Exactly no one appreciated that feeling.
While some regarded him with caution, hostility, disgust, or outright fear, he found that easy to ignore. What puzzled him the most was the reactions of several women to his presence.
Curiosity.
He leaned against a wall adjacent to a sideboard laden with largely untouched canapés, doing his best to disappear into the wallpaper. He’d noted that many of the women in the grand ballroom seemed to fabricate reasons other than food to gracefully flit by him like a cadre of vibrant butterflies.
In fact, he’d retrieved more than a half dozen accidentally discarded handkerchiefs from the floor in front of him. Had held multiple drinks as one lady or other fixed a bunched hem or broken lace behind the fern to his left, exposing varying lengths of their ankles and calves. A matronly marchioness had quite lost her balance and fell into his arms in an apparent swoon. She’d somehow made it impossible to avoid the press of her abundant bosoms as he righted her, and had promised him her generous gratitude if he called upon her tomorrow after her husband had gone to the House of Lords.
Indeed, more than a handful of married ladies did their utmost to convince their husbands that they were in need of his particular personal protection just as much as any orphaned, bookish baron’s daughter. One of them had overtly gestured to his features and proportions as a deterrent from a husband’s jealousy. What would he have to worry about around such an ungainly brute?
Unsurprisingly, he received no offers of employment from any man in the room.
Not only did the attention make him feel freakish and uncomfortable, but it also made his job more difficult than it ought to be.
Felicity was the only woman who deserved his attention tonight. All others were nothing more than an irritation.
An irritation that was swiftly compounding by the stifling heat and closeness of the ballroom, the fiendishly relentless music, and the sheer number of men who’d held Felicity Goode in their arms that evening.
In Gabriel’s imagination, he’d already broken seven arms and gouged out numerous eyes.
This was hell.
Lucifer himself was taking his due earlier than expected, by making him watch her smile up at elegant and well-mannered men of her class.
And wondering if he would be the man to win her.
As promised, she and Lord Bainbridge had shared a sedate dance, and the man had been nothing but solicitous and polite.
He’d relinquished her company to a squat, red-faced hedgehog of a man upon whom she bestowed a benevolent smile, and even struck up a lively chat.
All the while, others laughed behind their gloves and their fans.
At her. At her partner.
Several lordlings lingered around the food, gazing at her like wolves circling a wide-eyed fawn. They grinned their sharp-toothed grins as they guessed who would next come up on her card. They bragged about saving her from having to kiss a toad like Lord Kessinger. About dazzling her with their pedigrees and their family estates.
All the while, Gabriel yearned to tear them all open. Sternum to throat.
He stood at the ready, waiting for them to give him a reason.
Just one.
After an eternity, the waltz ended, and the benighted Mr. Kessinger escorted her from the dance floor, looking for all the world as if he’d gained two inches in height.
Gabriel knew how the man felt.
A smile from her was akin to a kiss from the sun or God’s very own forgiveness.
And tonight, she was every inch a goddess.
Champagne silk threaded with some sort of glimmering magic was certainly not secured upon her body by the hoaxes they had the nerve to call sleeves. Gauzy fabric with the substance of a whisper draped from her shoulders, leaving her flesh all but bare from her jaw to the edge of the ivory gloves that crested above her elbow.
Her bodice, if one could call it that, revealed more than it covered, as various contraptions beneath foisted her breasts higher than they had any right to be. Offering up each delectable mound like an apple of Eve, tempting any unsuspecting man to have a taste. The skirt, while not tight or formfitting, gave the illusion of clinging to her hips in what he’d gleaned from ladies’ gossip, was the new— and some said, indecent— fashion.
He couldn’t disagree. When she walked, the outline of her thighs appeared beneath the skirts, before the flowing fabric belled out to swirl around her knees and feet like a gossamer mist.
When Gabriel had removed her cape upon their arrival, it’d taken all his willpower not to wrap her back up in it, toss her over his shoulder, and conduct her out of the sight of anyone.
Anyone, but himself.
As she approached, Gabriel noted that beneath her tranquil demeanor were the barest hints of strain. A small pinch between her brow, a whitening at the corner of her lips, and a shadow beneath her eyes that contrasted with skin three shades paler than usual.
Even so, she turned to Lord Kessinger, who ignored Gabriel, and sank into a graceful curtsy. “Thank you for a most enjoyable dance, my lord,” she proffered, enduring the kiss he hovered above her knuckles before retreating to Gabriel’s side.
With a grateful, if brittle, smile, she accepted the glass of punch Gabriel had procured for her, and stifled a yawn behind her glove.
“You should drink,” he prompted when, instead of sipping the punch, she surveyed the ballroom much as he had been doing the entire night.
“What?” she asked distractedly.
He gestured to her cup. “You’ll overheat if you don’t drink.”
“Oh, how thoughtful of you.” She took several long sips from the crystal glass, pressing a glove to a sheen at her hairline. “What do you think of Lord Kessinger, Mr. Severand?”
Now that they were in public, he was Mr. Severand once
