Lover Be Mine (Legendary Lovers 2)
Gesturing toward the draperies that covered the French doors, she indicated his escape route.
His grin flashed white while a devious sparkle lit his eyes. “What will you give me to disappear?”
“This is not the time for games!” she hissed frantically. “Please, you have to go.”
“Very well,” he murmured with a theatrical sigh. “But this is not over, beauty.”
To her surprise, he pressed a quick, heated kiss on her lips, then slipped behind the curtain before she could aid him with a shove. Clearly his audacity knew no bounds, Sophie thought with exasperation and relief.
Straightening her disheveled gown, she came out of the nook just as her aunt entered the room.
“I thought I might find you here, poring over some literary tome,” Mrs. Eunice Pennant remarked. “I wish I could avoid my guests as easily. Did you forget I arranged this ball for your sake?”
Sophie had never liked lying, especially to her favorite relative, so she settled for a small prevarication. “I just needed a momentary respite from the dancing, Aunt.”
Her elderly great-aunt’s penetrating gaze surveyed her, making her very aware of her hammering pulse and flushed cheeks. Mrs. Pennant’s sharp glance then shifted and settled on the library table, where Lord Jack Wilde’s cutlass still lay gleaming in its leather scabbard.
“A respite, you say? Honestly, Sophie. I never expected you of all people to be lured in by a rogue.”
Embarrassed heat flooded her when she realized she’d been found out, but her response was cut off by her great-aunt.
“We will continue this discussion later, after my masquerade ends. Your parents are wondering where you went, and Dunmore has been asking for you. For now you had best put on your mask and cover your hot face. And do straighten your hair. You don’t want to give the impression you have been indulging in a torrid love affair.”
“No, of course not, Aunt,” Sophie murmured meekly, grateful her elderly relative was on her side.
She found her mask on the sofa and slipped it on. Yet as she followed her aunt from the library, Sophie couldn’t help but cast a wistful glance behind her, wondering if Lord Jack was still there or if he’d escaped through the French doors into the night.
Her fingers strayed to her still-tingling lips as she remembered his blazing kiss. Then, with a scoffing sound of self-annoyance, Sophie dutifully exited the library in order to return to the masquerade ball.
The hour was late when the festivities ended. Once the final guests departed, Sophie’s parents retired to bed, clearly satisfied with her progress in winning the Duke of Dunmore—in part, she realized, because they knew nothing of her romantic interlude spent in the arms of their enemy. They would be appalled to learn she’d been kissing and cavorting with Lord Jack Wilde under any circumstances, let alone at a ball intended to reel in his grace. Thankfully her great-aunt had not mentioned her indiscretion.
Yet Aunt Eunice was apparently not willing to forget the incident either.
“A word with you, my dear,” the elderly lady murmured when Sophie would have sought her own bed. “Pray attend me in my sitting room.”
Suspecting she was about to have a peal rung over her head, she accompanied Mrs. Pennant upstairs to her elegant suite of rooms. Whenever the Fortins came to London, they stayed at Mrs. Pennant’s London mansion. And since her parents couldn’t afford the enormous expense of a London Season, Aunt Eunice had sponsored Sophie’s debut almost entirely. It therefore stood to reason she would have a large say in their affairs and their attempts to find a noble husband for their daughter.
The silver-haired lady settled in her favorite chair, prepared to quiz her grand-niece.
“So tell me what happened tonight, Sophie. You were kissing the pirate, were you not?” Without waiting for a reply, she shot another question. “Who was he?”
Sophie replied truthfully, since there was no point in delaying the inevitable. “The pirate was Lord Jack Wilde, Aunt.”
Surprisingly, Mrs. Pennant nodded. “I suspected as much, for I recognized his physique. Few men have such magnificent shoulders as he. But I confess I am shocked at you, miss.”
Although spurred to defend herself, Sophie tried to keep her voice even. “I assure you, it was not an arranged assignation. I have never spoken to him before tonight.”
“Then why was he here uninvited?”
“I believe he was acting on a challenge from a member of his family.”
Her aunt’s thin lips twisted into something resembling a smile. “Leave it to a Wilde to do something that outrageous. I have to admire his gall, however. In my day, men were bolder than the namby-pamby crop of beaus who flock around you. But surely you are aware of Lord Jack’s reputation, Sophie. He is a rogue of the first order, and the very devil with the ladies.”
“So I have heard, Aunt.”
For generations, the fiery, passionate Wilde clan had cut a swath through the bedrooms and ballrooms of Europe, and Lord Jack was the worst perpetrator of the current cousins. Reportedly, he loved women and they loved him back.
Certainly Sophie had noticed him before this. How could she not? With his charisma and brazen, dare-the-world charm, he was impossible to ignore. But she had followed his career much more closely since spying him at the Arundel Home for Unwed Mothers.