“No. Because I am a man.”
“Ah,” she said, “a much better reason.”
Was that sarcasm in her tone?
He did not care.
He just wanted to get her home.
“Well, you were not planning to come to me.”
Damned right. “No. I was not.”
“And so I had to take matters into my own hand.”
He would not be amused by her charming failures in language. She was a walking scandal. And somehow, he had come to be her escort. He did not need this. “Hands,” he corrected.
“Precisely.”
He helped her cross the street to Park Lane and Ralston House before asking, quick and irritated, “I have better things to do today than to play nanny to you, Juliana. What is it you want?”
She stopped, the sound of her given name hanging between them.
“Miss Fiori.” He corrected himself too late.
She smiled then. Her blue eyes lit with more knowledge than a woman of twenty years should have. “No, Your Grace. You cannot take it back.”
Her voice was low and lilting and barely there before it was whisked away on the wind, but he heard it, and the promise it carried—a promise she could not possibly know how to deliver. The words went straight to his core, and desire shot through him, quick and intense. He lowered the brim of his hat and turned away, heading into the wind, wishing that the autumn leaves whipping around them could blow away the moment.
“What do you want?”
“What things do you have to do?”
Nothing I want to do.
He swallowed back the thought.
“It is not your concern.”
“No, but I am curious. What could an aristocrat possibly have to do that is so pressing that you cannot escort me home?”
He did not like the implication that he lived a life of idleness. “We have purpose, you know.”
“Truly?”
He cut her a look. She was grinning at him. “You are goading me.”
“Perhaps.”
She was beautiful.
Infuriating, but beautiful.
“So? What is it that you have to do today?”
Something in him resisted telling her that he had planned to visit Lady Penelope. Planned to propose. Instead, he offered her a wry look. “Nothing important.”
She laughed, the sound warm and welcome.
He was not going to see Lady Penelope today.
They walked in silence for a few long moments before they arrived at her brother’s home, and he turned to face her finally, taking her in. She was vibrant and beautiful, all rose-cheeked and bright-eyed, her scarlet cloak and bonnet turning her into the very opposite of a good English lady. She’d been outside, boldly marching through the crisp autumn air instead of inside warming herself by a fire with needlepoint and tea.
As Penelope was likely doing at that very moment.
But Juliana was different from everything he had ever known. Everything he had ever wanted. Everything he had ever been.
She was a danger to herself . . . but most of all, she was a danger to him. A beautiful, tempting danger he was coming to find increasingly irresistible.
“What do you want?” he asked, the words coming out softer than he would have liked.
“I want to win our wager,” she said, simply.
The one thing he would not give her. Could not afford to give her.
“It will not happen.”
She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “Perhaps not. Especially not if we do not see each other.”
“I told you I would not make it easy for you.”
“Difficult is one thing, Your Grace. But I would not have expected you to hide from me.”
His eyes widened at her bold words. “Hide from you?”
“You have been invited to dinner. And you are the only person who has not yet responded. Why not?”
“Certainly not because I am hiding from you.”
“Then why not reply?”
Because I cannot risk it. “Do you have any idea how many invitations I receive? I cannot accept them all.”
She smiled again, and he did not like the knowledge in the curve of her lips. “Then you decline?”
No.
“I have not decided.”
“It is the day after tomorrow,” she said, as though he were a small child. “I would not have thought you to be so callous with your correspondence, considering your obsession with reputation. Are you sure you are not hiding from me?”
He narrowed his gaze. “I am not hiding from you.”
“You do not fear that I might win our wager after all?”
“Not in the least.”
“Then you will come?”
“Of course.”
No!
She grinned. “Excellent. I shall tell Lady Ralston to expect you.” She started up the steps to the house, leaving him there, in the waning light.
He watched her go, standing on the street until the door closed firmly behind her, and he was consumed with the knowledge that he had been bested by an irritating Italian siren.
Chapter Nine
The hour on an invitation serves a purpose.
The refined lady is never late.
—A Treatise on the Most Exquisite of Ladies
Surely no meal is more sumptuous than one served with marriage in mind . . .
—The Scandal Sheet, October 1823
He was the last to arrive to dinner. Deliberately.
Simon leapt down from his carriage and made his way up the steps of Ralston House, knowing that he was committing a grave breach of etiquette. But he was still feeling manipulated into attending the dinner at all, so he took perverse pleasure in knowing that he was several minutes late. He would, of course, make his apologies, but Juliana would know immediately that he had no interest in being managed by an impetuous female.