He made a leg at the sight of her. “Miss Picklewood, Lady Hero. You are the fairest damsel here tonight, I vow.”
“My lord.” She wondered what he would say if she asked him what feature he found so especially beautiful about her? Was it her eyes? Her neck? Her breasts? But then he’d never seen her bare breasts. Only one man had and it wasn’t her fiancé.
She looked away, biting her lip as guilt battered against her.
“I hope your dear sister is better?” Mandeville asked gravely.
“As well as can be expected, my lord,” Cousin Bathilda answered. “The doctor has prescribed bed rest, but he thinks the arm will knit.”
“I am so glad.”
“I see my good friend Mrs. Hughes over there,” Cousin Bathilda said. “If you young people will excuse me?”
“Of course,” Mandeville murmured. He held out his arm to Hero without really looking at her. “Shall we stroll?”
“Please,” she answered sedately, calming the hysterical voices in her head.
She laid her hand on his sleeve as he led her into the crowd. The room was too hot, it seemed. Lady Helena had chosen to decorate the ballroom with hundreds of roses, and the scent of the wilting flowers was almost overwhelming. She nodded her head and murmured inanities to passing people until she thought she might scream. Her world had tumbled off balance, and she didn’t know how to right it again.
And then, suddenly, Griffin stood in front of them, dressed elegantly in blue and gold, his wig snowy white. His arm was crooked, as he idly fondled something in his hand. His green eyes flicked from her face to her hand, laid on Mandeville’s sleeve, then rose slowly to his brother’s face.
Hero tried to swallow, but her throat was dry. Surely he wouldn’t say anything, do anything, here?
Griffin bowed stiffly. “Good evening, Thomas, Lady Hero.”
She nodded, unable to speak.
“Griffin,” she heard Mandeville say beside her. “I didn’t know you were invited tonight.”
“It’s amazing the places where I’m welcome.”
She lifted her eyes at his cynical tone. His green eyes clashed with hers, his expression grim.
She caught her breath.
“What have you got there?” Mandeville asked.
Griffin raised his eyebrows and opened his hand. Hero inhaled silently. Her diamond earbob lay on his palm—the one she’d thrown at him in the sitting room at her engagement ball.
He smiled thinly. “A trinket I found upon the floor. Do you think it becomes me?”
He held the earring to his ear as Hero widened her eyes in warning. Surely Mandeville would recognize it as hers!
“Or perhaps it’s better suited to a lady,” Griffin drawled. He reached out, and Hero felt the heat of his fingers as he dangled the earring near her ear.
Mandeville frowned, looking confused. “Don’t be an ass.”
“No?” Griffin’s smile had disappeared as he looked at her. “Well, maybe I’ll make it a keepsake.”
He pushed the earring into his waistcoat pocket.
Hero stared at him, her chest aching as if she’d been weeping. She’d lost him, she suddenly realized. They could never again be friends now.
Griffin looked at Mandeville. “With your permission, I’d like to offer your fiancée a dance.”
“Certainly,” Mandeville replied.
And just like that, she was handed from one man to the other, rather like a prize pony at a country fair.
Hero waited until they’d strolled some distance from Mandeville. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I know,” Griffin replied low. “You seem to only want to do, er, other things with me.”
“Hush!” she hissed desperately.
In any other man, the look he gave her might be mistaken for hurt. “I’m not going to disgrace you here in front of everyone, never fear.”
She didn’t know how to reply to that, and while she was contemplating it, he led her swiftly through a pair of French doors and outside.
She looked around the lovely paved balcony with wide steps that led into a shadowed garden and turned to him accusingly. “You told Mandeville we were to dance.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “We’ll tell him you felt overwarm. You certainly appear overwarm.”
She lifted a hand to her flushed cheek. “That’s not a very gentlemanly thing to say.”
He laughed shortly and without humor. “Nothing I say ever pleases you, my Lady Perfect. Have you noticed? Only the things I do please you.”
She looked away, but he placed a thumb under her jaw and turned her head back so that she had no choice but to look him in the face. “You were pleased this morning, were you not?”
Hero wanted to lie, but in the end she could not, so she simply stayed mute.
He grimaced and let his hand drop with a gesture of disgust. “You won’t admit it, but I know you were. I felt you as you came apart in my arms, as your sweet cunny clenched about my cock.”
She shivered, remembering the feel of him, too. “Please.”
He stared at her hard and then drew her down the steps and into the shadows of the garden. Pulling her along until they were out of earshot of the ballroom doors.
He turned and placed his hands on her upper arms. “We must discuss it, even if you want to forget it forever.”
“That’s just it,” she whispered, emboldened by the dark. “I don’t want to forget.”
“Hero,” he said low, and her name sounded like a prayer on his lips.
He bent over her, there in the dark garden, and she felt the brush of his lips over hers. They were whisper-soft, like the kiss of a knight for a maiden he held in high esteem. Did he think of her that way, even now that she’d proven herself unvirtuous? She drew back and tried to search his face, but it was in shadow. He might as well have been a stranger.
She made to step back, but he caught her hand, holding her against himself. “Will you marry me?”
She shook her head, tilting her face to look at the stars, still and empty and so very far away. “How can I?”
“How can you not?” he retorted, his voice deep. “I’ve pierced your maidenhead.”
She closed her eyes.
“Hero.” His hands rose to grip her shoulders hard. “You must marry me.”
“Do you love me?” she asked.
His head jerked back. “What?”
“Do you love me, Lord Griffin?”
“I… have feelings for you.”