Author: Sara Bennett
Category: Historical
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/39978_18
Sinclair believed she had.
It wasn’t often a girl of no birth or family worth considering reproved him for being too forward and making tongues wag. In fact he could never remember it happening before.
Well, it was certainly a step forward in his effort to behave recklessly and dangerously. The tingle of anticipation, the need to have his own way, was growing inside him.
“How long do I have to wait before I can be alone with you?” he said, and wondered if he sounded as sulky as he felt. “I warn you, Miss Belmont, there is only so much of this I can endure.”
She smiled up at him. She really was an enchanting minx. “Not long,” she said.
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“Do you promise?”
“Most sincerely,” she answered, and he knew she was teasing him. He couldn’t remember a woman being so free and easy with him, not for a very long time. He didn’t quite kno
w how to respond to her.
While Sinclair was trying to think of a reply Squire Richards came to join them. He knew the man—a pompous fool—but he was claiming Sinclair like a long lost friend, at the same time giving Eugenie a teasing reproof for monopolizing him. A moment later he was being tugged away by the arm through the noise and the crush to a gathering of the squire’s cronies.
He looked back over his shoulder, longing for Eugenie, feeling bereft. But she had already vanished into the sea of revelers behind him.
Chapter 6
Sinclair’s frustration was growing by the moment. Here he was, forced to make conversation with any number of red-faced worthies, when all he really wanted to do was press Eugenie Belmont into a dark corner and kiss her. Thoroughly. Completely.
That is what I’ve come here to do, after all.
The force of his acknowledgement surprised him, even shocked him. Over more recent years he’d convinced himself he was a man of mild passions—women had tried to ensnare him but he hadn’t felt the least bit in danger. Until now. This emotion he was experiencing didn’t feel mild, far from it. Eugenie had brought him here—Eugenie and her dare—and now he wanted to collect his due.
Why not admit that she’d been in his thoughts ever since she laid down the challenge, and that the more he tried to shut her out, the more she returned to taunt him with her pink smiling lips and clear green eyes? He could tell himself that a man in his position had a responsibility to remain aloof from a woman so far beneath him.
But it was no use.
He even dreamed of her at night, and awoke hot and flustered and aroused. Sometimes he was surprised by the erotic fantasies he indulged in where she was concerned.
And now here he was in the same room as her and yet he might as well be in another country.
The music was giving him a headache. The fiddle player in particular was excruciating. Not that Annabelle seemed to care. He’d watched her dance every dance so far, although thankfully not all of them with Terry Belmont. Sinclair was keeping a close eye on that situation. If Eugenie was unsuitable for a Somerton then her brother was ten times worse. He had made some inquiries after their visit and learned that the boy was mixing with unsavory sorts at the Five Bells, drinking and gambling and probably carousing with the village girls. The consensus was that he was his father all over again.
The Belmonts were a thoroughly bad lot.
“Your Grace?”
His heart jolted. He would have spun around like a callow lad, except that at the last moment he remembered who he was and what was due to his position. So instead he turned slowly, in control of himself, and stared haughtily down into her flushed, smiling face.
And then he spoiled it all.
“Thank God,” he growled. “Now can we talk in private?”
She pretended to give it due thought but he could see the laughter in her eyes. “First we’ll need to dance.”
“Dance?” he said, as if she’d asked him to stand on his head.
“Come, Your Grace, it is not difficult. I can show you the steps. Well, some of them. I am not so good at the more intricate country dances but I can waltz. Miss Debenham was very particular about the waltz.”
“I am perfectly capable of dancing,” he said. “That is not the issue.”
But all the same he led her onto the floor and they took up their places. She was light on her feet and seemed to enjoy herself as they strove to find enough room in the sweaty crush to perform their steps. Grimly, Sinclair set himself to get through it, but after a while found it was not so bad. At least it gave him an excuse to hold her close, and he found the scent of her hair as intoxicating as the finest wine in his cellar. Lithe and graceful, her waist slim beneath his hand, he suspected she had underplayed her prowess when it came to dancing.
“Miss Debenham taught you well.”