Proper Scoundrel by Annette Blair

Jade.
     
    He bowed in turn before each, repeating the ritual of hand kissing and pleasantries. Then he partnered each wallflower— Molly’s mother, Lilly, first. Then Sofia, Millie, and Lacey last, country dances all.
     
    Marcus paid that grand price to waltz with Jade, consoled by the fact that she would offer her undying gratitude and he would accept.
     
    Speaking with Lilly, Sofia and Millie had not been intellectually stimulating, but the three were lovely, sweet, and suitably behaved for the social situation, which said much for Lacey’s lessons. Their conversations followed a similar tone, however. Jade was their saviour. They’d be left in the cold, or worse, if not for her.
     
    His discourse with Lacey turned more personal and thought-provoking. Though she remained quiet, calm, and always the lady, he judged she’d been deeply hurt in her life, perhaps at the point when she’d been sent to Peacehaven by her family.
     
    During the course of their dance, he apologized for his error the day they met.
     
    “Being mistaken for someone’s mother was unexpected,” Lacey said, “and a blow, though unintentional, I realize, because I lost a daughter.”
     
    She mentioned neither a husband nor a lost love, and Marcus offered sympathy and thanked her for trusting him with her story.
     
    “If there is a man you love, who isn’t claiming you—” Marcus spoke for her ears, alone, as he kissed her hand after their dance. “He’s a fool.”
     
    Lacey’s eyes filled as she whispered her thanks.
     
    Once he showed Jade’s fledglings off, suitors crowded round.
     
    Assuring the men’s faultless deportment, Marcus stood beside Jade, a hand at her elbow to mark his possession and discourage any and all comers inclined in her direction. One dandy who made to approach her received Marcus’s darkest scowl and changed course on the instant.
     
    The supper waltz finally began and Marcus exulted as he swept onto the floor with the scandal who stole his heart.
     
    As they turned and dipped, his hand at her back sizzling for the contact, he drank in her elegance in greedy draughts—long lashes, dazzling eyes, high cheekbones, lush lips, inches away from his own. He wanted to kiss her there, and there, and there too.
     
    Jade watched Marcus, for all the world as if he were nibbling her here and there in his mind. Lord and didn’t she wish he’d nibble in truth?
     
    When admonishment, bearing Gram’s voice, slipped into her mind for the weak thought over a man, Jade cast it aside. Nothing would stop her tonight. At her first ball, she’d dance in the arms of her favourite gallant and damn the consequences.
     
    Her valiant suitor. Not a man in sight matched Marcus for male splendour. He wore black tailcoat and trousers with a gold waistcoat and a shirt of snow white. A topaz winked in his lapel. His neck-cloth conveyed elegance not fuss.
     
    “Do you like what you see?” he asked.
     
    Jade smiled to entice. “As you did this afternoon.”
     
    “You wore the same slippers then as now,” he observed. “Would I find the rest the same as well, were I to ... unwrap ... the very splendid package before me.”
     
    Jade lowered her lashes, as much to hide nervousness as to titillate. “I would never let you unwrap, I have to say, unless I could do the same.”
     
    He pulled her closer, and her heart and body rejoiced. “It will happen,” he said, his voice low, his breath warming the air near her ear. “The moment is yours to name.” He pulled back to gaze deeply into her eyes. “Think carefully on it, however, my sweet. Mating fire with ice will alter us both.”
     
    True fear of a man hit Jade then, for the first time, a fear greater than she’d learned at her grandmother’s knee. One that could neither be touched nor named.
     
    The power Marcus Fitzalan held over her could alter her in crucial ways, she feared, and that’s what frightened her most. Except that he seemed so different from other