His lips twitched. “I liked you better when you sulked.”
“I do not sulk,” she said, stung.
Her sparking temper made his black eyes glint with satisfaction. “You do indeed sulk. Most magnificently. You’ve been sulking since we spent Christmas at Fentonwyck.”
She went rigid at the unfair accusation. “You mistake me, Lord Wilmott.” Her voice should sheathe him in ice.
“No, I don’t. Although the rest of the world does.”
“I won’t listen to you.”
He caught her arm before she turned away. “If you march off this dance floor in a huff, tongues will wag. Is that what you want?”
After Sedgemoor’s marriage to Elias’s sister, gossip had raged about the lady the duke had courted and rejected. Marianne never again intended to be the subject of talk. “I want you to release me.”
He curled his long fingers around her arm above her glove. The possessive touch set her unsteady pulses thrumming. “Will you meet me?”
Aghast she glared at him. “No, I will not. We have nothing to say to one another.”
“Yet we were such friends at Sedgemoor’s house party a few months ago.” His silky tone insinuated much more.
“We did nothing to be ashamed of.” She prayed she wasn’t blushing. “We only talked.”
At her stammered response, all trace of amusement fled his intense dark face. “Sometimes talking is enough.”
“My lord—” she began helplessly, bravado seeping away to uncover her misery. Then thank heaven, it was time to rejoin the dance.
She was grateful that for the rest of the set, Elias turned as silent as the block of marble he’d called her. She was even more grateful that assiduous drilling in her girlhood meant she followed the steps without needing to think.
Because of course Elias was right. Sometimes talking was enough.
Chapter Two
* * *
The next morning, Elias arrived at the Marquess of Baildon’s imposing white townhouse in Upper Brook Street. The butler showed him into the sunny morning room where he waited to hear that Lady Marianne wasn’t at home to callers. When she’d thanked him for last night’s dance, her manner had conveyed a distinct chill. Marianne Seaton’s politeness cut sharp as a knife.
Restlessly he strode across to the window to stare blindly out at the garden with its neat green parterres and gravel pathways. It was too regimented for Elias’s taste. He’d long ago guessed that Marianne had been brought up with similar military discipline.
How he’d hated seeing her so unhappy at the Chetwell ball. Nobody else would guess that she had a care in the world. But Elias had looked into that pale, perfect oval of a face and known that she suffered.
He’d burned to wrap his arms around her and protect her from the world.
The damnable truth was that he’d burned to do quite a bit more than protect her. Instead of melting into his arms and kissing him until he couldn’t see straight, she’d put him in his place. And his place, she made it clear, was a long way from wherever she chose to be. In return, he’d acted like a lout, sniping at her and making her angry.
Love was the very devil.
At the ball, she’d immediately flung up her formidable defenses, defenses she’d employed so often since they’d both attended the Duke of Sedgemoor’s Christmas party at his Derbyshire estate, Fentonwyck. Last Christmas when she hadn’t treated him like a leper. When she’d given him a whole afternoon of her company on a snowy walk. When Elias’s powerful masculine interest had become something more profound.
He’d found himself at the age of thirty, falling unexpectedly but irrevocably in love with a woman generally considered a stodgy pattern card of good behavior.
Except she hadn’t been. Briefly she’d revealed the vivid warmth hidden beneath her serenity. Their conversation had soon ranged beyond generalities to her life in Dorset and his tribulations with his inheritance. She’d displayed a sharp intelligence and a generous heart and a beguiling sense of the ridiculous.
How could a man be anything but enchanted?
Even at the time, Elias had recognized that she granted him a rare privilege. And while he’d ached to kiss that soft pink mouth, he’d had the wisdom to keep his demeanor merely friendly.
Since the house party, they’d rarely spoken, and when they did, she retreated behind a thorny reserve. Last night’s prickly little exchange had been as close as he’d come since Christmas to the Marianne he’d known at Fentonwyck. He was sure that since her return to London, her bulldog of a father had convinced her that Elias was after her money.