Katrina hummed to the music, pretending that without Lord Nate at her side she didn’t feel alone and vulnerable, despite all the noise and being at the centre of a bustling crowd. She was startled when a large male hand grasped hers and pulled her into the dance.
“That was very fast…oh!”
It wasn’t, as she had assumed, Lord Nate who had accosted her. This man was a little shorter, the eyes behind the mask not nearly dark enough. She looked for the duke, hoping he would have noticed what had happened and come to rescue her, but she couldn’t see him through the constantly changing swirl of bodies.
“What are you doing here?” her partner asked, sounding angry.
“You don’t know who I am,” she replied, alarmed because she recognised his voice but couldn’t place it. “And have no right to ask such questions even if you think you do.”
The arm supporting her waist tightened. “I beg to differ.” There was anger in his voice, a strong smell of brandy on his breath. “This is no place of innocents.”
“I think I would like to sit down again now.” She glanced around, unaware they had danced so far away from her table. She could no longer see it, there was still no sign of the duke, and she panicked. “Please take me back to my friends.”
Instead of complying, her partner dragged her from the rotunda and pushed her into the first walkway they came to. She was too afraid to feel the cold and too weak to break his tight hold on her wrist.
“Let me go!” she demanded, attempting to kick his shins.
“We need to talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
Her partner pulled off his mask.
“You!” she gasped. “How did you know it was me?”
“No other lady in London shares your distinctive hair colour,” Lord Avon snarled. “Besides, I recognised Sheridan’s voice and know just how friendly with him you would like to be. You won’t drive in the park with me, or show me any particular favour, and yet you would risk your reputation or worse at an event such as this.” His breath came out in an angry hiss. “What sort of man is Sheridan to bring you here and what do you imagine he hopes to gain from your presence? Surely you are not naïve enough to imagine he doesn’t expect something in return?”
“You are here.”
“Not with an innocent young lady.”
“Despite what you appear to think of me, I am both innocent and perfectly safe in Lord Nate’s care. Or I was, until you abducted me. You have no business confronting me thus. What I do is no concern of yours. The whole purpose of a masquerade is that one retains one’s anonymity and I was not in danger of being recognised; until you…you—”
“What you do is very much my concern.” His words were slurred, his eyes, she now noticed, bloodshot. Dear God, he was comprehensively foxed and sounded as though he was jealous of her friendship with Lord Nate. There was no telling what such an arrogant man, unused to rejection, would do under those circumstances. She would have to try and keep him talking, endeavour to placate him, and hope that Lord Nate and the duke came to find her. “I intend to marry you, Lady Katrina, and this is no assembly for my future wife to be recognised at.”
Marry me? “Thank you,” she replied, astounded that such an idea could have formed in his head yet determined to set him straight. “But I have no interest in marrying you and you have no business dragging me from the rotunda.”
“You would rather be in there with Sheridan,” he sneered, his grasp on her forearms tightening.
“You’re hurting me. Let me go!”
He wrenched off her mask and looked down at her, his eyes glistening with malice. “Only when you have agreed to marry me.”
“You can have any woman you want. Why me?”
“Because you intrigue me. The moment I knew you weren’t attracted towards me or my position in society I became determined to change that situation.”
“How very petulant you sound.” And yet Katrina knew she had been offered a huge compliment, even if Lord Avon would be a brute of a husband. In his drunken state, the true nature of his character was showing. “But I will not marry you. Nor would I have done, even if you had addressed me in the proper manner.”
“Oh, I think you will, if you care about your reputation and your father’s opinion of you.”
She gasped. “You would tell him I was here?”
“Only if you refuse to see reason.”
How the devil had this happened? All she had wanted was an evening’s unconventional entertainment and she had finished up in a hopelessly compromising position. Where was Lord Nate? How long had she been out here? He must have missed her by now. Lord Avon, in his drunken stupor, seemed so starkly determined and she was afraid of him. Afraid of what he might do to her here in these frosty gardens where no one would think twice about a lady screaming or come to her aid. Or what he might do to damage her reputation if she somehow managed to get away from him.
“I will not be forced to do anything I don’t want to,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly. “If you want a willing wife you will have to look elsewhere.”
“Don’t be such a damned fool! You will soon change your mind when you realise what you’re turning down.”
He pushed her against a low dividing wall and attempted to kiss her. Katrina twisted her face away but one of his hands grasped the back of her neck, forcing her to face him again.
“I had given up all hope of finding a woman who would meet with my father’s approval and possesses a little spirit.” His grin was diabolical as he attempted to lift her skirts with one hand, still holding her firmly with the other. But at least now she had one hand free and used it to gouge at his face. “Stop that!” He batted her hand away as though she was an irritating fly, his strength and determination monumental. “The moment I set eyes on you, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of Almack’s, I knew I’d finally found her.”
“No! Never.” She spat the words at him.
“If you won’t agree to become my wife then we shall just have to anticipate our wedding day. No one else will want you if I have you first.”
Katrina’s struggles froze when she realised what he intended to do to her, right here in the open air. And he was right; no one would think it the slightest bit odd. Dear lord, what was she supposed to do now? He still held her with one hand while he fiddled with his breeches, his vile breath peppering her face as he held her in place with the weight of his body.
Her inertia was brief. No one was going to find her in time so she would just have to fight him off on her own.
Somehow.
“Let go of me!”
She brought her knee up and caught him squarely in the groin. It must have hurt like the devil but he appeared too intoxicated to feel much pain. He merely grunted and then grinned malevolently.
“And who’s going to save you if I don’t?”
Despair gripped Katrina, even as she continued to struggle, knowing it was hopeless.
“I am.”
It was a moment before she realised someone else had answered Lord Avon’s question.
“What the devil…”
Avon’s grip on her loosened and Katrina was able to inch away from him just as Lord Nate, his face like thunder, grabbed Avon by the collar and knocked him out cold with a single blow.
“Are you all right?” he asked Katrina, who threw herself into his arms, sobbing.
***
“It’s all right,” he said, soothing her with firm, comforting sweeps of his hands across her back.
“Did he hurt her?” Lady St. John asked anxiously.
“No,” Zach replied. “We got here just in time.”
Zach attracted the attention of one of Everton’s men and instructed him to get Avon away from the gardens immediately. Katrina’s sobs had subsided and Nate handed her his handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “He pulled me up to dance, I thought it was you and when I realised it wasn’t I couldn’t…couldn’t find the duke and I was so scared.”
“You’re safe now,” Lady St. John said, holding one of her hands.
Nate was too furious to speak. He relived the fear he had felt when he returned with her lemonade and found her missing. Zach and Lady St. John hadn’t seen what had happened to her. It was so crowded and happened so quickly. If they hadn’t decided to search the closest walkways first, aware that Katrina would not willingly have left the rotunda with a stranger, he preferred not to think about what the consequences might have been. He had been a fool to bring her here! This was all his fault.
“Let’s go back inside,” Zach said. “I expect you’d like to go home, Lady Katrina. We’ll fetch our possessions and do just that.”
“Can we walk?” she asked, looking up at Nate. “I need a moment to regain my composure but I don’t want to go back in there.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Lady St. John asked.
“Absolutely,” she replied with a touch of her former spirit.
“I’ll fetch her cloak,” Zach said, returning a short time later with that garment. “Put your mask back on, Lady Katrina. We shall wait for you inside, Nate.”
Nate nodded to Zach and took the precaution of tucking Katrina’s arm inside of his before placing her hand on his sleeve. He had failed her once this evening. It wouldn’t happen a second time. They deviated from the main grove into one of the quieter walkways. Rustling and laughter from some of the offshoots implied that masqueraders were already indulging their passions. He hoped it didn’t remind her of what had almost just happened to her, due entirely to his lack of diligence.
They had reached a dead end with a bench situated in an arbour. They were entirely alone, and in spite of the cold the situation was far too intimate for Nate’s comfort. Increasingly attracted to the vivacious Katrina Heston, he was now firmly of the opinion that he must have been out of his senses to persuade Zach to invite her here. He was not sufficiently in control of his passions that he could resist the gravitational pull that made it nigh on impossible to resist her charms.
“I am so sorry that happened,” he said, striving to contain his anger at Avon’s behaviour.
“He recognised me and…well, he seemed to have got it into his head that he was going to marry me, so he didn’t approve of me being here.”
“And decided to force himself on you to emphasise his disapproval?”
“He was intoxicated.”
Nate firmed his jaw. “Which is no excuse.”
“No, but he said if I didn’t agree to marry him, he would tell my father I was here.”
“How very gallant of him.”
“Do you think he will do it?” she asked anxiously.
Nate smiled at her. “Don’t worry, he won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“We will make sure he knows that if he says a word, we will tell his father what he attempted to do to you.”
“Oh.”
“His father is a stickler for good behaviour. He won’t approve of Avon even being here but if he knew he also tried to—well, to do what he wanted to do to you, then he would most likely disinherit him. He keeps threatening to do so because he grows tired of his wild ways and Avon won’t take the chance.”
“Thank you for setting my mind at rest,” she said on a soft sigh. “About that, at any rate.”
“My pleasure.” At least he had done something right. He decided against telling her that Avon wouldn’t mention her presence here because if he did so it would become known that Nate had taken her. He would then be the one expected to do the marrying, which would not suit Avon’s purpose.
But would it suit Nate’s?
“My father returns in less than a week,” she said, surprising Nate by broaching a subject he had been trying to think of ways to raise himself.
“You don’t sound overjoyed at the prospect of seeing him again.”
“Oh, I am. It’s just…well—”
“You feel guilty because you would prefer for him not to come quite yet?”
She glanced up at him, her eyes wide and luminous in the near darkness. “How did you know?”
“I could tell something was upsetting you when we went skating yesterday. I am glad you’ve told me what it is.”
“Ah, but I haven’t. Well, not precisely.”
“Tell me,” he said softly.
She was quiet for such a long time that at first he thought she would not.
“I have been wrestling with my conscience ever since receiving Papa’s letter,” she eventually said. “And more precisely, whether I should tell you what it said.”
“Me!”
“Yes, it concerns you.” She turned to face him and Nate could tell then that something was seriously troubling her. He wrenched off his own mask and then gently removed hers. He needed to see her full expression, as much of it as he could, in the lamplight. “Mr. Brown ran back to Brussels and told Papa that I waltzed with you. Twice.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“What do you mean, is that all? It’s a disaster.”
“Because your father thinks you behaved badly?”
“Well, yes…Actually, no. I don’t like to disappoint him of course, but I was thinking more of you.”
The air left Nate’s lungs in an extravagant whoosh. He regarded her features, pinched with worry, and his senses reeled. He was so accustomed to people trying to take advantage of his elevated position within society that he hadn’t been prepared for a lady, any lady, to take the diametrically opposed view. Clearly she imagined her father would take Nate to account for his behaviour, perhaps insisting that he marry Katrina to protect her reputation. Obviously she did not know anything about the tight hold Brown had over Heston. More than one ambitious young lady had tried to engineer the situation Katrina now found herself in and would have gloried in her success. But it was apparent to Nate that Katrina felt only guilt.
“You must not worry about me, sweet Katrina,” he replied, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing her gloved knuckles.
“But I do worry. What if—”
“Hush.” He placed a finger against her lips to still her words. “I honestly didn’t know you hadn’t been presented. Even if I had,” he added, dropping his voice to a seductive purr, “I doubt whether I could have resisted dancing with you, if only to save you from having to take to the floor with Brown.”
“Ha, he says he was rushing over to warn me not to waltz.”
“Rubbish! He wanted to waltz with you himself and when he failed in that ambition he spitefully reported you to your father.”
She blinked. “How can you possibly know that?”
“Oh, trust me, I know how men like Brown think.”
“Be that as it may, we did waltz twice.”
“In a crowded ballroom, in front of five hundred people including my mother and your chaperone. We did not leave that room at any time and have done nothing since then to give the gossips reason to exercise their tongues.”
A ghost of a smile flirted with her lips. “Apart from coming here tonight.”
“Apart from that.”
Her eyes widened as he lowered his head towards hers. A night like this was made for lovers and although they could never be that…well, a kiss was just a kiss. He was unsure if it was wise to steal one so soon after her ordeal at Avon’s hands but something stronger than his own will drove him on. Her lips parted as though in expectation of that kiss and Nate obliged, fiercely possessive as his lips roved hungrily over hers, waiting for a protest that did not come.
Instead her lips parted beneath his and with a sense of victory swooping through him Nate’s tongue invaded her mouth, tangling with her own in an erotic dance that sent his senses reeling and his mind on an erotic detour it had no right to take. Ye gods, he was on fire with need! He wanted her as he couldn’t remember ever having wanted a woman. But he couldn’t have her and there was an end to the matter.
Reluctantly he broke the kiss and settled an arm around her shoulders.
“There,” he said. “I did promise you a proper kiss, did I not?”
She tilted her head and sent him a sultry smile. “Is that what it was?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t doubting your prowess, Lord Nate. I dare say you know what you’re doing.”
Nate chuckled. “If you’re angling for more then you’re wasting your breath.” He placed a finger beneath her chin and tilted it backwards. “More could only lead to trouble.”
“Unsure of yourself, my lord?”
“You, my little vixen, are enough to tempt a Trappist monk.” It suddenly seemed excessively warm in the chilly gardens.
“Lord Nate, you—”
“Nate. My name is Nate.”
“I know,” she said, sounding sad, distracted.
“What is it?” he asked. “There’s something else you’re not telling me.”
“Yes. About no one knowing I came here tonight.” She turned worried eyes upon him. “I’m not sure, but I think someone’s been watching me and followed us to Westminster tonight.”