A Waltz in the Park by Deb Marlowe Page B

worried she wouldn’t make it, or that she’d have to be convinced to ride out with him, but there she was, waiting.  Seeing him in the hack, she hopped right in.  In under a few seconds they were on their way.
    He had to admit, after her unwillingness to be publicly associated with him, her easy trust called up a wave of surprisingly warm gratification. 
    “I have to thank you for the notion of the plain brown cloak and basket over my arm.  I vow, not a soul looked my way the entire two blocks!  How did you learn such a neat trick?”
    “A friend described it—or a friend of Hestia’s, I should say.  But you must take care.  You might be ignored as a servant in Mayfair, but anywhere else in the city you’d just be a girl alone.”
    She nodded.
    “How did you get away?” he asked.
    She grinned.  “The groom my cousin assigned to go about with me has a fondness for dice.”
    He snorted.  “A great many of them have a fondness for dice.”
    “Well, Henry is shockingly indiscreet about it.  He gets up a game everywhere we go.  I once had to wait outside my modiste’s for nearly thirty minutes because he was ‘on a streak.’  I won his gratitude when I didn’t say anything about it at home.”  The bottom corner of her mouth, wider by just a bit than the top, quirked upward.  “This morning I slipped out to the mews, where there always seems to be game going.  I gave him half a crown and told him I’d appreciate it if he could double it for me, and that I’d share the profits.”  She gave a little laugh.  “I could walk to Portsmouth and back today and he’d have no notion.”
    “I’m impressed,” he said with a nod.
    He was pleased that she didn’t ask a lot of questions, too, although his note had mentioned the meeting she’d requested and he supposed that was all that truly needed to be said.
    Instead she bounced about on her seat for a few minutes, watching out of the window, then she’d settled back, sitting very straight and inexplicably closing her eyes. 
    She wasn’t asleep.  He sat back to watch her, trying to pin down all the things that made her different from so many other Society girls.  Even now, despite the rough ride and the indifferently sprung carriage, she charged the very air, made him feel . . . stimulated.  Present and interested in a way that he usually only felt when he was engaged in some battle with his father.  He didn’t even know what she wanted with Hestia, but he was content to have helped her, secretly pleased to be sitting here amidst the swirl of her fresh scent, a part of the anticipation and light and color she brought with her. 
    He leaned forward suddenly.  Her eyes were still closed, but her mouth was silently moving.  He watched closely, listened hard and eventually made out a word here and here.
    Fraught , she mouthed.  Heavy .  And a few minutes later . . . Laden .
    He frowned, wondering.  It felt odd to think that a mere few days ago he hadn’t known her. 
    He still didn’t know her.
    Oh, but he wanted to.
    “Would you answer a question?” he asked suddenly.
    Her eyes popped open.  “I think so,” she said cautiously.
    “What—in the name of all the circles of hell—are you doing?”
    She bit her lip. 
    He wished she wouldn’t.  Beeton had been right, it was such a continual distraction, that sultry pout in the midst of her innocent face.  It kept reminding him of all the dark and lascivious things a mouth like that was meant to do.
    “I will answer,” she said slowly.  “But only if you promise not to speak of it to others—or to judge me too . . . silly.”
    “I won’t speak of it,” he promised.  “But do you want an honest answer about the rest?”  He shrugged.  “I’ll try not to.”
    She struggled a few moments and he watched, fascinated, at the antics her eyebrows got up to as she made her decision.
    “Very well.  But first, let me ask you . . . Have you ever felt like the very air about you