His stare should have set her on fire. The smothered guffaw from Lisbeth, who coughed into her napkin, made the duke’s scowl deepen, and Bronwyn nearly lost her battle with her composure. Poor Lady Willington looked confused as if she couldn’t quite comprehend the undercurrent beneath what seemed on the surface to be easy conversation. Her husband had returned to tucking into his dessert, too busy to notice any metaphorical bloodshed at the table.
“This is easily settled.” The growled words were barely audible, but when the duke let out another dark rumble, reached over, and took hold of Bronwyn’s wrist, her next breath went captive in her lungs. The heat from his gloved hand seared her as if he’d touched her with bare skin, and the sheer size of those long fingers encircling her wrist was enough to make her pulse kick up a few notches. He took hold of the dance card and its attached pencil that dangled from a silver ribbon.
Bronwyn knew what he would find—the space for the waltz was marked with her own name. It always was. She could flirt and dance ad nauseam, but the thought of being held so closely by any gentleman did not sit well with her. Not that any man would be untoward, but she was guarded with her person for good reason. And besides, except for Cora, she was alone on this ship.
She tried to tug her hand away, but the duke’s grip subtly tightened. Not enough to hurt, but enough for her to know he wouldn’t release her so easily, now that the gauntlet had been thrown. One heavy eyebrow rose as he flipped the booklet open to the marked space and wrote his name over Bee in a heavy scrawl. “This Bee person will have to wait his turn. I look forward to it.”
***
Valentine was dreading it.
Sod his life choices to the pits of purgatory.
Couldn’t he have declined like a normal man and not risen to the challenge and the salty bite of that mouth of hers? The lady was toying with his head—one minute the flirtatious, vain, empty-headed miss who made his stomach recoil, and the next, a vicious, sharp-tongued termagant who pushed his normally unflappable buttons. She’d written her own name in the space, and if he hadn’t known the moniker from the ship’s passenger list, he wouldn’t have written over it.
But why had he? The space was already taken.
He could have bowed out with no one the wiser.
Valentine sighed as he and Lisbeth took a turn around the ship’s opulent ballroom. One would never know that one was on a ship, with the enormous oak dome rising high toward a spectacular skylight. The starlit sky above was magnificently romantic, if one was given to such tendencies, which he was not. The spectacular decor resembled that of a posh London hotel, the painted murals beneath the skylight depicting frolicking cherubs and dancing nymphs. Valentine had to hand it to his friend—Ashvale’s sense of taste was impeccable.
If only Ashvale’s sister was cut from the same elegant cloth, but no, the woman had the personality of a burlap sack.
That reminded him. He shot his former countess a circumspect look. “Your toe seems quite fine to me, Lisbeth.”
“Oh, it comes and it goes. Toes are capricious things, aren’t they?”
“Are they?”
She nodded. “Indeed.”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked when their steps led them closer to where Lady Bronwyn stood in delighted conversation with no less than half a dozen of her swains. He had the sudden desire to sweep them all overboard.
“You know why,” Lisbeth replied, laughter in her voice. “It’s amusing to see her get through that ice shield of yours.”
“Ice shield?”
“Nothing and no one ever gets to you, Valentine, not in any of the years I’ve known you, much less a woman. Even me, you would only let in so far and yet I barely scratched the surface. I have never seen you so…ruffled over a lady.”
He scowled. “She’s not a lady. She’s a bloody nightmare draped in satin and sapphires.”
“But you are ruffled,” Lisbeth said grinning.
“I am aggravated.”
One shoulder lifted, eyes drifting to the source of the aggravation in question, as Lisbeth tapped her lips with her fan. Tinkling laughter like the sound of broken glass drifted toward them as one of the bucks dropped dramatically to one knee, a hand pressed to his chest.
“Good God, she’s preposterous.”
“Why? She’s not the one dropping to her knees, is she?” Lisbeth remarked, and that unleashed a different spool of thoughts in his head, ones which he did not want to entertain. “How can you fault her for the actions of a few infatuated gentlemen?”
“She is encouraging them!”
“No, she is not.” Lisbeth huffed a laugh. “You truly are ruffled. Why are you so annoyed by some harmless amusement, Val?”
He tugged on his collar, annoyance spiking as yet another fop fell to the floor in mimicry of the first. Didn’t they have any dignity? “Ashvale is my friend. If his fool sister goes and gets herself compromised by the end of this voyage, who do you think he will blame, if he learns I was also on this ship?” Valentine clenched his fingers into fists. “But we should be looking for the Kestrel, not watching a charming chit put on a show for all the witless idiots in this room who only want a rich heiress to fund their diversions.”
“So she’s charming now?”
He ground his molars. “Charmingly dim.”
“I think there’s a lot more to Lady Bronwyn than meets the eye, to be honest. All women put on a mask in one way or the other, especially women of the ton, but she’s different. The mask she’s chosen doesn’t quite fit.”
“How so?”
“I don’t think she’s as empty-headed as she pretends to be.” Her gaze returned to him. “Especially when she’s around you. She tries too hard to put you off.”
“Not hard enough,” he muttered.
The polka on the ballroom floor came to an end and the strains of the waltz began. Valentine’s feet were glued to the floor, a feeling of reluctance swelling inside of him. His instincts were screaming and he’d learned to listen to them over the years. They didn’t warn of danger, but they warned of something all the same. This dance he never should have agreed to would be pivotal.
“Enjoy your waltz,” Lisbeth said with no small amount of mirth.
“I’d rather go for swim in the Thames at the height of summer.”
She snorted. “It won’t be that bad.”
“You’re right. It will be much worse.”
Valentine saw the moment Bronwyn took notice of the change in music as well as the transformation that came over her. The animation melted away. Eyes darting to the orchestra, her spine went ramrod straight, the delight fading from her expression and a studious blankness replacing it. Her throat worked, that full bottom lip disappearing between her teeth. Was she dreading the interlude as much as he was?