owed it to him. A part that felt small and cheap. An ugly bit of himself he didn’t want to acknowledge fully. His grandfather might call him a fool, and he might even have been one if he was to judge with the clearer vision of hindsight, but up until a few days ago, he’d always been proud to have been the knight who’d rescued the lady from the dragon.
She took a long drag and let it out slowly, smoke drifting up to obscure her face. She sighed again, blew out another cloud, and bit her lower lip, obviously thinking. Remembering. Her eyes were shadowed, almost vacant.
She smiled a bit wistfully. Torchlight haloed her hair. One side of her mouth quirked up. There was that smile that had gotten him in trouble all those years ago. At the time, he’d have done anything to see it again. Seeing it now sucked the breath right out of him and set alarms ringing in his head. He should go. Now. The fey creature beside him simply wasn’t the woman he’d given up everything to save.
Reason struggled with want, with need. Desire slipped its leash and he felt himself lean in. It was impossible not to answer that smile. That sly invitation.
She didn’t step back. Didn’t twist aside. Her eyes didn’t drop in maidenly anticipation, but he hadn’t expected them to. This wasn’t the girl from Paris. No. This was the woman from his dreams.
‘Hey, Georgie!’ The Viscount St Audley’s voice, loud and eager, erupted from inside the house. Ivo jerked himself upright and turned to stare out into the garden, nerves jangling, heart racing with the spark of unfulfilled lust, with the rush of near discovery. He gripped the balustrade with his free hand, bearing down until his knuckles whitened, and took a slightly unsteady breath.
‘I’ve been looking all over for you,’ the man yelled from the doorway. ‘Layton wants to hear about the race you won last week.’
Mrs Exley took one last puff on her cigarito, her eyes teasing him, full of the knowledge that he’d been about to kiss her—that she’d been about to let him—and then excused herself, striding quickly across the stone terrace, skirts shushing loudly with every step. A nightingale who’d overstayed the season trilled in the dark recesses of the garden, lost and lonely.
He shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have been so weak. He and his family were barely on speaking terms as it was. If did something as profoundly stupid as to entangle himself with the source of his original downfall, his grandfather would have an apoplectic fit. And rightly so.
Ivo stared down at his hands, willing himself to breathe, watched as the ash fell from his forgotten cigarito. He stubbed it out and flicked the remains down into the garden.
He shouldn’t have come.
As soon as Bennett had said that Mrs Exley would be here, he should have made his excuses and escaped into the next county. A crack of male laugher burst out of the billiard room, rolled over him, and scurried off into the night to cause havoc as it might.
The cosseted darling of rakes. The bona ropa of at least
