Page 59 of Enticing the Devil

Once again, the power to make her own choice was taken from her.

As subtly as she could, she pulled her arm from Beynon’s grasp and started toward the nearest empty seat. Unfortunately, it was next to another unoccupied chair, which her partner promptly claimed.

Keeping her gaze forward, she only half listened to Lily explaining that the order of the readings had been chosen at random before she announced the partnership who was to go first.

Anne could endure this. Ten short scenes, including their own. Perhaps after she and Beynon gave their performance, she’d be able to slip from the room unnoticed.

As the first couple started their reading, the man beside her shifted in his chair. The new position pressed the length of his thigh against hers. An unwanted thrill chased along her skin at the contact as heat rushed through her.

Was she so weakened by her desire for him that such a simple touch could reduce her to trembling?

Just as subtly, she reestablished the breath of space between them.

From the corner of her vision, she saw his large hands, previously resting atop his thighs, curl slowly into fists. For a second, she thought he might reach out...touch her. Then she almost laughed at her foolishness.

He didn’t want her.

Even as she acknowledged the painful truth, her memory was seized by a visceral recollection of being held in his arms, her body wrapped around his, while his heavy breath warmed her throat and his hardness throbbed inside her.

He’d wanted her then.

But passion and sexual hunger—even as intense as what they’d surrendered to last night—did not equate to true feeling. And no matter what society’s expectations happened to be, she did not believe it justified a hasty marriage. She’d rather spend her days a spinster than commit herself to a life as another man’s unwanted obligation.

Mr. Thomas could glower all he wanted. She wasn’t going to marry him.

She remained stoic and resolved through the next few readings, but when it was finally their turn to step in front of the room, she felt an odd trembling deep inside.

Beynon stood first and held his hand to her.

She set her fingers in his without thought—a reflexive response to the common gesture. But when his warm hand curled around hers, her belly twisted and her gaze lifted to catch his for a split second before he directed his gaze forward.

What she saw in his eyes in that moment worried her. It wasn’t his usual broody stare. No flash of temper or burning ire gleamed from the depths. Instead, she saw a hard, unmovable resolve.

It frightened her in a way nothing else could have.

By the time they took their seats facing the other guests, a silent wariness had claimed her.

Lily smiled encouragingly as she handed each of them copies of the abbreviated scene they were to read before turning to her guests.

“Lady Anne will be reading the part of Margaret and Mr. Thomas will read the part of Faust in the dungeon scene of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, Part One.” With a glance back to Anne and Beynon, she whispered, “You may begin whenever you’re ready.”

As Lily took her seat beside her husband in the front row, Anne glanced down at the lines. Taking a deep breath, she tried to focus on the words rather than the man beside her.

An uncomfortable hush settled in the room around them as everyone waited for the scene to begin. The first lines were Beynon’s and Anne finally lifted her gaze to see him staring intently at her, his gaze dark and his expression severe.

But then he glanced down at his scene and read. The heaviness of his voice brought a stark, painful gravity to Faust’s impassioned words as he sees his former love in the dungeon cell. Anne’s response as Margaret was a pained appeal filled with confusion as the imprisoned woman fails to recognize the man she’d once loved.

As the scene continued through the emotional turmoil of a woman lost to grief and guilt and a man desperate to redeem himself by freeing her from the tragic fate that awaited her, Anne surrendered to the emotion of the scene. She surrendered to the pain in Margaret’s pleas for mercy as the woman remembered all she’d lost. And she surrendered to the rough, almost angry insistence of the man who’d led to her ruin but was now fighting to save her.

Beynon’s reading of Faust’s passionate demands as he urged her to leave with him, to flee the dungeon before it was too late, forced Anne to fight past the emotion clogging her throat to respond as Margaret struggled against the weight of her own shame and despair.

By the time they reached the end of the scene, Anne felt weak and raw.

Because she’d felt Beynon’s reading as if he’d been Faust himself. Desperate and fighting to fully understand the woman he wished to save and the strength of the darkness that gripped her.

With her heart racing, she met Beynon’s heavy stare. His dark eyes were weighted with silent passion and, again, that unforgiving resolve.

As desperate as she was to reject his proposal, he was just as fiercely determined not be swayed from his intention.

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