She stepped to the railing and looked down, eyes scanning the laughing people far below them. “They seem so free,” she murmured.
With a sweeping glance, Emma took in the men and women below. She was nervous and was doing her damned best to hide it from him. If he didn’t know her, it probably would have slipped right past him.
“That is the point of attending to be sinful.”
She had come to him for a reason, and he would not rush her. He tamped down on the need urging him to demand what she was doing there, and why she was dressed with such provocative wickedness. If he scared her and she did something foolish, he would never forgive himself.
A soft laugh tumbled from her throat. “How terribly wicked of the countess to name her house party Sinful. I understand it is a weekend of pure extravagance for society to indulge in pleasures and vices. The decadence hinted at in the scandal sheets were not so exaggerated I see,” she said with a glance at a couple embracing intimately by a Corinthian column near the dancers.
He chuckled at the primness that seeped into her voice.
“Do I detect an affront to your sensibilities?”
She laughed lightly, and her shoulders lifted in an inelegant shrug. “Hardly that.”
“Hmm…at least tell me your real name.”
She froze with the glass halfway to her lips, wariness flaring in the depth of her blue gaze. Elliot wondered if he played his hand too soon.
Her lips pursed after a few tense seconds. “Why would you think I’m lying?”
He hesitated, and she stepped boldly toward him, curving her body into his. “And if I lied…I assure you it will take more than a demand for me to spill my secrets.”
“So, you do have secrets.”
“Multitudes of them,” her voice was throaty and soft, tempting him. “I give you permission to try to extract them from me.”
Was this really Emma? She seemed daring and more alluring than anything he’d ever encountered. How freeing her mask must be to her? If he revealed that he knew her identity would she run from him?
“Why are you truly here?” The need to know burned in his gut.
She took a sip of her champagne, watching him over the rim with a piercing quality that rattled him. He was not a man to be easily rattled.
“For the same reason as everyone. Pleasure.”
The “reason” was becoming clear to Elliot, and he fervently prayed he was mistaken in the matter. His cock had stood to attention and had yet to calm down from the way she rasped pleasure. “Are you experienced in erotic liaisons?” he asked wondering how far her ruse extended, and to steer the conversation away from pleasure.
He kept waiting for her to laugh, and say something like “Dear Elliot, how I like to tease you,” not that such an absurd explanation would suffice as the reason for this charade because he had ignored her, keeping his careful distance and protecting his heart and pride?
She tilted her glass to her sultry lips, emptying its content before placing the glass on the ledge. She leaned against the balcony railing, brows arched in challenge. “Are you tempted?”
“Yes,” he said bluntly.
She gave him a look of drowsy sensuality, and it held him transfixed. Where had she learned to do that? She effortlessly pulled him with her innate physicality and pure female seductiveness.
It seemed she wanted to banish Emma completely tonight and immerse herself in however she envisioned Amelia. How irritating it was that she could affect him so easily. Still, he liked her like this. He’d known there was a wicked side to her, deep down. It had seemed like an injustice for someone as beautiful and carefree as Emma to be stifled, to be defined and confined by an accident. How she had pulled away from him and everyone in those first months while she been abed. The doctors had declared she would never walk again, and she had proved them wrong. She was resilient and beautiful and brave and unquestionably reckless.
How he had wanted her then, enough to defy his grandmother, the imperious, austere and exacting duchess of Hartford. Elliot had understood why his father had run away to wed his mother and made no effort to claim his connection to the aristocracy. The duchess held no warmth. How she had raged and threatened him when he’d made his intention clear to marry Emma.
Emma, of course, had rejected him. He had asked her for almost two years, and she had kept refusing his offer of courtship until he had stopped asking. Elliot now knew he should have persisted and not have given up on her. Eight years. Merciful Christ. It was painful to imagine what they could have been, the joy, the love, the passion they could have had if he had trusted more in the yearning he saw in her eyes.
He considered her, surprised he no longer felt any anger toward her. Though he had burned with fury and pain in those early years,
he found little or no emotion had been left inside of him. He had been tired of losing those he loved, and it had been so natural to harden himself against the harshness of heartache. Somehow it had become so natural to him, even the lady he was contemplating to court within the next few weeks hardly inspired anything beyond a gentle appreciation of her genteel beauty.
Emma made him feel.
The only time he’d seen her display some sort of passion was when she played the pianoforte, which she still did in privacy. Now she glowed, the desire for something more gleamed in her gaze, and he wanted to burn with her if only for a fleeting moment.