Pursuing Lord Pascal (Dashing Widows 4)

Which was true, too. A fumbling dunderhead when it came to his wife, but that wasn’t the full measure of the fellow.

As reward for his discretion, he received a grateful, if shaky smile. “He was.”

She’d mourned Mowbray, if only as a colleague. However unworthy the thought, Pascal was grateful she’d never loved before.

Did that mean he wanted her to love him?

Shock held him transfixed as he examined the question. Over the years, many women had professed to love him, starting with his flighty mother. A few at least must have meant it. The mawkish emotion had always proven a poisonous gift, laced with demands and tears, and the inevitable acrimony when the woman realized Pascal was incapable of loving her back.

But when he imagined Amy Mowbray loving him, that trapped, suffocated feeling was absent.

How…unexpected.

He extended his hand. “We should go back. As it is, it will be dark when we return.”

She sucked in a shuddering breath, wiped her eyes again, and put away her handkerchief. To his relief, she took his hand, although she still looked unhappy. “Sally will think we’ve eloped.”

He didn’t express his approval of that idea, however much he liked it. Only a heartless villain would badger her about marriage, when she remained so heartbreakingly fragile. “Not her. She’ll just think I conspired to keep you out late.”

Amy managed another faint smile. “I haven’t been much fun this afternoon.”

He tucked her hand back into the crook of his elbow. As they walked toward his carriage, the shadows lengthened around them. A breeze promis

ed a chilly trip back to London. “It doesn’t always have to be high jinks and champagne.”

She moved closer into the shelter of his body. He hoped not just because the air cooled. “Thank you for telling me about your parents.”

“It wasn’t a pleasure.”

She gave a husky laugh. “I know exactly how you feel.”

“After today, you can never call me a stranger again,” he said gently.

“No,” she said, and for the life of him, he couldn’t tell whether that change left her pleased or dismayed.

Chapter Eight

For two weeks, Pascal kept to his word and wooed Amy as he’d promised. If courtship was a new experience for her, it was no less so for him. He soon realized quite how careless he’d been with his previous amours. On the rare occasions when a woman denied him, he might devote a day or two to the chase. Should the effort prove too taxing, he’d shift his focus to someone else.

Now he looked back on all those years of pleasurable, but meaningless encounters, and couldn’t help feeling they reflected poorly on him. A man shouldn’t find it easy to shrug his shoulders and replace one woman with another. Somewhere a lover or two should have touched his heart.

But they never had.

Until now. Until he met a clever, skittish widow with a cloud of tawny hair and eyes that flashed between green and gold. At thirty, he was late to his first true affair of the heart, and the experience left him floundering.

Not least because, instead of running into his arms, Amy became increasingly distant. The flirtation that started with kisses and confidences became less intimate each day. It was a damned backward way to win a bride.

There were no more passionate interludes in the moonlight, no more shared secrets. Several times, he’d tried to broach her defenses, but she proved adept at keeping him out. The irony was that when all his previous lovers had sought to build emotional closeness, he’d maintained his detachment.

Now Pascal was the one to want more than a woman was prepared to give.

He’d wager what little money he had that the gods were laughing their heads off at him.

Most days, he drove Amy in the park. At the balls they attended, she always granted him two dances, including a waltz. They went to the opera, the theatre, museums, picnics, musicales, breakfasts, balls. Society began to treat them as a couple, and the clodpolls he called friends snickered to see the former libertine under the widow’s spell. The world awaited news of a wedding for the elusive Lord Pascal and the charming Lady Mowbray.

Pascal wondered if it waited in vain. Which added to the comedy, given that for the last ten years, he’d had his choice of bride. Now he wanted to marry a lady, yet he couldn’t pin her down for a definite answer.

In the beginning, he’d assumed Amy was all but his, and this game they played moved toward a fixed end. But as day followed discouraging day, his prize edged further out of reach.