Charlotte kept the stiff smile firmly in place as she pa.s.sed her father holding "court." She nodded to the group and fought the bile that twisted up her throat. The swirling feelings had been colliding against each other all day.

"Can you imagine the heirs?" A broodmare. "Stock like that . . . you can see it." A porcelain vase. "Brought her up right too. Knows her position." A mannered hostess who would turn the other cheek to indiscretions without comment or messy emotion. Her father had had an indiscretion for nearly all her lifetime.

She felt the chill invade, a chill that never seemed to dissipate anymore at these events. Her father's behavior had mortified her once, but she was well used to it now. He used her future stock, her promise in the eyes of the ton, to get away with increasingly bad behavior.

She thought on Roman Merrick's words to her instead. His words about beauty-that there was something far more interesting about her than her form and face.

Her smile tightened. Plagued by thoughts of him, even now, even here, in a place he couldn't touch.

She kept her feet moving toward the refreshment table, wishing she could find a beverage spiked with whatever concoction he had poured. The drink had curled down her throat and coated her insides, allowing her nerves to settle without making her drunk.

"Miss Chatsworth." Mr. Trant stepped before her, lifting her hand. "A pleasure to see you this eve looking so well."

She tilted her head, keeping her breathing even. "Mr. Trant."

He surveyed her, as if he could determine from the perusal whether she had been ruined the night before. Ruined, sullied, despoiled. A favorite crystal vase blemished by muddied hands.

He held up an arm and set her hand on it. "If you would do me the honor?"

She hesitated, but Trant's arm tightened under her loose fingers. She nodded, and he swiftly moved them into the natural lanes around the floor where people had been treading paths all night. She felt odd holding on to his arm. Which was strange, since it was a natural gesture and position. Indeed, there were at least ten other couples engaged in a similar stroll. But she felt heated eyes watching her from somewhere, and her instinct was to push Trant away.

Ridiculous. She tried to shake off the thought. There were always eyes on one during an event. Even the least-watched wallflower was observed some of the time. It was the gossipmonger's way to pick out even the most insignificant tidbit. And walking a path with a gentleman wasn't insignificant. Nothing extreme, no, but worthy of comment all the same.

"You look beautiful tonight, Miss Chatsworth." Unspoiled.

She thought of the conversation in the night regarding the state of a woman's virginity. Roman Merrick had said . . . Her free fingers caught the skirt of her dress, clutching the fabric.

Stop thinking of him.

"Thank you, Mr. Trant. You look handsome as well." And he did. Though his eyes were sharp and glittering. Always trying to find the flaw he had yet to discover.

She couldn't imagine relaxing around a chessboard with this man. Oh, she had a feeling chess was a game he relished. Not for the pleasure of the game but to destroy his opponent.

Roman played to win as well, and was by far the more dangerous man overall. Still, there was an ease she had found with him, despite, or maybe between, the cracks of danger. Bewildering.

And she was still thinking of him.

Her fingers tightened on Trant's arm.

"You are well?" he asked.

"It is as I told my father this morning. My untimely illness has pa.s.sed, leaving me none the worse. In fact, said illness seemed merely to find amus.e.m.e.nt in creating its mayhem in the first place. I feel quite as I did two mornings past."

Which said everything Trant wanted to hear. And was mostly the truth besides. She could feel the tension in Trant recede. The muscles of his arm relaxing.

"I am pleased to hear it. Though should your illness return, please notify me immediately, so I can extend my a.s.sistance."

"I'm sure that will be unnecessary."

Why did she feel the throb of hot eyes resting upon her?

"Nevertheless, some illnesses have a tendency to linger. Left untreated, they can fester and destroy."

She laughed lightly, falsely. "Yes. Thank you for the caution and warning."

"I worry about you, of course. And have a care for your future." He steered them deftly about the floor. "Our future."

She tried to replicate the laugh, but without the empty echo. She failed. "Though I am flattered, you step ahead of yourself, Mr. Trant."

"It would be . . . unfortunate should anyone learn of the events. I only look after your interests, my dear." He smiled, then relinquished his hold on her. "Perhaps a dance later?"

She murmured automatically, mechanically, as he bowed and stepped back. Leaving her to linger over his words, his carefully veiled threat.

Her gaze brushed her mother, who was observing Charlotte from her seat near a group of matrons. Sitting on the edge of the group, as always, never quite an integral part of the inner circle, where she could help her daughters.

Coasting through life without much notice or care. Malaise clinging to her like a second skin. Though this was one of her "good" days, and Charlotte was glad. Viola had henpecked Charlotte all day, leaving no time for Bennett to interrogate her. Since Bennett treated Viola as if she were a highly allergic substance, he had stayed far away.

Charlotte wasn't going to question her good fate. She'd take her mother's sourness over her father's greed any day. Though, as she met her mother's eyes, she wondered if she knew. If she had initiated the constant barrage of scolding over a guise of concern. But Viola had never shown a desire to save her daughter from any threat or fate.

And Trant had initiated a threat. There would be no cause for Trant to share her whereabouts last eve-if she were pledged to him. Otherwise . . . well, Trant would remain silent only for as long as it was in his self-interest to do so.

Her father would simply tell her to clean up the mess. Then obtain him what they desired. For the good of their family.

She watched a friendly young man ask a friendly young woman to dance. A pretty blush bloomed on the woman's face-as did similar high color on the man's. They exchanged besotted gazes as they walked to the floor.

She wished she were at home, tucked beneath her covers.

She watched other young women laugh and play, dance and make merry with the gentlemen of their choice. Gentlemen who were enamored of them. Individually charmed. Not with some false notion of beauty and winning. Gaining a trophy, then shelving it, when she proved not as exciting as first thought, the glow of the win falling to dissatisfaction.

She watched a group of unattached young women whispering behind their hands. Waiting for a lick of gossip to spread-or starting it themselves. Thus far, Charlotte had proven unavoidably boring to the gossip mill, and had thus skirted much of the negative flow. There was nothing exciting about ice except when it started to melt into a messy puddle, spreading in all directions, falling down uneven ground. Destroyed.

Her mother had been beautiful once, so she'd been told. On a good day she could see a hint of it in the curves of her mother's cheeks. But it was her father's mistress who received his attention. A mussed woman half as pretty but twice as vibrant.

Such was the life she had thought, a year past, that she would split with Miranda. But Miranda, warm, vibrant Miranda, had it all.

Unfortunately, Charlotte would likely take after her mother in more than just icy blond looks and cold-mannered regard.

Though she couldn't imagine her mother lounging about the bedcovers across from a man with his shirt open, gaze untamed. Lighting sparks within her, causing silly dreams that held no basis in reality.

Stop thinking of him!

Who was to say that Trant wouldn't love her for herself? That he wouldn't dig deeper and help her uncover all that she wished to be. Thawed and vivacious. Or that Marquess Binchley wouldn't?

A bitter laugh escaped at the image, and she quickly coughed into her hand.

She looked to the shadows beyond the open doors. The garden blooms and night whispered of release. Away from the games and conversation. Strategy and laughter. Laughter that wasn't hers.

She tried to shrug off the heavy feeling that seemed to pierce through the ballroom doors, straight from the dark shadows outside. Dark shadows that whispered of danger.

Her feet moved toward the open doors and the shadows that lay beyond. The lure of escape.

Of breathing free air.

She crossed the stones, exchanging pleasantries with people lingering outside, then headed for the greenery, the garden calling to her more forcefully.

She pa.s.sed a hand along the trailing clematis vines falling from the wall bordering the property. She had danced earlier with the Earl of Tewksbury, a man whose rheumatoid did not promote a second turn, which meant their one dance would be cause for comment. She had danced twice with an increasingly bleary-eyed, red-rimmed Marquess Binchley. And Trant would claim at least one dance later.

Fine old t.i.tles with the first two, high ambition in the third. She'd secure a solid social place with any of them. More than one of the women inside would happily dismember her for her melancholy. Those same women would never realize that when she let the emotion free, Charlotte felt jealousy toward them.

But now . . . now instead of an empty pit, there were strange new emotions and sensations swirling within her, dark and uncomfortable, restless and unnerving. But they were there. Filling the distention.

Making her feel as if she were ascending in the balloon, the ground far below, the restless excitement overwhelming, springing and growing over the past few days. A mirror of Miranda's expression. Of Charlotte's disgraced country neighbor. Of the young ladies free to choose their beaus.

It was frightening and exhilarating at once, for what was she to do with the knowledge? The feelings?

The edge of a silken purple flower slipped from her fingers, and she walked farther into the low garden without breaching protocol. It was a lovely spot, easily seen from the terrace. She needed a few moments to herself. A chance to dream other dreams.

However, seeking freedom came with consequence. If any young buck had noticed and decided to follow her, she would be forced to speak to him in the garden shadows. But the more rakish men who flourished in the shadows usually left her alone. She was too cold for their tastes, too distant.

What Roman Merrick had seen in her, she didn't know. A simple challenge most likely. A challenge that would come to a disappointing end.

For it seemed easy for men to see that she was a crystal vase, not a warm bulge of clay.

She shook her head, biting her lip hard, and looked ahead. From other escapes, she knew there were two benches in the back of the open garden and yard, near the more wild and twining vines and higher bushes along the wall, and she could see the vague outline of one bench as she moved closer. If the stone wasn't too damp, she could sit back, lift her feet, breathe in the scents of sweet jasmine and gardenias. Take a few stolen moments to watch the guests on the veranda, and keep to herself.

She ran her fingers along the surface of the bench. Still dry. She pivoted and sat, a relieved breath escaping her as she lifted her legs slightly off the ground, the nearest guests far enough away so as not to bother her unless they were expressly seeking her out.

Was it wrong to feel the echo of his fingers in her nape, of his mouth on hers? Better than a well-executed twirl on the dance floor. Something alive and wild. Something that was intimately hers.

She put her hands on the stone and leaned her head back, lifting her face to the moonlight and closing her eyes.

"Much lovelier with all of that gorgeous freedom upon your face."

She jerked her head forward and to the side. The voice, straight from her imaginings, caused the hair at her nape to tingle, her skin to heat, her lips to part.

Unrelieved black met her view. Only the gold of his hair-flashing silver in the slight moonlight-and the flesh of his carved skin stood out from the shadows of the high bushes in the corner. A scandalous alabaster statue garbed in twilight. Legs on the bench and head tilted back to the darkness.

A thousand emotions curled inside her, ramming together, trying to escape through her throat, her skin, the heart of her chest.

His lips curved, and white teeth flashed. "I thought I might find you here."

Her mouth opened and closed, heat blazing a rapid trail upward through her body. She suddenly felt as if she were floating above the ground in that rapidly ascending balloon.

" What? "

He slowed his speech into deliberate syllabic chunks. "I thought I might find you here."

"I heard you the first time," she hissed, looking about in sudden panic, hands frozen, clawed around the stone. Panicked by her reaction. Panicked by the threat of discovery. Panicked that the man she couldn't stop thinking of was here in front of her, able to see any flaws or defects-that she was truly as unexciting as she'd been bred to be.

The guests continued milling about. No one had looked in her direction yet. No one had noticed that there was a man clothed in darkness, violating the s.p.a.ce. That he was sitting awfully close to an unmarried lady in a darkened spot.

Suddenly, the shadowed bench, though still public and safe, seemed wildly dangerous and wrought with reputation hazards. Wrought with the most dangerous hazard she had ever encountered.

"It took longer than I'd expected, but I was right."

She refused to gape more, so she pressed her lips together until she could control some of her thoughts.

" What? You-you've just been lying here in wait? Thinking I might-might come out here on my own? Are you mad ?"

"I knew it was a matter of time. You suffocating indoors, needing to come out and be free."

She stared at him, words stuck in her throat. "You know me not." Her voice came out in a cracked whisper, the balloon ascending that much higher.

"Then I guessed correctly, did I not?"

She glanced back to the veranda, swallowing. She should rise and return to the other guests immediately. Remove herself from his suggestion. Remove herself from the very real danger he represented in all forms.

She turned to him instead. "Why are you here?" she hissed.

He smiled, fierce triumph in his shadowed, silver eyes. "To see you. "

The tingle of awareness became a rush, a heedless tumult of sensation.

When the young swains, brushing up on their wooing, sang her songs or read her lines, she would politely applaud or smile. Perhaps feel a bit of embarra.s.sment for herself or the person wooing. But never had she felt the rush of feeling that some women expressed. Their hands going to their chests, their breath coming in gasps, their lids fluttering in invitation.

She had scoffed at such reactions before . . . all the while, secretly wishing she could experience such foolishness, such emotion. One lift of perfect lips and three uttered words by this man was all it took.

Thrilling foolishness. "And now that you have?" she asked, her voice little more than a whisper as she watched his lips.

"Ah. The real question." He didn't break the shadows, but something about him seemed to lean toward her. "Now that I have, I can't seem to resist wanting more."

Want. That was the ache in her belly that had turned from cold marble to heated brick. "Do you know what would happen if you were found here?" she asked, all cold decorum lost.

"I'd be forced to move my feet nimbly like one of the oafs inside? Bowing and fumbling and positioning my cravat ever higher?"

"You'd be arrested."

"Taken away in chains, I hope."

She narrowed her eyes. "It isn't something to be taken lightly. A man sneaked into a gathering just last week and is up for sentencing on charges of fraud and trespa.s.sing."

"Mmmm . . . but I have . . . coerced many of the men inside, and have information on most of the others. I think I might get away with a . . . lesser punishment."

She couldn't respond for a second. "If that is true, then I think you in more dire straits should you be found. I imagine many men would be well pleased to be rid of you."

He just smiled. "Concerned for my safety?"

"Your sanity, perhaps."