Before she could say the same about him, the waltz ended. He dropped into a low, formal bow to match her curtsy, but when she rose to walk off the floor, he stopped her.

“Give me another dance.”

She wanted nothing more. But she knew society’s rules, even if she’d never been part of it. “Two dances in a row with the same man is scandalous.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re wearing masks.” He took her hand between his, unwilling to let her go. “I just found you, Lady Swan. I can’t bear to give you up so soon.”

His hopeful gaze undid her. How could she resist?

With a nod, she took her place for the next dance, and when the quadrille started, oh, how glad she was that she’d agreed! They moved back and forth, close and away, and something about the roiling knots of dancing couples struck her as more intimate than the waltz had been. Snatches of conversation when they came together, curious gazes when they parted…enough for her to realize that he was broad shouldered and physically fit, that his black clothes clung to a muscular body used to hard work, that his jaw was firm and masculine, his hair curly dark brown and most likely as silky soft as it looked.

Her fingers itched to touch his hair. And to trace along his jaw, to brush over those lips—more, she wanted to kiss those lips. Those full yet strong lips that even now twisted into a lazy grin as he audaciously returned her stare, as if he knew exactly what improper thoughts were racing through her mind.

She lost count of the number of dances they shared, but not the number of times he smiled at her. Nor could she ignore the electric tingle that sparked through her with every brush of his hand against hers, or the heat that blossomed inside her from the way he watched her…the way he made her feel as if she were truly as beautiful as he’d claimed.

When the dance ended, she was breathless and beaming. The masquerade was proving to be the grandest night of her life, and all because of this man, whose real name she still didn’t know. Whenever she’d asked during the dance for his given name, he’d only murmured, “Later,” then circled away.

“My lady.” A deep voice at her shoulder caught her attention, and she turned to find a man beside her dressed as a tiger. But for all his finery, he sorely lacked in comparison to her panther. “May I request the next dance?”

“I’m terribly sorry,” he interjected as he stepped to her side with an easy-going smile that belied the sudden tensing she sensed in him at the approach of the other gentleman. “Lady Swan has given her evening to me.”

He took her arm and led her away toward the wall of French doors that opened onto the garden terrace and let in the fresh night air to cool the crowded room.

“Lady Swan has, has she?” He wouldn’t be able to see the arched brow beneath her mask, but from his low chuckle she knew he heard it in her voice.

He leaned down to bring his mouth close to her ear. “At least, I hope she will.”

A shiver swept through her, and not from the cool evening air as he led her outside onto the terrace and into the shadows, where they could finally be alone.

“Perhaps she would,” she countered playfully as she stepped away, her hand trailing up his arm as she moved past, “if she knew the name of the man she was with.”

He grinned at her obstinacy. “John.”

Her shoulders sagged. That wasn’t at all helpful. For heaven’s sake, half of the men in England were named John. “Just John?”

“For tonight, yes.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips, to place a lingering kiss of apology against her fingers. “If you learn more, you might not like me so much.”

Never. Oh, he was simply wonderful! “I like you a great deal,” she admitted in a whisper, so soft that it was almost lost on the night. “I can’t imagine anything changing that.”

“I certainly hope so, because you have utterly captivated me.”

At a loss for words, she melted, sinking against the marble balustrade behind her.

He stepped toward her to close the distance between them. Not releasing her hand or breaking eye contact, he eased the long white glove down her arm and off. This time when he kissed her fingers, there was nothing between his warm lips and her bare skin.

The sensation was overwhelming, and a soft sigh eased from her lips.

“I want to kiss you.” He turned her hand over to touch his lips to her palm.

She swallowed. Hard. “I think you are.”

“A proper kiss.” His mouth trailed up to her wrist, and he smiled against her pounding pulse at discovering the effect he had on her. “To taste the sweetness of you.”

God help her, she wanted exactly that. More daring than she’d ever been with a man before, she caressed her bare hand over his jaw. The warmth and strength of him pulsated beneath her fingertips.

“Then kiss me.” Her answer was nothing more than a breath. “Please, John.”

Closing her eyes, she held her breath. He leaned forward and touched his lips to hers, then moved away.

Her eyes fluttered open, bewildered. Was that all? Disappointment rang hollowly through her. It was barely a kiss, when she’d craved so much more!

Sensing her frustration, he placed another delicate kiss to the corner of her mouth, then slid his lips across her cheek, following the line of her mask to her ear. “If we were alone,” he promised her, each word a titillating warmth that tickled over her skin, “truly alone, without fear of anyone stumbling upon us, I would give you that kiss. And so much more.”

To make his point, he traced the tip of his tongue along the outer curl of her ear and sent a shiver of heat shuddering through her. Her hands slipped lower to his chest, to clutch at his lapels and keep him right there with her. So close that the heat of his body warmed her front, that his masculine scent of leather, port, and cigars filled up her senses and made her head swirl.

“But tonight,” he warned, “we must make do with what we can steal.”

He removed his glove and caressed his thumb over her bottom lip while he took her earlobe between his lips and gently sucked. A sound of longing fell from her, and she touched the tip of her tongue to his thumb, to encourage him to give more caresses, more stolen kisses.

Instead, he trailed his hand down her neck, to the hollow at the base of her throat. He strummed his thumb against her wildly beating pulse, before his hand moved lower to the top of her chest, where her heart jumped against his fingertips and her breath came quick and shallow. An ache began to tingle between her legs, although his hand was nowhere near there.

“We could…find a way…to be alone,” she whispered as his lips slid once more over hers to claim a kiss in passing.

He froze, tensing beneath her hands as they rested against his chest.

When he didn’t reply, she nervously added, “If you’d like.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her pressed against him as he buried his face in her hair and laughed. The low sound rumbled deliciously into her. Then he released her and shifted back to his original position, close but not touching except for his lips at her ear.

“I would like nothing more.” As his deep murmur vibrated through her, he dared to lower his hand to steal a caress of the side of her breast through her satin bodice. “Because then I could tell you all the wicked things I wanted to write to you in my letters but couldn’t, and we could do all that we dared.”

His hand fell away. A whimper rose on her lips at the unexpected loss of his touch.

“But we cannot.” With a knowing gleam in his dark eyes, he stroked her bottom lip with his thumb in a caress that hinted at so much more. “Something tells me that you’re still innocent,” he murmured as he slowly explored the shape of her lips He was kissing her with his fingers the way she longed for him to do with his mouth. “And if we were alone tonight, you might not be innocent much longer.” He slid his lips across her cheek, once more to her ear. “Because I would make love to you, if you let me.”

She trembled, the excitement and temptation of his words sending her pulse spiking. Goosebumps dotted her skin, and she could barely breathe beneath the intoxicating masculinity of him. She closed her eyes, swept away by him and the midnight magic, and confessed in a whisper, “I would let you…”

A deep breath seeped from him, his hardness replaced by a new tension. One that was dark and dangerous. So much more intense…a yearning that both excited and frightened. The same yearning he flared inside her.

He placed slow and tantalizing kisses to her ear, and she whimpered, never realizing before how erotic secret whispers could be. How delicious a man’s mouth at her ear, how tender her earlobe between his lips. She slipped her hands beneath his jacket to cling to his waistcoat. Although he refused to be drawn closer to her physically, he was already inside her head and her heart.

He dared to brush his hand over the low neckline of her dress, with a featherlight caress over the swells of her breasts. His scandalous touch should have offended her. Instead, it stoked the growing ache between her legs that now turned into a dull throbbing.

“You know what happens between a man and a woman,” he murmured, “How a man makes love to her?”

“Yes.” She’d become feverish with the images his words stirred inside her head. He was making love to her now, she realized, right there on the terrace, surrounded by the crush of partygoers, with his whispered words, soft kisses, and stolen caresses.

“We would do that, love, and I would show you how much you mean to me, how beautiful you are.” He kissed her lips, his mouth lingering against hers in brazen promise. “I would give you all the joy a man can bring to a woman, until you shatter with bliss in my arms.”

Her head spun trying to fathom him and the pleasures he was describing. She could barely find her breath now. Couldn’t find the strength to open her eyes, in fact. If he did to her as he promised, then—

A loud cheer went up from the ballroom, accompanied by a flourish from the musicians.

Surprised, she opened her eyes and gazed straight into his, only to lose her breath completely at his predatory stare. As if he wanted to carry her away into the shadows and devour her, like the panther he was dressed to be.

“Midnight,” he rasped out in explanation, his voice hoarse.

She’d lost track of the hour. Not that it mattered. She was his for the evening.

He slipped his hands behind her head. “It’s time.”

She blinked. “Time for—”

He pulled free the ribbon holding her mask in place, and it fell away. Startled, she grabbed frantically for it, but the satin slipped through her fingers and landed on the marble at her feet.

Her face revealed, she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. Monmouth would see her. He would have her arrested for certain now for trespassing, or accuse her of theft, or—oh God, it would be the end of her and her father!

She tried to push past him to flee, but he grabbed her elbow and stopped her.

He stared at her, his eyes wide behind his black mask. For a moment, he was too stunned to move as his gaze swept over her face, then down her body, taking her in and trying to understand the woman who stood before him.

Panic swelled inside her as the party guests spilled out onto the terrace, making it impossible to hide in the shadows. Someone would see her. Recognize her—

Oh, dear God, no! She shoved past him and ran, back inside the house and through the crush toward the front door, disappearing into the night.




CHAPTER 4




JOHN dug his heels into his horse’s sides and urged the gelding faster across the field. Two nights without sleep. Three days without a note of explanation. Three damnable days of wondering what Cora Bradley had been up to in leaving him those notes. In accepting the invitation to the masquerade. In letting him whisper such things to her that the mere thought of them had his blood boiling in a way that the act itself with other women had never done.

Christ.

She knew who he was. Had to have known all along—

No. She didn’t know. Just as he had no idea until he removed her mask that the exquisite creature who’d captured his imagination through all those letters and stolen kisses was the woman who’d become the bane of his existence.

Apparently, she still didn’t know, or the exasperating Miss Bradley would surely have been at his doorstep by now, demanding an explanation. At gunpoint.

If anyone deserved an explanation it was him. What the devil had she been doing on Monmouth land in the first place, then returning after dark, alone, when it wasn’t safe? He could have been anyone, for Christ’s sake. A criminal. A murderer.