Devil in My Arms by Samantha Kane

Hilary,” a voice filled with feminine satisfaction said from behind him. “I was unaware you would also be attending Lady Gaston’s garden partytoday. That makes four times we have run into one another in the last two weeks, doesn’t it?”
    He turned and saw Mrs. Fairchild standing behind him, sipping lemonade and smiling knowingly. He refused to acknowledge her amusement. Instead he decided to answer her with the truth she had demanded two weeks ago. “Indeed it does, Mrs. Fairchild. At the Templetons’, Lord and Lady Cheswick’s dinner party, the Leighton musicale, and now this garden party. I came here today specifically to see you, as a matter of fact, since you avoided conversation with me at those affairs.”
    He’d expected to fluster her. Again he underestimated her. “Did you? Do you need my assistance on an inquiry, perhaps?”
    At least she wasn’t avoiding him. But she was clearly going to make him state his intentions more bluntly. Revenge, perhaps, for his too forward behavior two weeks ago? By now she ought to have realized he had no trouble circumventing polite conversation. “Not at all. I find myself unaccountably fascinated by you.”
    She laughed and it sounded genuine. “Unaccountably? Hardly flattering, sir, but honest, to be sure. Come, walk with me.”
    “You spend a great deal of time walking,” he observed. “Drawing rooms, gardens—always when I see you, you are in motion.” Running from him, perhaps? He didn’t care for that notion.
    “At my husband’s house, I was rarely allowed the freedom to walk anywhere,” she said without self-pity. “I am making up for a previously sedentary life.”
    The unfamiliar burn of anger filled him. Very little truly angered him. He’d seen too much, knew too much. But the idea of anyone forcing the gay, amiable, droll Mrs. Fairchild to sit still when it was clear she was brimming with energy and mischief was enough to make a small tic appear in his left eyelid. How extraordinary . “Then we shall walk until you are too exhausted to walk any more.” He held out his arm and she lightly laid her lace-gloved fingers upon it. Her warmth seeped through his jacket.
    “What an odd garden party.” She adroitly changed the topic, once again cutting off any questions about her past. “These are hothouse flowers and we are indoors. I have never seen the like.”
    “Ladies of Lady Gaston’s station have too much time on their hands and notenough sense to use it wisely.”
    His observation amused her. “Do you always speak so plainly?”
    “I try to,” he said, stopping to accept a small nosegay of purple pansies from a footman. He presented them to Mrs. Fairchild with a bow. “It is not always appreciated. But I do find it eliminates most misunderstandings.”
    “Hmm,” she said as she sniffed the flowers. “These are prettier than they smell.”
    His smile was involuntary. “Most things are.”
    “I hope I do not fall into that category,” she said. “I am wearing Harry’s French perfume.” She tucked the nosegay into the velvet sash at her waist. Her dress was obviously meant to resemble some sort of country maid’s attire, with large square pockets on the skirt. That is, if country maids wore fine white muslin embroidered with pink roses and decorated with green-velvet sashes.
    “I suspect you do not need perfume to smell sweet,” Hil told her, remembering how she’d smelled at the Templetons’ not long ago.
    “Do you need to borrow funds?” she asked suspiciously, eyeing him warily.
    “I do not,” he responded, surprised at the question. “Why do you ask?”
    “I cannot imagine why else you would shower me with compliments.”
    “Telling you that you do not smell bad is hardly showering you with compliments.”
    She burst out laughing. “From you it is.”
    He honestly did not know what to do with her. She seemed to find him amusing, more than anything else. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had treated his