Kiss Me, Annabel

She turned a little white. “You are very blunt.”

“We will dance, and I will flirt with you, but you will not flirt back. As the music is ending, I will lean toward you and whisper something in your ear. And you will slap me, as hard as you can, and then proceed to call for your carriage.”

“Are you recuperating my reputation?”

“Only in order to take it away,” he said. “I mean to have you: but I have to make you into someone worth having first, if you see what I mean. After last night, no one would believe that I would spend a night with you. I have my own kind of reputation, and if we’re going to make this believable—”

“I need to be more attractive,” she said flatly.

“Interesting,” he clarified.

“Because trollops are tedious.”

“Precisely.”

Imogen was about to tell him to go to the devil, when the truth slid into place with a devastating jolt. Easy? She’d been nothing more than easy for Draven. She’d put herself in his way for years, fell out of an apple tree at his feet, fell off her horse so that she could get into his house…

If she hadn’t been so easy, perhaps he would have—The truth blinded her and made her feel unable to breathe.

She turned back to Mayne. He held out his hand and she rose.

Naturally, complicated old-fashioned dances were being played, the kind where you see your partner for two seconds and then twirl away into the hands of another. But Mayne caught the eye of the orchestra leader, and a second later, a gold coin was snugly nestled in the man’s pocket. The master of ceremonies called “A waltz by Franz Schubert!”

Imogen curtsied. Mayne bowed. He held out his hand and she took it. “Don’t come close to me,” he said to her, sotto voce. “At some point I’ll try to pull you against my body; I’d like you to visibly resist.”

She nodded. The music lapped around them, Schubert at his sweetest and saddest. He glanced down and found her eyes were dark and teary.

“Don’t you dare cry!” he hissed. “That would ruin everything.”

“Draven and I never danced together,” she whispered.

“Good thing. You’re not keeping the beat very well, are you? That’s the second time you’ve trod on my feet. It might have been enough to put Maitland off.”

Thankfully her chin rose and she glared. He smiled down at her, the serpentlike smile of a man preparing a seduction. From the corner of his eye he saw Lady Felicia Saville, one of his less lovely conquests of the past, eyes wide.

Deliberately he spread his hand on Imogen’s back and pulled her toward him. She sprang back as stiff as a spring and glared at him.

“So why can’t you dance?” he asked, giving her a smile as sizzling as he could make it.

She frowned at him. “Because my father didn’t have enough money to keep a dancing master, that’s why!”

He moved his hand caressingly just as he twirled her about, so that Felicia could have an eyeful. Then he smiled again, the cool, calculating leer of a rake.

“I don’t like your face when you do that,” Imogen said suddenly. “It makes you look quite dissolute.”

“Getting your own back for the trollop comment?”

“Telling the truth.” Her eyes fell. “As you were, I suppose.”

Thankfully the dance was drawing to an end; he was feeling quite battered by Imogen’s loving comments. Perhaps he’d crawl off and join Rafe in his barrel of brandy. Then he remembered how enraged Rafe would be when he heard of this dance.

“All right,” he said to her, “I’m going to whisper in your ear, and then you slap me.”

He leaned in to her just as the music stopped, brushing her hair aside with a tender hand, whispering, “I’ll come for you tomorrow, at three o’clock in the afternoon.”

She sprang back, eyes flaming. Then she drew back her hand and whacked him in the cheek, jerking his head back.

When he straightened, she leaned toward him with an assassin’s smile on her face. “I enjoyed that,” she said. “And I just want to make one comment.” Her eyes were so sharp that they could have cut stone. “I don’t mind slapping you, but if you ever think that I’m doing anything by the name of a coney’s kiss, you’re wrong!”

“A what?” he said, but she was gone.

He rather of liked the sound of it, although it was probably something he knew of under a far more pedantic title.

Perhaps something Scottish?

He grinned. Perhaps his penance would not be entirely cheerless.

Nine

Griselda had promised to attend a debut ball being given for the daughter of a friend, and she was justly irritable at the idea that she must delay her departure and accompany Imogen to Grillon’s Hotel.

“A hotel!” She said it with all the loathing of a woman who would never enter a hotel of her own volition.In her voice Imogen heard the echo of Mayne’s label, trollop. “I can’t go alone, Griselda,” she said steadily. “Annabel will come with me, but it’s not proper for the two of us to make that visit alone.”

“Of course it’s not!” she snapped. “Dragging your sister into a place like that.”

“So I’m asking you. I made a mistake,” Imogen admitted. “You were right.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “You were right about Ardmore and I was wrong, and I’m sorry. Please help me to get out of this, Griselda.”

“I suppose you can’t just send him a note,” she muttered.

“Mayne said not.”

Griselda’s head swung up. “Mayne? So my brother is involved in this, is he?”

“He’s the one who—who told me that I had to apologize to Ardmore in person,” Imogen said, a tear spilling down her cheek at the humiliation of it all.

“Mayne is always right in these matters,” Griselda said resignedly. “Lord knows, he’s had years of experience. And you did put the earl in an awkward position last night. I expect Ardmore will have to explain you away before he can make a proposal to a decent girl’s father.”

Imogen swallowed. “I didn’t think about him.”

“No.” And then: “All right. We’ll be unfashionably late to Lady Penfield’s ball and doubtless I’ll have to hear about it for the next month or so. She’s so anxious to have this ball of hers a success. Perhaps Mayne could accompany us…that would at least ensure his presence. Lord knows why matchmaking mamas still want him around, but they seem to.”

“He might fall in love someday,” Imogen said doubtfully, picturing Mayne’s Lucifer-like exhaustion. After their conversation, she no longer had the faintest belief that he would fall in love with her.

“One can always hope,” Griselda said. “Now, what are you going to wear tonight, darling?”

“Black,” Imogen said.

“Not too low in the bosom. You don’t want to entice a man when you’re begging his pardon.”

Imogen never wanted to see Ardmore again, let alone beg his pardon, but she stiffened her back. Maybe she’d make him beg her pardon too. For saying such a horrible thing in her presence. That horrible…word. Whatever it meant.