Seduced by His Touch by Tracy Anne Warren Page B

and favorite plays and playwrights.
    Then, without quite realizing where the time had gone, the evening was over.
    “Until next we meet, Miss Danvers,” he said in his rumbling baritone as he bowed over her hand. “I had a most enjoyable evening.”
    “As did I, your lordship.”
    And she had, she realized. So enjoyable she couldn’t remember a pleasanter time. She’d relaxed and been at ease in his company in a way she rarely was with anyone—man or woman.
    Curtseying, she bid him adieu, then stood watching from the doorway as he climbed into his carriage and drove away.
    Once the last guest had gone and the door was closed and locked for the night, she and her aunt turned toward the stairs.
    “A fine time, was it not?” Aunt Jane said with a sleepy smile.
    “Yes. Very fine,” Grace agreed.
    “I should imagine so, considering the way a certain handsome lord could not be torn from your side. You’ve made a conquest there, my girl.”
    She stopped. “Conquest? Oh no, you mistake the matter.”
    Her aunt gave a disbelieving snort. “I mistake nothing. Men have a look about them when they’re pursuing a particular woman, and when it comes to you, Lord Jack has that look written all over him. He’s certainly a bold one, singling you out the way he did, then keeping you all to himself for the whole of the evening.”
    “It wasn’t the whole of the evening,” Grace defended. “And he did not single me out. We were merely talking and the time got away.”
    “Talking, hmm?” Aunt Jane patted her shoulder as they reached the upstairs landing. “Call it what you like, but that man wants you.”
    Wants me? No, she thought, he doesn’t want me, at least not in the way Aunt Jane thinks . He’d come tonight out of gentlemanly politeness, then spent time with her because she was the youngest woman in the room. His attentions were nothing special, nothing she should take seriously. Likely he was bored and she amused him for some unfathomable reason. Once his personal business here in Bath was concluded, he would leave, forgetting he had ever known a young woman named Grace Danvers.
    “We are merely friendly acquaintances, who share a few interests in common,” she stated. “He has no deeper regard for me, I assure you.”
    “Time will tell,” her aunt said, a smug expression in her eyes. “For now, I am off to bed. Good-night, dear, and sweet dreams. If Lord Jack is in yours, I know you’ll sleep well.” With a little laugh, she walked down the hallway to her room.
    A moment later, Grace went to her own bedchamber, certain that on that last score her aunt was right.

Chapter 6
    O ver the next two weeks, Lord Jack Byron gave Grace’s aunt plenty of ammunition to bolster her argument that he was courting Grace.
    Everywhere she and her aunt went, there was Lord Jack.
    He happened upon them while they were taking the air strolling along The Circus, and another time while they were shopping on Bond Street.
    They crossed paths on the Royal Crescent, where Lord Jack had taken a lease on one of the area’s luxurious town houses.
    Grace encountered him at public assemblies and at one or two private parties, as well.
    She even met him at the Pump Room, agreeing to walk along the room’s perimeter to share the latest news from London and abroad, while her aunt sat with friends and took the waters.
    Yet despite Aunt Jane’s certainty that she was being pursued, Grace saw nothing particularly lover-like in his attentions to her. He flirted, yes, but she discounted that as a case of Jack Byron simply being Jack Byron. As for his seeking her out when they were in company, well, they talked easily and had developed a rapport of sorts—one that led them both to gravitate toward each other for a measure of easy talk and undemanding companionship.
    She was certain he viewed her only as a friend. For in spite of his roguish promises, he never made any effort to lead her down temptation’s path. Nor did he try to hold her