Page 64 of Some Like It Wild
“Sophie,” he breathed against her parted lips, suddenly finding it the most entrancing name in all the world.
He drew away first, desperate to bring his rioting passions under control before he did something they would both regret.
“How did you recognize me tonight?” She blinked up at him, her sultry blue eyes shadowed by the cat-eye slant of the mask’s eyeholes. “How did you know I was the comtesse?”
Unable to keep his hands off of her despite his best intentions, he traced the delicate curve of her jaw with the back of his fingers. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to find you. I would have known you anywhere. Anytime.”
She ducked her head, her unexpected shyness just as entrancing as her boldness had been. “I don’t suppose I made a very convincing comtesse.”
“On the contrary. I thought it was a remarkable performance. Had I been at the theater I would have leapt to my feet and shouted, ‘Bravo!’ at the top of my lungs.”
She slowly lifted her head, her eyes narrowing. “What did you say?”
“I said I would have leapt to my feet and shouted, ‘Bravo’…” He trailed off, watching in alarm as the color began to drain from the bottom half of her face. “Sweeting, what is it?”
“You!” she breathed, backing away from him.
He followed her step for step, bewildered by the abrupt change in her demeanor. Before he knew it, they were on the other side of the curtain and beginning to attract a small but fascinated audience.
She pointed a trembling finger at him. It didn’t take him more than a glimpse of her stormy eyes to realize it was trembling not with fear, but with rage. “You! I know who you are! You’re one of those miserable wretches from the theater who pelted me with rotten vegetables.”
She reached up and tore off the mask, baring her face to him and the world. Crispin’s heart plummeted toward his shoes as he finally rememberedexactlywhere he’d seen that magnificent face before.
It wasn’t uncommon for him and a bunch of other rowdy young bucks to terrorize the town on a weekend. Usually their mischief was limited to seeing who could swill the most cheap gin without casting up their accounts on their shoes or tossing unsuspecting passersby into a horse trough. But on one fateful Friday night, when they were already deep in their cups, they had stumbled into a smoky, second-rate theater off Drury Lane.
When Sophie had taken the stage, he had been just as transfixed by her beauty as he was now. Then she had opened her exquisite mouth and ruined everything.
As she had stuttered out her lines in a wooden monotone, the theater had erupted in catcalls and hoots of laughter. Before he knew it, one of his friends had shoved a rotting tomato into his hand. He had tossed it without thinking, then felt worse than rotten when he saw that beautiful face streaked with tomato juice and bits of pulp. She had turned and looked right at him in that moment, her face proud and pale, her blue eyes darkened by accusation just as they were now.
“You threw a tomato at me!”
He raised both hands as if to ward off an attack. “I was foxed out of my head on cheap gin that night! If I hadn’t been, I would have remembered it before now.”
She snorted. “Ah yes, because you’ve been waiting your whole life to find me. You would have known me anywhere. Anytime. Except for the night you and your horrid friends bombarded me with rubbish and ran me out of town!”
He shook his head, helpless to defend the indefensible. “Well, you have to admit you were a really awful actress.”
She sucked in an outraged breath. “I’d rather be an awful actress than an awful man!” With those words, she snatched a glass of champagne from a footman’s tray and tossed its contents right in his face.
She spun around and went storming off, leaving behind a trail of shocked gasps and muffled titters.
“Lovers’ quarrel,” Crispin muttered to the man nearest to him, earning a knowing and sympathetic nod as he used his cravat to mop his face.
By the time he had swiped all the champagne from his eyes, the exquisite Comtesse d’Arby had vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared.
When the musicians struck up yet another infernal Viennese waltz, Connor grabbed Pamela by the hand and began to drag her toward the middle of the floor. He’d had just about enough of watching her wistfully moon over the couples sweeping gracefully around the ballroom. He’d already decided that there would be none of those ridiculous country dances or stately minuets for him. If he was going to make a complete ass of himself in front of half of London, it was going to be with her in his arms.
“Where are we going?” Pamela asked, alarmed by Connor’s ferocious scowl. He looked as if he were ready to do murder.
“I’m going to dance with you,” he growled. “But if I break your toe as I did my mother’s, you have only yourself to blame.”
Her heart soared in time to the music as he drew her into his arms, cupping one of her gloved hands in his much larger one and pressing his other hand firmly to the small of her back. As he swept her into the waltz, other couples eager to spy on them rushed to join the dance.
For a dizzying moment it was as if they were right back in her bed, their gazes locked, their bodies moving in perfect rhythm.
Until his foot came down firmly on her toes.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, making an involuntary little leap of protest.
