Pursuing Lord Pascal (Dashing Widows #4)

Chapter Three

A s the carriage rolled into motion, Amy was breathless, caught up in a dream, rushed along from event to event with no logic to link them. Her lips tingled after that brief kiss in a way they’d never tingled after her husband’s rare kisses. Now the man she’d mooned after as a girl said he wanted to marry her.

She resisted the urge to pinch herself. When she was a dizzy adolescent, head over heels with her brother’s picturesque friend, she’d imagined Pascal declaring his love. In her innocence, that had usually involved a rose garden, and a white horse, and endless yearning looks.

By the time she turned sixteen, she’d recognized those fantasies as mawkish and unrealistic. Heavens, if she’d thrown in a couple of unicorns and a troupe of dancing fairies, her dreams couldn’t have been more unlikely to come true.

Since then, she hadn’t entertained a single romantic thought. Until Lord Pascal had danced with her and revived the remnants of foolish girlhood that lingered under her practical manner.

She was too flustered to be tactful. Not that tact came naturally anyway. “We have nothing in common. The idea’s ridiculous.”

Instead of taking umbrage, he laughed with sardonic appreciation. “This is the first time I’ve discussed marriage with a lady. You could be a little kinder.”

“I’m sorry.” She’d noticed last night that for a man whose handsomeness was universally praised, he showed a refreshing lack of vanity. “You caught me by surprise.”

“I hoped to avoid any misunderstandings about where my thoughts are leading.” He still looked amused. “You’re not an ingénue, Lady Mowbray.”

The problem was that in most ways that counted, she was an ingénue. She realized that her hand still lay in his. The first time he’d touched her, her heart had turned cartwheels. It said something for how he’d distracted her today that she’d forgotten they held hands.

She slid her hand free and clenched it in her lap. “You’re mocking me.”

He frowned. “Not at all.”

“Then why would you say such a nonsensical thing?”

He cast her a wry glance. “Kinder, please, Lady Mowbray.”

“You’ll have to forgive my manners.” She sucked in an annoyed breath. “I’m not used to strangers wanting to marry me. I wondered if it was some peculiar London joke.”

“You’re a beautiful woman.” He studied her with a puzzled expression. “You must have men after you all the time.”

“Hundreds,” she said drily and with perfect honesty. There was her farm manager, and her tenants, and her neighbors who, after initial reluctance to accept a woman’s advice on farm matters, now clamored for her help.

She was startled when Lord Pascal accepted the answer at face value. “Exactly. So if I’m bowled over, why should you be surprised?”

“You’re very direct.” She hadn’t expected that. His extraordinary looks deceived her into thinking this was a man who would woo a woman in rhyming couplets. “You’re not at all as I imagined when I was fourteen.”

His laugh held a hint of self-derision. “I’m a fairly basic fellow. Does that disappoint you?”

She thought back to the buffle-headed milksop her infatuation had constructed in her mind. “No.”

He brightened. “So I’ve got a chance?”

She stifled a laugh. “No.”

This close, there was no avoiding his substantial physicality. The arms clasping her in the waltz had been impressively muscled, and the body next to hers on this cursed small seat was hard and lithe. And warm as a coal fire.

His hands lay loose on his powerful thighs, the reins draped over them. Everything about him was perfect. The idea that he might want a harum-scarum ragamuffin like Amy Mowbray was outlandish.

But of course, thanks to Sally’s efforts, she wasn’t that ramshackle bumpkin anymore. At least on the outside. On the inside, she was still her plain, outspoken self. The knowledge that if Pascal had encountered her a month ago, he wouldn’t have spared her a glance increased the feeling of unreality.

“Why?” he asked.

“In any true sense, we met last night. You know nothing about me.”

“The best part of marriage is all the things you discover after the vows are spoken.”

She shook her head and clasped her gloved hands in her lap. “You can’t possibly mean that.”

“Why not?” He seemed content to let the horses amble along through the dappled sunshine under the trees. “Anyway, I know more about you than you think.”

“Oh?” She waited for some flippant reply. But his expression was serious as he studied her.

“You love your family, and you’re loyal to your friends. You’re very clever. You have a romantic streak, but you do your best to repress it. You consider yourself a sensible woman—and most of the time, that’s true. You have a dry sense of humor, and the ability to mock yourself and the pomposity of others. How am I going?”

Some women might find it flattering that an attractive man paid such minute attention. Amy was uneasy. The woman he described was better than she was, but the resemblance was unmistakable. It wasn’t her. But it was certainly a version of her.

“You make me sound as if I have no faults,” she said gruffly.

His smile conveyed too much affection for a man who had only met her last night. “I make you sound like you’re perfect for me. I saw immediately that you were something special. And I, my dear Lady Mowbray, am a connoisseur.”

She stared back, both fascinated and appalled. “This is some sort of game.”

“On my honor, it isn’t.” He flicked the reins at the horses to urge them to a trot. “I begin to suspect something else about you—you pretend to more confidence than you possess.”

She cringed. Sally and Morwenna had both said the same thing. “What on earth makes you say that?”

“Your reaction to my proposal, for one thing.”

“I’m very good at running my estate.”

“Oh, I’m not saying you underestimate your brains or competence. But I’m beginning to wonder whether you realize how brilliantly you sparkled last night. Everyone admired you.”

She sighed, as the carriage bumped across the grass. “That was because you made such a fuss about dancing with me. Every woman in that ballroom envied me.”

“And every gentleman envied me. You may as well accept we make a fine pair.”

She bit back a laugh, even as what he said seeped down through chronic self-doubt to settle in her bones. Perhaps Sally had performed a miracle, transforming the hardy thistle Amy Mowbray into a fragrant rose. “Which is no reason to seek a more permanent arrangement.”

He shrugged, not shifting his gaze from the bays. The carriage emerged from the trees onto the lawns where the ton gathered to see and be seen. “I’m thirty years old. I’ve been out in society for more than ten years. I’ve pursued women, and women have pursued me. I’ve learned to tell the genuine jewels from the paste, literally and figuratively. You, Lady Mowbray, are a diamond. A man would be a fool to sit back while some other damned oaf picked you up and put you in his pocket.”

With the presence of other people, the intensity between them receded to a bearable level. Even if Pascal was still talking tosh. On that secluded path, every word had wrapped around Amy like rope, until she feared she’d never escape.

Now she burst out laughing. “Lord Pascal, I appreciate your kindness. I wonder what you’d say if I took you at your word and had the banns called.”

His wicked smile deflated her returning ease. “My dear Lady Mowbray, I’d say you’ve made me the happiest man in England.”

Before she could protest, he was bowing to a handsome lady and her daughter who drew their carriage to a halt beside them. The ladies looked vaguely familiar. Amy’s life in Leicestershire involved meeting the same people over and over. The onslaught of new faces last night had left her floundering.

What a bizarre world London was. Populous and bustling. Yet strangely intimate, so one encountered the next day the people one had met the night before. While she murmured polite responses to the lady’s questions, her eyes roamed the stylish crowd. So many familiar faces, some she could even put a name to.

In the distance, she saw Sally driving a phaeton with Meg and Brandon beside her. She forced her attention back to Lady Compton-Browne and was shocked to catch flaring dislike in Miss Compton-Browne’s eyes.

Amy summoned a smile, but the girl no longer looked at her, but at Lord Pascal. Her expression betrayed the misery of a dog drooling after a juicy bone placed high out of reach.

Ah.

Pascal made his excuses and rolled the carriage forward to greet more of his friends. That set the pattern for the next hour, and to Amy’s surprise, she enjoyed herself. Nobody treated her like an interloper, or questioned her right to be with this superb man. She even found the confidence to face down the ladies’ envious stares.

“You’ve made me a social success,” she said wryly, when Pascal pulled the carriage up with a flourish before Sally’s front steps.

“Nonsense. You did that yourself.”

“Having you as my escort didn’t hurt.”

“It certainly didn’t hurt your escort. He’s had a thoroughly delightful couple of hours.”

“So have I.” To her relief, the heavy traffic on the way home had given him no opportunity to revive that troubling conversation about marriage. His boldness left her scared and unsettled and puzzled—and stupidly, dangerously tempted. For more kisses, above all. Some hitherto unrecognized feminine instinct insisted that if Pascal bent his mind to it, he could kiss her to heaven and back. “Thank you.”

Sally’s gleaming black door opened, and a footman ran down the stairs to hold the horses. Another appeared to assist Amy to alight, but retreated to stare stalwartly into space when Pascal shook his head.

“My pleasure. I’m glad the drive wasn’t nearly the ordeal you expected.”

She released a startled gasp of laughter. Perhaps he did know her better than she thought, after all. “Oh, dear, Sally would be disappointed. She tried so hard to teach me to pretend all of this is a mere doddle to my sophisticated self.”

“You acquitted yourself beautifully, Lady Mowbray. I told you—I’m paying special attention.”

Just like that, her earlier tumult returned. Her stomach knotted, and the moisture dried from her mouth. “Lord Pascal…”

He jumped down from the carriage to come around to offer one gloved hand. “Don’t fret.”

“Don’t fret?” she whispered with sudden temper, but too conscious of the servants to give this arrogant, disturbing—gorgeous—man the set-down he deserved. “Of course I’m going to fret.”

“Good,” he said, still smiling as if she wasn’t telling him off. His teeth were as perfect as the rest of him. Straight. White. And somehow predatory.

“What the devil do you mean by that?” She placed her hand in his and made a creditable descent from the carriage. Heat curled up from his fingers and settled in the pit of her stomach in a most disconcerting fashion. Except a woman would have to be dead not to find Pascal attractive. And however quiet Amy’s life might have been in recent years, she was far from dead.

“When you fret, you’ll be thinking of me.”

“Not necessarily with fondness,” she said grimly. The groom in his bright blue livery ran up the stairs from the kitchen, bowed to his employer, and settled in the seat at the back of the carriage.

Pascal laughed again. “Well, I’ll be thinking of you—and fondly.”

For a searing moment, his gaze focused on her lips, and she was transported back to those dazzling seconds when he’d kissed her. She hadn’t scolded him nearly as severely as she should for that piece of daring. In fact, she had a horrid feeling she hadn’t scolded him at all.

“You’re engaged for Lady Bartlett’s ball tonight?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, and realized he still held her hand. She had to stop doing this.

She pulled away, struggling to ignore a pang at the separation. She couldn’t stand out in the street, holding hands with Lord Pascal as if they were sweethearts. The innocent description seemed incongruous for such a worldly man.

“Will you save me both waltzes?”

Her lips twitched. It was devilish difficult to cling to anger. Dear Lord, he was a master at these flirtatious games, while she was a mere novice. “No, I will not.”

When he placed one of those elegant hands on his heart in a tragic gesture, she giggled. And Amy couldn’t remember giggling since she’d been a silly chit under this very man’s spell.

“Cruel beauty.” His blue eyes—that was such an impossible color—sharpened. “One waltz.”

“Very well.”

“And the supper dance?”

“My lord—”

“Excellent.” Another flashing smile as he caught her hand and bent over it. She braced for his lips on her glove, the way she’d await a blow. But the contact never came, although the way he squeezed her fingers set her giddy heart racing. “Until tonight.”

He jumped into the curricle and waited as Amy went inside. Only her conscience knew how difficult it was not to look back and watch him drive away.