Page 55 of Miss Prim and the Duke of Wylde
Over the past days, she’d relived those fraught moments in Bond Street again and again and was increasingly certain the man’s target must have been Drago. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would try to harm her, and surely if the man had intended her harm, he wouldn’t have come at her while Drago was walking beside her.
No, that she was the man’s intended victim made no sense at all. Ergo, he’d been after Drago.
After tonight—after this event that marked their prospective relationship being recognized and accepted by their world—she intended to use her bolstered position to probe further as to who might wish Drago ill.
A cuckolded husband? One had to imagine that might be a possibility.
But she didn’t as yet feel she had sufficient standing to badger Drago for information—not yet. And tonight, she didn’t have to worry for his safety, so she could relax and enjoy the moment, and she devoted herself to doing just that.
Regardless of whether she eventually married Drago or not—she quashed a sharp pang at the mere thought of “not”—this would be her one and only engagement ball, and she intended to enjoy it to the full.
Appropriate toasts were drunk and wishes for their happiness resonated throughout the long room.
The food was delicious, and the wine flowed freely. The back-and-forth conversation about the table was rapid-fire, consistently good-natured, and often hilarious. Her familial peers were in excellent form, and the comments, observations, retorts, and ripostes came thick and fast.
Laughter was the prevailing sound, with excited chatter a hum overlaying the backgroundclinkof cutlery on fine porcelain and the occasionaltingof crystal glasses being tapped.
Eventually, however, after the final course had been consumed, his mother and hers rose and came to drag—accompany—Meg and Drago upstairs to the ballroom, to stand at the head of the reception line for the guests who had started arriving for the ball.
Meg exchanged a quick, feeling look with Drago, but with nothing more than a faintly challenging lift to his dark brows, he rose and pulled out her chair, and together—to the raucous cheers of her cousins and his—they meekly followed their parents from the room.
For the next hour, she stood beside Drago as they welcomed the better part of the haut ton to their event and accepted the congratulations, all surprisingly genuine, heaped upon them.
Finally, their mothers—smiling with approval—released them, just as the musicians struck up for the first waltz.
Drago’s mother leaned close and whispered, “Your reward for behaving in such exemplary fashion. Trust me when I say that we”—with her gaze, she included Meg’s mother, who was smiling delightedly—“appreciate it.”
Laughing, Drago bowed to her and to Meg’s mother, then took Meg’s hand and, with his gaze capturing hers, gracefully led her to the floor, passing through a parting sea of guests to reach the clearing space.
There, he turned, and Meg went into his arms.
She’d previously thought waltzing with Drago akin to floating on air; tonight, he waltzed her onto a different plane, one on which only he and she existed.
They whirled, and she gazed into his eyes, unable to look away as the magic of the moment descended and wrapped about them, cocooning them in a net of heightened awareness and blatant, pulse-throbbing, sensual longing.
The sensation of his hand splayed across her back, the contact burning through the layers of fine silk, the physical power as he swirled them, step by masterful step, revolution by revolution, down the floor, all effortlessly snared and fixed her senses.
The guests watching were a blur of faces, a distant murmur of sound. Someone started clapping, then the applause spread throughout the room, the percussive beats almost as fast as her heartbeat.
She was enthralled—fascinated anew—by this man who, she was fast learning, had untold facets, all of which she longed to explore. She did not understand where that compulsion came from, from what it sprang; she only knew it was there, and at moments like this, when she was truly a physical captive in his arms, that need rose and thrummed very close to her surface, leaving her skin prickling with lascivious hunger and unsated desire.
Could he tell that he made her feel like that?
Trapped in his dark gaze, she didn’t doubt it; from all she’d heard of him over the years—whispers shared among the cohort of unmarried young ladies—the man was a master seducer.
She would have been stunned to learn that, at that very moment, the master seducer was questioning, dazedly, who was seducing whom.
The feel of Meg—hisMeg—in his arms was a potent invitation to sin.
He knew well enough that he had to resist the tug of that primal urge, yet her eyes—so wide, so very blue—inexorably drew him in. Into imagining a moment when it would be just the two of them, alone and free to explore…
All that he now so desperately wanted to uncover, catalog, and know.
To know and make his in the most primitive fashion, albeit cloaked in his usual charming veneer, disguised by his customary sophisticated expertise.
He knew who he was beneath the elegant outer coating, and it was that man who so powerfully lusted after her, the lady who was almost his.
Who would soon be his. He told himself that as he hauled hard on the reins of his always reckless libido. He would not risk any harm to her, would not permit even a whiff of scandal to touch her.
