Scandalously Yours (Hellions of High Street 1)
The pale moonlight spun like silvery vapor around the brighter flickers of gold.
Caught up in her movements and the mesmerizing play of light against dark, Olivia didn’t realize that she was not alone until a shadow fell across her face.
“I am willing to try anything,” murmured John as he fell in step beside her and began mimicking her movements.
The flames seemed to lick up higher and she was suddenly hot all over. Unwinding her shawl from her shoulders, she let it trail away behind her.
Sway, sway.
And then an unexpected spin as John took hold of her and pulled her into his arms. Sparks flew up from the crackling logs, and somewhere in the nearby trees a pair of nightingales broke into a twittering song. Taking her hand, John slid into the figures of a waltz. He was humming, the soft notes in perfect harmony with the music of the night.
“That’s lovely,” she murmured after several bars. “What is it?”
“Beethoven’s Sonata ‘Quasi una fantasia.’” A silver shimmer winked over his smile. “Which is more popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata.”
Moonlight. Firelight.
The tangled glow traced over the planes of his face, the flame-tipped lashes, the stubbled whiskers, the lean jaw. Silhouetted against the iron gray stone he looked like a wild Druid warrior. Dark. Dangerous.
Olivia felt the breath shiver in her throat. This was not the civilized, straitlaced earl of a London ballroom, but a far more primitive male.
A little frightening, but undeniably alluring.
He released her and suddenly shucked off his coat. Beneath the white linen of his shirt, the shadowy contours of his muscles rippled as he raised his arms in martial salute to the moon.
The Perfect Hero, limned in the magic of midnight.
Spellbound by the sight, Olivia blurted out, “Oh, Anna and Caro would find this all terribly romantic. They enjoy…”
“They enjoy what?” he asked after a slow, spinning turn around the red-gold flames.
“Oh, er, you know—those wildly emotional scenes one reads about in novels and poetry.”
John remained strangely silent. Rather than resume his humming, he recaptured her hands, and for an interlude, the only sounds in the night were the crackling coals and their steps scuffing over the hardscrabble ground.
And the nightingales. The notes of a new song floated out from the dark, breeze-ruffled foliage of the trees.
“And you do not consider yourself romantic?” he finally asked.
Olivia shook her head. “Ye gods, no. I haven’t a romantic bone in my body. My passions are purely pragmatic.”
“I think you are very wrong. The essays you write are, at heart, powerfully romantic.”
“Th-that’s absurd. They—”
The touch of his fingertip stilled her lips. “They are romantic because they inspire us to think we can be better than we are. They give us hope that the future can be brighter.”
The sudden warmth suffusing her cheeks was not from the burning branches, but rather from some inner glow.
They danced on. Olivia lost count of the steps and the minutes. Lost count of all the rational reasons to put an end to the whirling dervish dance of emotions inside her.
Stop. The inner word was lost in the echo of a myriad other longings. Throwing thought to the wind, she pulled away from John and peeled off her spencer jacket. It fell to the ground with a whispery sigh.
To her surprise, he laughed and suddenly stripped away his shirt and tossed it atop her crumpled spencer.
“You once said that waltzing was far too stilted and that we all ought to dance naked in the moonlight.”
“I say a great many foolish things, Wrexham,” said Olivia, watching the light lap over his sun-bronzed skin. I feel a great many foolish things.