shy to express her likes and dislikes. Dealings with her resulted in mutual satisfaction instead of drama.
He also knew that taking her to bed a hundred times would not make his frustration go away. No, this went deeper than the natural urge for release, and relief was hopelessly pegged to one green-eyed bluestocking.
She had not replied to his message. And he had not seen her at breakfast.
He prowled through the doors of the music room and methodically scanned the rows of plush chairs.
At last he caught the familiar glint of mahogany hair.
His palms turned hot and damp.
His heart began battering against his ribs as if he had run up a few flights of stairs.
He stood, stupefied. How could this happen to him? He was nearly thirty-and-six.
Annabelle looked up from her lap, and her clear green gaze hit him in the chest like a physical object, hurled with force.
He swallowed. Oh, it was most definitely happening to him.
He felt Caroline’s gaze on him, vaguely expectant, and he realized his abrupt stopping had caused a pileup behind him. He smoothly fell into step again and steered toward his chair in the front row near the piano.
Annabelle was seated at the very back, next to a baroness he knew loosely. Neither woman probably spoke a word of German. He should have had a translation of the songs printed for his guests. It suddenly seemed very important that she liked the songs.
Caroline took the seat beside him, wrapping him in her powdery fragrance.
He resisted the urge to turn his head to glance back.
A rare flash of anger crackled through him. He had found half of society’s social conventions and rituals void of reason from the moment he had been old enough to use his own brain. He mastered them, of course, but rarely had he felt these petty constraints chafing as much as he did now, where he could not sit next to the woman he wanted in his own music room. And all around him, people were scraping the chairs and dragging their heels over the polished wooden floor, coughing and wheezing and just plainly incapable of sitting still.
Finally, the pianist and the singers appeared, a soprano and a mezzo-soprano called the Divine Duo.
The noise died down. His irritation remained. The duo, their ridiculous name notwithstanding, was excellent, their voices rising and falling seemingly effortless, carrying the gamut of human emotions from melancholy to joy and back, and yet his mind refused to take flight with the melodies. Instead, he was starkly aware of the clock above the fireplace behind the pianist and of Annabelle some fifteen rows behind him.
He glanced at the clock a total of four times.
At a quarter to two, the last song finished.
At thirteen minutes to, the applause had ceased and everyone was making for the exit.
The progress to the door was slow, encumbered by guests wanting a word, a moment of his time, and the moments added up. Then he was stopped dead by the protruding bosom of the Marchioness of Hampshire. As he dutifully exchanged pleasantries, Annabelle was being herded right past him by the flow of people.
She did not spare him a glance.
“Did you enjoy the concert, dear?” the marchioness loudly asked Caroline, who was still by his side.
“Quite,” the countess replied, “to think that something so sweet would come from the pen of a staid and stoic German.”
Sweet?
Sebastian realized he was frowning down at her.
She raised her thin brows questioningly.
“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that they have feelings, too. The Germans.”
Her eyes took on a slightly bewildered expression. Then she gave a small apologetic shrug.
When he looked up again, Annabelle had disappeared.
* * *
He was running late. He was never late, and he had to force himself to maintain a dignified pace as he approached the maze. Relief crashed through him when the entrance came into view. She was waiting for him next to a limestone lion in her new coat and the same hat she always wore, a brown, nondescript thing that he’d quite like to see her replace with a dozen new ones.
“Miss Archer.” He lifted his top hat.
She curtsied. Her cheeks were flushed, but that could well be the cold.
He offered his arm. “Would you accompany me on a walk?”
“Your Grace—”
“Montgomery,” he said.
She arched a brow. “Your Grace?”
He arched a brow right back at her. “I believe we can safely suspend that formality in light of the circumstances.”
There was a hitch in her breathing.
He wondered if she was going to play coy