Summer Is for Lovers (21 page)

Her tormentor’s mouth fell open, though it was hard to discern whether he was startled more by her pointed questions or by her newfound confidence. She had never spoken this way in polite company before. At least, not while sober. There was a dizzying sense of freedom that accompanied her speech, the knowledge that she could say these things, could be this person, without the crutch of even a single glass of champagne.

The fingers on Mr. Dermott’s still-outstretched palm fisted, and the hand dropped to his side. “I imagine I deserved that. Would you grant me this dance as a way to redeem your opinion of me?”

Caroline met his gaze, unrepentant. Indeed, unamused. “And what of how you have shaped others’ opinions of
me
?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I imagine that dancing with me will dispel any unfortunate rumors that may have started.” A flush crept along the edge of his collar. “Please, Caroline. I would like this chance to start again.”

She expelled the breath that was cramping her lungs. Her head felt fuzzy, whether from her new boldness or Mr. Dermott’s unexpected apology, she could not be sure. A part of her—a surprising part—was tempted to take a turn around the dance floor with him, if for no other reason than to quiet the crowd’s rumors and show him he could not affect her.

“Miss Tolbertson,” she told him.

His confused blue eyes lifted to meet her own. “I . . . beg your pardon?”

“If you wish to start again, you will address me as Miss Tolbertson.” She managed to gift him with a tight smile. “Then I would know you mean to start anew. And it should not be the crowd’s opinion of me you seek to reform, but the opinion they hold of you.”

He broke into a dazzling grin that stretched from one tip of his
en pointe
collar to the next. His hand lifted again, a long, slow gesture ending in the renewal of his earlier offer to dance. “Thank you, Miss Tolbertson. I shall endeavor to restore your faith in me.”

Caroline found she couldn’t look away from the sight of those gloved fingers reaching for her. Not an adder, then. They were venomous, certainly, but their bites were not often fatal. No, Mr. Dermott’s bright, eye-numbing smile and outstretched fingers brought to mind another sort of snake. She had read about cobras in one of Penelope’s omnipresent travel books, a snake indigenous to India that mesmerized its victims with slow, beautiful movements before striking with deadly efficiency. She had laughed at the time, wondering how stupid a victim would have to be to fall for a dancing snake.

She didn’t have to wonder any longer.

Because her hand was sliding, almost of its own accord, into Mr. Dermott’s. And then she was stepping onto the dance floor.

Chapter 25

D
AVID WATCHED
C
AROLINE
walk out onto the floor with Dermott with a sensation akin to falling. Only not from a fine, tall height, where he had time to get his feet under him.

No, David felt as if someone had kicked his feet out beneath him, and he had fallen a short, heavy distance onto shards of glass.

He had arrived late, shouldering a plan to keep a wary distance from Caroline for the entirety of the evening. It was a calculated strategy for self-preservation, because every time his mind wandered in her direction, it settled on the image of her stretched out on a rock, skirts rucked up, her face flushed with pleasure.

Not the sort of image that lent itself to stale conversation or the polite company of peers.

In addition to his own instincts for survival, he had also assembled this plan for her benefit. Hovering at her shoulder and glaring at her potential suitors would not help Caroline discover which gentleman here tonight was worth setting her sights on.

But almost immediately, he spied Caroline bowing to Dermott in the opening strains of a quadrille, and he could no longer recall why removing himself from her vicinity was a sane idea.

She was luminous, drawing the eye of every available male in the room, and quite a few of the unavailable males, to boot. Her gown, some miraculous creation he had never seen before and could not quite remove his eyes from, bordered on indecent. Not in the amount of cleavage it displayed, because, after all, this was Caroline.

It was more the manner in which the dress cut away from her shoulders to reveal her curved upper arms. It was an elegant thing, proper in its construction, but it also made a man want to press his lips against the tanned indentation of her collarbone. Tonight, finally, she had relented in her choice of hairstyle, and he sent up a prayer of thanks for those silly rags she had so hated this afternoon. Her hair fell in soft ringlets around her ears, and with each movement of her shoulders those waves moved like a lazy fallen halo against the endless column of her neck.

And Dermott, blast the man, had the best view in the house.

Even if he had to look up to see it.

Every proprietary instinct in David’s body, every possessive urge he had been fighting to suppress, surged to the front of his emotional queue. He paused at the edge of the dance floor. Pulled a frustrated hand through his hair. Considered tugging at the roots, just to remind himself this was all his fault.

Yes
, he had encouraged Dermott and his friends to open their eyes. Yes, he had wanted them to see Caroline for the potential in her eccentricities rather than just the perceived oddity of her actions. But he also wanted to haul that smiling bastard off the dance floor and plant a fist somewhere in the vicinity of his leering mouth.

What did she see in the man? Surely Caroline couldn’t be interested in such a disingenuous soul, especially not one who seemed as intent on spreading gossip behind her back as swooning at her feet. Even Branson would be a better choice than Dermott, and Branson fit her about as well as a ladies’ left slipper fit his own right foot.

David wanted Caroline to be happy, truly he did. He just wasn’t sure he wanted her to be happy with someone like Dermott.

As the dance finally came to its conclusion, he could see, in a flash of unholy annoyance, that a single dance with Mr. Dermott appeared to have done Caroline’s reputation a great deal of good. Within seconds, she was swarmed by a crowd of young—and some not so young—men, like ants discovering a nice cherry pie at a country house picnic.

A possessive drumbeat struck up a rhythm in David’s veins, insistent on taking a piece of this pie for himself. He began to shoulder his way toward the crowd. From across the room, he could see Branson start toward her as well, a determined look on his face. Apparently the boy wanted the next dance. Well, the love-struck swain was going to have to wait, because while David might not be her perfect match, he was quite sure Branson wasn’t either.

Caroline’s face broke into a smile as David covered the last few feet, then fractured around the edges, no doubt when she caught sight of his glower. He was stalking her with the terse focus of a predator, but she did not move away.

If anything she leaned toward him.

“It is a pleasure to see you tonight, David.” She used his given name without hesitation, setting the stage for the evening with her chosen informality. He supposed, after the trick he had pulled on her this afternoon, he should be glad it was not a more derogatory name she chose to use.

“And you, as well.” David’s body reacted unfortunately to the low timber of her voice. Then again, he was used to his body hardening at the sight and sound of her by now.

But he wasn’t used to this concurrent, unexpected stirring in the region of his heart.

“I believe the second dance of the evening is mine,” he told the gentlemen hovering nearby, eliciting a series of groaned protests and sending the remnants of what had been a very good plan up in smoke.

It wasn’t his dance, of course. He had just arrived, had not even completed an entire circuit around the periphery of the ballroom, much less devolved into penciling his name onto young ladies’ dance cards.

But she offered him her hand anyway, as he had known she would.

And then it was his turn to dance. His turn to admire the beautiful curve of her neck.

His turn to be the object of other men’s ire.

It was a waltz, of course, the same dance that had set off their unfortunate conversation two nights ago at the pavilion. Only this time, it was a slower melody, better suited for an elegant string orchestra than a brass band. She seemed more rigid than his memory, or less pliant. Though David had told her two nights ago that a proper dance partner would make one forget the steps, he could almost hear her counting.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

Clearly he was not doing his job if she was so focused on the placement of her feet.

He pulled her a little closer then, and she moved into his arms with a slight, wilting sigh. She stayed quiet, and the silence surprised him. This was, after all, a girl who tended toward chattering, especially when she was nervous.

David searched his mind for something to say that would pair well with the strains of the music. Though he had more than once been accused of having a silver tongue, the poet in him seemed to have been cannibalized by a growling, primitive beast who had trouble stringing two coherent words together.

The only thing that came to mind that made any sort of sense matched the rhythm of the music in fine, terrifying fashion:
Mine, mine, mine.

He swallowed against that inappropriate thought. “You look lovely tonight, Caroline.”

She raised her eyes and offered him a peculiar smile, once that carried a hint of discomfort rather than pleasure. “Thank you.”

He set his sights on the target of her mouth, given that there was nowhere else he could look that did not cause his body to tighten. She might be unusually quiet, but that also meant her lips were not moving, and that was an opportunity that invited closer scrutiny.

Her lips looked . . . mouthwatering. Like a plum at the peak of flavor, placed temptingly atop a bowl when the rest of the fruit had yet to ripen.

He dragged his eyes from the temptation of her mouth to the crowd beyond, only to spy Dermott watching them with hooded eyes. He wondered in that telling moment if her discomfort had anything to do with the man. “Did Mr. Dermott say something to upset you?”

David half hoped he had. Hadn’t he been looking for an excuse to pull the man outside for a good, old-fashioned thrashing?

“No. It was something Mr. Duffington said.”

His gaze jerked back to hers. “Who in the hell is Duffington?”

“The Earl of Beecham’s son.” She inclined her head toward a nearby couple.

David looked in the direction she indicated. He spied Miss Baxter dancing in the arms of a dark-haired gentleman he recognized as being part of the crowd that had followed Caroline about on the Marine Parade yesterday. Duffington looked as though he might maim his slightly built partner with one misstep.

“What did he say?”

Caroline’s lips settled into a straight line he felt to his bones. “He asked me to marry him.”

David felt as if the floor tilted. Indeed, it may have. He struggled to maintain a facade of calm reason through his rising disbelief. “And did you accept?”

Her eyes darted a moment to their spinning feet.
One, two, three. One, two, three
. “I told him I would think on it.”

“You cannot seriously consider him a viable candidate.”

Her gaze pulled back up. “He is the son of an earl, David. I shall not entertain an improved prospect. I am not even sure why I delayed my answer, given my family’s dire financial straits. It has to be yes, I think.”

A stubborn denial set up in David’s brain. “He is too short for you.”

“If I am to use height as a guide, I would have to exclude an overwhelming majority of men in attendance tonight. I don’t think I can afford to be so particular.”

“Well then, he’s about four stone too heavy.”

She raised a brow. “Better me as his partner than the imminently crushable Miss Baxter, don’t you think?”

“Well then, he’s too bloody young for you!” David snapped, exasperated by her inability to see reason. Blood pushed through veins narrowed by panic, seeking an outlet and finding none. There was no one he could pummel, no exertions at the ready to calm his ire. “Duffington is not your match,” he ground out, so there could be no mistake.

That, finally, brought a flash of spirit to her features, which had tended toward stone for most of this conversation. “Should I set my sights on Mr. Dermott, then? Although if we are to be quite strict about it, he doesn’t meet your height requirements either.”

“Did Dermott offer for you too?” David demanded, incredulous at the man’s balls-up bravado.

Then again, hadn’t Dermott proven himself, on more than one occasion, a competitive fool? If Dermott believed the son of an earl was interested in Caroline, he might renew his twisted interest in her on that basis alone. David’s hands tightened involuntarily about her waist. Perhaps he should have encouraged Dermott to take that drunken swim the other night, after all—the world would now be a safer place.

Her cheeks had gone pink at his question. Or was that becoming color a by-product of their afternoon on the beach? He regretted it now. He had left her simmering with frustration, and then turned her over to a ballroom full of randy young men.

What had he been thinking?

“No.” Caroline gave her head a slight shake, setting the gentle curls around her face in motion. “He did not ask me to marry him. But he offered me an apology. And I believe it was sincere.”

“You thought his intentions toward your first kiss were sincere too, and look what happened.” David’s lips tightened around the obvious. “Dermott does not have your best interests at heart. You must trust me on this.”

Her color ran higher at that. “Well I
don’t
trust you. Not on this. The objections you raise disqualify every man of my acquaintance except one:
you
.”

Her words sounded small. Or it might have been their negligible volume, juxtaposed against the vacuum they created in his chest.
One, two, three. One, two, three.

Her fingers tightened on his hand against his silence. “Do you know what I think? I think your reasoning on the unsuitability of other interested gentlemen has nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with denial. Mr. Duffington might not be my ideal, but he is at least a living, breathing person who cares enough about me to see to my future. You, on the other hand, seem to care very little about what becomes of me.”

Her words fell like carefully constructed blows, designed to tear him apart from the roots. “How can you say that?” he demanded, recalling the unholy restraint it had taken to prove very much the opposite, just this afternoon. “How could you think I don’t care for you?”

She licked her lips, looking the very opposite of a wounded creature. “You send a good deal of mixed messages in this regard.”

“Where would you be if I permitted you the kind of ruin you seem so willing to embrace? It is my worry over your future that guides me in this.”

She shook her head, her eyes near glinting sparks. “You speak of my ruin as if it is some kind of inevitable conclusion to our relationship. Well, spending the rest of my life married to the wrong man seems every bit as ruinous as falling for you.”

“Then don’t fall,” he told her. “Because I do not welcome the burden.”