Beyond Seduction (Bastion Club 6)

“Thank you, dear.” Sybil drew her hand from his arm and sank onto a chaise by one wall. She glanced around. “I can’t see Muriel or Madeline, can you?”

“No, but they’ll be here soon, no doubt.”

“If you see them, do direct Muriel this way.”

With a nod, Gervase moved away, inclining his head to Mrs. Entwhistle as she bustled up to speak with Sybil.

In some respects, the crowd was a boon; there were sufficient tall gentlemen present to give him cover. Gervase kept moving, slowly tacking through the crowd, acknowledging greetings, exchanging the usual pleasantries, yet maintaining the fiction that he was on his way to join someone. That, he’d long ago learned, was the best way to wait for someone in an arena such as this; he always had a reason to move on.

Smiling, nodding, even chatting, required little mental effort to sustain, leaving the better part of his mind wrestling with a subject he rarely addressed—his feelings. On the one hand he felt buoyed and encouraged by Madeline’s bold actions of the previous night, even more by her admission that she’d wanted to make love with him as her most special birthday treat. Contrarily, an odd uneasiness rippled beneath his usual confidence, undermining it in a way he neither liked nor understood.

The source of that uneasiness was that unsettling power that had grown between them, that he’d sensed and known was there from the first, but that he’d tolerated, allowed to be, accepted on the grounds that anything that drew her to him, that held the promise of tying her to him, was in his best interests.

He still felt it was—knew it was—that it wasn’t something he wished to lose, at least in the sense of it linking them, and tying her to him.

What he wasn’t so sure about—what was making him increasingly edgy—was the way it now tied him to her.

“My lord!” Just ahead, Mrs. Juliard waved to him.

He paused by her side, greeting her—and a young lady he learned was her niece.

“Harriet’s come to spend some time with us. I was just telling her what a pity it was that she missed the festival at the castle. She was quite intrigued to hear about the cannons.”

Gervase smiled into Miss Juliard’s youthful countenance—and wondered how on earth any sane person could imagine, as Mrs. Juliard clearly hoped, that his interest might fix on such a young, naïve lady.

But he liked the Juliards, so he made the appropriate noises; he was preparing to part from them, to utter a polite lie, when he suddenly knew—simply knew—that Madeline had arrived. Lifting his head, he looked across the room—straight at her where she’d paused just inside the main doors.

She looked delicious in apple-green silk, with both her brothers’ gifts on display—and his gifts, too, in her hair, and dangling from her wrist.

Turning back to the Juliards, he smiled; he had no more need for lies. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, there’s someone I must speak with.”

They parted with smiles and nods; Mrs. Juliard hadn’t truly harbored any high hopes.

He had to cross the better part of the ballroom to reach Madeline; within a few feet he was reining in his impatience—he couldn’t actually push through the crowd. It took a good ten minutes to cover the distance without drawing attention to his fell intent…and when he neared her, he discovered someone else—several someone elses—had reached her before him.

Slowing, then halting, he inwardly swore.

She was surrounded by a coterie of Lady Hardesty’s guests. The sight made him pause—to reconnoiter before he rushed in. Courtland was there, by Madeline’s elbow, the cad, along with four other tonnish gentlemen. He wouldn’t have trusted any of them with his sisters.

He certainly didn’t trust them with Madeline but…even from ten feet away he sensed she was holding her own. Her Valkyrie shield was fully deployed. However, the fact that, despite there being five outwardly attractive ladies, friends of Lady Hardesty, in the party, all five gentlemen, including the handsome man on whose arm Lady Hardesty herself leaned, had their predatory gazes firmly fixed on Madeline told Gervase all he needed to know.

Lady Hardesty and her friends were no longer especially desirable prey, at least not to those five gentlemen. That was why all five

were looking at Madeline as if she were a lamb. A frolicking, innocent, delectable lamb.

Resuming his stroll forward, he made for her side. He kept his gaze on her face. As he’d hoped, she sensed his presence before the others did, glanced his way, then stepped back, creating space for him by her side.

Space he smoothly filled. “Madeline, my dear.” With a confident smile, he took the hand she offered and bowed, inwardly gloating at the smile she’d turned on him; it still held a vestige of social veneer, but no one with the slightest experience could, on seeing it, doubt that he and she were lovers.

“Gervase.” She, too, used his given name, made it soft and private. “I wondered where you were.”

Straightening, he met her eyes, read in them that she’d reached much the same conclusion he had and was eager to make clear to the five other gentlemen that she had no interest whatever in them.

He squeezed her fingers, then laid her hand on his sleeve, covering it with his—and only then looked at the others, letting his gaze travel the circle of faces to come to rest on Lady Hardesty.

“Lord Crowhurst. How delightful!”

He very nearly blinked. Lady Hardesty had clearly missed his and Madeline’s blatant message.