“Well, if you hadn’t served such a nasty object in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed to be rescued!”

“You wouldn’t have needed to be rescued if you didn’t have such a weak stomach.”

“You’re not supposed to mention body parts in front of a lady,” she said virtuously. “Your mother said so.”

Westcliff grinned. “I stand corrected.”

Enjoying their bickering, Lillian grinned back at him. Her smile died, however, as a slow waltz began and Westcliff turned her to face him. Her heart began to thump with unrestrained force. As she looked down at the gloved hand that he extended to her, she could not make herself take it. She could not let him hold her in public…she was afraid of what her face might reveal.

After a moment she heard his low voice. “Take my hand.”

Dazed, she found herself obeying, her trembling fingers reaching for his.

Another silence passed, and then, softly, “Put your other one on my shoulder.”

She watched her white glove settle slowly on his shoulder, the surface hard and solid beneath her palm.

“Now look at me,” he whispered.

Her lashes lifted. Her heart gave a jolt as she stared into his coffee-colored eyes, which were filled with dark warmth. Holding her gaze, Westcliff drew her into the waltz, using the momentum of the first turn to bring her closer to him. Soon they were lost in the midst of the dancers, circling with the lazy grace of a swallow’s flight. As Lillian might have expected, Westcliff established a strong lead, allowing no chance of a misstep. His hand was firm at the small of her back, the other providing explicit guidance.

It was all too easy. It was perfect as nothing else in her life had ever been, their bodies moving in harmony as if they had waltzed together a thousand times before. Good Lord, he could dance. He led her into steps that she had never tried, reverse turns and cross steps, and it was all so natural and effortless that she gave a breathless laugh at the completion of a turn. She felt weightless in his arms, gliding smoothly within the parameters of his taut and graceful movements. Her skirts brushed his legs, wrapping and falling away in rhythmic repetition.

The crowded ballroom seemed to disappear, and she felt as if they were dancing alone, far away in some private place. Intensely aware of his body, the occasional touch of his warm breath on her cheek, Lillian drifted into a curious waking dream …a fantasy in which Marcus, Lord Westcliff, would take her upstairs after the waltz, and undress her, and lay her gently across his bed. He would kiss her everywhere, as he had once whispered…he would make love to her, and hold her while she slept. She had never wanted that kind of intimacy with a man before.

“Marcus…” she said absently, testing his name on her tongue. He glanced at her alertly. The use of someone’s first name was profoundly personal, far too intimate unless they were married or closely related. Smiling mischievously, Lillian turned the conversation into a more appropriate channel. “I like that name. It’s not common nowadays. Were you named after your father?”

“No, after an uncle. The only one on my mother’s side.”

“Were you pleased to be his namesake?”

“Any name would have been acceptable, so long as it wasn’t my father’s.”

“Did you hate him?”

Westcliff shook his head. “Something worse than that.”

“What could be worse than hatred?”

“Indifference.”

She stared at him with open curiosity. “And the countess?” she dared to ask. “Are you also indifferent to her?”

One corner of his mouth curled upward in a half smile. “I regard my mother as an aging tigress—one whose teeth and claws are blunted, but who is still capable of inflicting harm. Therefore I try to conduct all interactions with her at a safe distance.”

Lillian gave him a mock-indignant scowl. “And yet you tossed me right into the cage with her this morning!”

“I knew you had your own set of teeth and claws.” Westcliff grinned at her expression. “That was a compliment.”

“I’m glad you told me so,” she said dryly. “Otherwise I might not have known.”

To Lillian’s dismay, the waltz ended with one last sweet drawn-out note of a single violin. Amid the ensuing currents of dancers moving off the main floor, with others coming to replace them, Westcliff stopped abruptly. He was still holding her, she realized with a touch of confusion, and she took a hesitant step backward. Reflexively his arm hardened around her waist, and his fingers tightened in an instinctive attempt to keep her with him. Astonished by the action, and what it betrayed, Lillian felt her breath stop.

Checking his impulsiveness, Westcliff forced himself to release her. Still, she felt the force of desire radiating from him, as penetrating as the heat drafts of an entire forest on fire. And it was a mortifying thought that whereas her feelings for him were genuine, his might very well be the whimsical result of a perfume’s aroma. She would have given anything not to be so attracted to him, when disappointment or even heartbreak was a foregone conclusion.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked huskily, unable to look at him. “It was a mistake for us to dance.”

Westcliff waited so long to reply that she thought he might not. “Yes,” he finally said, the single syllable roughened with some unidentifiable emotion.

Because he could not afford to want her. Because he knew as well as she that a pairing between them would be a disaster.