Miles stopped at the open doorway and took in the scene in stunned anger. He couldn’t have been clearer in his instructions that nobody was to enter the south wing without his express permission.

Though as he watched Jonathan and Kate spinning around the room, he had to admit that his brother’s skills on the dance floor seemed to be improving. Jonathan had never been one for dancing or anything else that required any degree of coordination.

He looked to the source of the music only to see Miss Pickett watching him as though he were the one intruding instead of them. The woman was beautiful, even in her anger. She likely had her share of suitors. Why she hadn’t been snapped up before now was a mystery he didn’t care to contemplate. She was probably impossibly choosy. Demanding. There was an air about her that any man might find impossible to match.

Miles considered marching over to the Victrola and scratching the blazes out of the record, just to make a point, when Jonathan spied him and his face lit up.

“Miles! You must join us!” Jonathan looked at Lucy, and Miles saw the plan the instant it formulated in his brother’s head. “Lucy needs a partner!”

Miles glanced at the woman in question.

Her smile was tight. “Oh, no, I’ll just watch. I do not require practice.”

“You are already so well accomplished, then?” Miles said, unable to help himself.

Her chin went up a notch, and he saw that Kate and Jonathan had slowed. Did Kate think he would tear down her cousin in front of witnesses?

“Actually, I am, my lord,” Lucy said. “Very well accomplished.”

“Then you shall have no problem taking a spin about the room.” He approached her slowly, hands in his pockets, figuring he looked as unthreatening as he ever would. When her eyes widened slightly, he was forced to revise his assumption, and he steeled himself for the repulsed look that was sure to follow.

Rather than the stammering, horrified refusal he expected to see in her pretty features, her eyes narrowed.

Miles hid his reluctant surge of approval with a smirk. He was gratified that she had to look up to maintain eye contact with him. She deserved it, after all. Her arrival had disrupted his peace of mind, and he didn’t feel an ounce of remorse over his lack of propriety as he inched closer.

“Are you asking me to dance, my lord? Because I have yet to hear it phrased as a polite question. After all, you’ve no idea if my dance card is already full.”

Was she flirting with him? He studied her face, struggling to fit her into an acceptable mold. Women did not dance with the Beast of Blackwell Manor, not willingly, not unless they were prodded by their mothers who sought to trap him into an eventual proposal. And those kind were easily discernible—the wily ones were all things polite and coy, but they always held part of themselves back, as if the task at hand were unpleasant but necessary. And the fear was always visible. Always. Even when they tried to hide it.

Miss Pickett held his gaze with a certain amount of anger, but no guile. She had money, he sensed she made her own status, and she needed nothing from him. Feeling an inexplicable and utterly irrational urge to shock her, he noted her bare hands and stripped his gloves from his fingers, one by one, tossing them on the floor near the Victrola. He extended his hand to her, wordless, and waited.

He didn’t take kindly to rejection—it was why he never willingly extended himself. It didn’t matter that Jonathan and Kate were the only two witnesses; if she openly spurned him, he would feel it. These days, he didn’t like feeling much of anything, and the fact that she held such power over the moment did not sit well with him.

Without glancing down even once at his hand, she placed her own in it, and he breathed an inner sigh of relief. Still no sign of fear on her face, no reluctance, just . . . a challenge. Very well. He was good at challenges.

 

Lucy fought to keep her eyes from drifting shut at the sensation of his hand upon the small of her back. She had known from the moment he approached that she would dance with him. This close, he smelled of something wonderful, something she couldn’t define, something that made her want to nuzzle her nose against his neck, kiss away the scar.

With a fair amount of alarm, she squelched the idea and focused on keeping her footing. She hadn’t lied—she was a very good dancer. She was also fairly accomplished at the pianoforte, the harp, and the violin. She sewed in beautiful, neat stitches and was quite exceptional with a drawing pen and sketchbook. She had been gifted with an intelligent brain and a quick wit. She conversed well with people from all walks of life and could play a mean game of croquet.

What Lucy had never experienced, however, was a prolonged exchange with a man of substance, one whose personality seemed a match for her own. Boys, she handled well enough. She flirted easily and could entertain their interests on a surface level. But she had yet to feel the thrill of a genuine challenge from a man who played at a deeper and much more dangerous game.

This man was not a boy.

And, oh dear. His lordship was addling her brain. His strong hand at her back—his other completely enfolding her own—and his nearness had her scrambling for something to say. Lucy never lacked for something to say.

She felt his gaze on her face as they stepped neatly together around the room. He was an exceptional dancer, which caught her by surprise. For someone so big, she would have thought he would be clumsy, or at least tentative. But he led her with sure movements, the slightest pressure of his hand on her back here, a gentle pull to the left there. There was no hesitation, no sense of inadequacy, no stammering compliments about her beauty or the daring honor of her brother, who had voluntarily fought for Queen and country.

She felt flushed and looked beyond his shoulder, which was a feat in itself as he stood a good head and a half taller than she. There was no way on earth she would have backed down from his inelegant request for a dance, but once in the midst of it, she wondered if she would be the one to instigate inane chatter.

Maintaining the same rhythm, he cut the length of his strides by half and gently, subtly, pulled her body closer to his. He kept up with the pressure until she finally looked at his face, her brows raised high.

“Perhaps you are unaccustomed to behaving with propriety.” She was trying for tart but afraid it came out rather breathless instead.

“I behave with propriety when it suits me.” His reply was a deep ­rumble, which she felt as much as heard.

“You are exempt from the rules by which the rest of us must live, then.”

“Have you not heard? I am an earl.”

Arthur Charlesworth had mentioned that his lordship hadn’t wanted the earldom, and hearing the bitter tone in his voice now, she wondered if it was true. For one who had never wanted the position, Miles Blake wore it extremely well.

She forced a smile. “Yes, and the last thing I heard on the matter was that even earls are not above the Queen, who behaves with decorum herself.”

He gave her a look she interpreted to mean he had a multitude of things he’d like to say on the matter, but he finally settled for what she defined as a jaded half smile. “And do you still have the same impression you expressed the first night you intruded upon my solitude in the library?”

She cast her memory back to that night. What had she said? Her confusion must have shown on her face.

“You said my scar wasn’t nearly as fearsome as you’d heard. Or something along those lines.”

Oh, mercy. “I was in a bit of a state.”

“Couldn’t sleep, you said.”

“Yes. Nocturnal visits from the Great Beyond have that effect on me, I’m afraid.”

A muscle worked in his jaw as he appeared to be searching for the right thing to say. She fought an absurd urge to run her finger along his jawline and down his throat along the white path of his scar. For the love of heaven, what was wrong with her?

“Miss Pickett,” he finally said, looking away, “I must apologize—”

She shook her head. “You are indeed an earl, but I hardly expect you to be able to control the otherworld.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I am not . . . content . . . with things I cannot control.”

“I don’t imagine you are.”

The corner of his mouth turned up in the first genuine almost-smile she’d seen on him. She cocked a brow at him and gave him an almost-smile of her own. He slowed, again, sobering, his eyes holding hers. She swallowed and unconsciously bit her lower lip before sternly chastising herself for behaving like a child.

His gaze flickered to her lip and then back up to her eyes, the hand holding hers tightening slightly. She felt the fingers of his hand on her back splaying, pulling her closer until the space between them was reduced to scant inches.

Kate laughed at something Jonathan said, and Blackwell blinked, the spell broken. He resumed their former cadence, but his eyes focused on nothing in the room but her. Lucy felt heat suffusing her face, and her left hand tightened reflexively on his shoulder.

So this was what it was like.

She had never understood how an all-consuming passion could sweep and overrule all sense of wisdom and rationale. The most baffling part was that she didn’t even like the man. He was rude and heavy-handed. Surly and defensive.

And he smelled divine. As if he sensed the direction of her thoughts, he lightly traced the side of her hand and forefinger with his thumb before pulling their extended arms fractionally closer. Almost as though they were a well-oiled machine that he tightened by small degrees.

She’d seen men admire her before. But never like this. Never with such focus, as if he wanted to devour her whole. Drawing a shaky breath, she said, “You Blakes are an intense lot, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea,” he murmured. “You really are not afraid of me, are you.”

“Should I be?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, you definitely should be.”

Her corset suddenly felt too tight, and she resisted the urge to pull her hand free and fan herself with it. She opened her mouth to reply, to attempt something light and flirtatious, and found she couldn’t form a single, coherent thought. As she looked at his ice-blue eyes, they seemed to darken slightly, the pupils widening. He broke the gaze with what sounded like a muttered curse. He closed his eyes briefly, opening them to focus instead on something over her head.

The last strains of the waltz faded, and they stopped dancing. He slowly relinquished his hold of her, and she immediately felt the loss of heat. Still holding her right hand, he bowed over it and then straightened. “Thank you for the dance, Miss Pickett.”

She dipped instinctively into a curtsey, caught by surprise at his sudden show of manners. “A pleasure, my lord.”

A rustle at the door drew her attention, and she removed her hand from his as Arthur and Candice entered, laughing with each other and looking impossibly beautiful. Lucy heard a slight sound from his ­lordship—disgust? a long-suffering sigh?—and flicked her eyes to his face only to see it was as impassive as ever. She was learning that he kept his emotions well in check. Unless he caught someone running around his house in the middle of the night, that is.

She turned her attention back to the siblings. Arthur approached with a smile as Candice looked at Kate with her brows pinched in a slight frown. “Kate,” Candice said as she reached the pair. “You look lovely, as always, but tired, perhaps? Sit on the divan by the windows while I continue your tutoring of my cousin, who has regrettably always had two left feet.”

Kate laughed at Jonathan’s wounded expression, and Lucy felt a stab of guilt that she hadn’t noticed Kate’s weariness. Arthur tucked Kate’s arm in his. “Allow me,” he said with a glance and a smile at Lucy.

Arthur gently escorted Kate to the windows overlooking the back of the estate and settled her comfortably on the divan with murmured comments Lucy couldn’t hear, but Kate smiled at the man and they shared a laugh.

“Miles, do start the music again, won’t you?” Candice called as she playfully slapped Jonathan on the shoulder and positioned his arm at her waist. “You will be dancing with your new bride before a multitude of guests in but a few weeks’ time. You wish to embarrass her?” she said to her cousin. “Besides, it shall be as when we were young. It will evoke pleasant memories.”

Blackwell put his hands in his pockets and remained rooted to the spot beside Lucy. “Pleasant for whom?” the earl muttered, and Lucy glanced up at him to see his jaw visibly clench.

It was as Lucy had suspected—there might have been tolerance, but no deeply held affection between the cousins. When Miles made no move to start the Victrola again, Lucy positioned the needle at the beginning of the spinning record. As the music sounded through the room, Arthur left Kate and crossed to Lucy, where he sketched a deep bow and extended his hand.

“I must dance with the most beautiful woman in all of England,” he murmured, and Lucy unconsciously glanced at Lord Blackwell’s stony visage before placing her hand in Arthur’s.

They quickly settled into a comfortable rhythm, and Lucy found that Arthur was every bit as graceful as his lordship. She knew, however, that should Arthur attempt to pull her close, to try heating her blood with an intense gaze that bordered on scandalous, she would leave him alone on the dance floor.

“Of course you would dance like a dream,” Arthur said, and she felt his fingers spread upon the small of her back as Blackwell’s had only minutes earlier. How odd that she found it irritating when, by all accounts, he was quite likely the most handsome man in all of England.

As he swung her in a wide, elegant sweep, pulling her close against him, a loud screech filled the room. Lucy stumbled to a stop and looked over her shoulder to where Blackwell stood at the Victrola, holding the record in his hand. She pulled away from Arthur, relieved to have a reason to do so.

Blackwell looked at Arthur as he smashed the black disc against his thigh. The shattered pieces skittered onto the floor, settling around the lord’s booted feet. “Out,” he barked, the sound echoing against the high ceiling. “I do believe I was very clear about this section of the house.”

Lucy glanced at Jonathan, who regarded Blackwell with anger clearly stamped on his features. “Of course,” he finally said to his brother and made his way to Kate, who stood with wide eyes.

Arthur placed his hand on Lucy’s elbow, but when she didn’t move, he released her and instead silently made his way to the exit with Candice, followed by Jonathan and Kate. Jonathan paused as though to say something to the earl, but then moved on with his arm around Kate’s shoulders.

Lucy stood where she’d stopped dancing, willing her feet to move forward but unable to do anything except look at Blackwell, who had turned his attention to her.

“What?” he growled and walked across the shattered bits of black that crunched under his feet. “What do you wish to say?”

Lucy cleared her throat and met his hot gaze as he neared. “I do not pretend to understand—”

“Correct,” he interrupted. “You most certainly do not.”

“Nor will I presume to tell you how to behave in your own home.”

“I should hope not.”

“You are a grown man. I believe you can discern that for yourself. If you’ll excuse me.” She stepped around him, her shoes echoing on the floor as she left Blackwell standing alone in the room.