to me discreetly in the glass house. Please hurry. Ophelia.
Maryann’s heart jerked with dread. The inelegant scrawl did not look like it belonged to Ophelia, unless she had written it in haste. Maryann hesitated, and glanced around. No one watched her. Somehow the note felt grave. She hadn’t seen her friend earlier, but Ophelia always attended balls notoriously late.
Snapping the fan closed, Maryann hurried from the ballroom and down the long hallway that led to the conservatory from inside. She wouldn’t hurtle recklessly inside but try and see that it was indeed Ophelia waiting before she entered. Maryann increased her pace, terribly worried something dastardly might have happened to her friend.
Suddenly, someone reached out from in the shadows and grabbed her hand. With a gasp of alarm, she whirled, lifting her fan.
“Call for your carriage and leave the ball immediately.”
Rothbury!
She had not seen him since that night on her balcony, and her heart sang with a peculiar thrill. Maryann tried to tug her hand from his, but his clasp was unyielding. “Why do you make such a demand without an explanation? What has happened?”
Instead of answering, he tugged her to keep pace with him as they moved toward the glass house. And more shadows. At that awareness she pulled her hands from his with a sharp tug, and he reacted by putting his hand around her waist fully and whirling with her, so she was pressed against the wall and in complete darkness.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
Maryann stared up at him, trying to decipher his expression, confounded with the unexpected sensations coursing through her body. “Why must we always meet in the shadows?”
“The note you got just now was not from your friend.”
Maryann froze, her heart jerking an uneven beat. “How…how did you know she asked me to meet her in the conservatory?”
He touched her cheek with a finger, surprisingly bare of a glove. Then he lowered that tormenting finger to touch the fullness of her mouth before dropping his hand and stepping back. His caress had been so fleeting…so careless, as if he often stroked the tip of his fingers along the curve of a lady’s cheek and then brushed it against the fullness of her mouth.
The sheer agony of wanting this man was…exquisite. “Do you act in such a wicked manner with all the ladies of your acquaintance?”
She had to know. Not that she wanted to be special in any way, but to be forearmed with an understanding of his behavior was to be forewarned. And would perhaps stop the foolish dreams she had taken around with her for the past few days.
“Wicked?” A rough, low chuckle that was as fleeting as that touch echoed between them. “You are truly an innocent bit, aren’t you?”
She frowned. “I…”
“There is no time for chatter. Go, call for your carriage.”
“Call for my carriage?” she repeated, considerably astonished. “Why are you ordering me about in this fashion? I am to meet my friend.”
“She is not awaiting you,” he said tersely.
“Why should I take your words it is not so?”
Maryann felt when he stiffened.
“If you wish to continue against my better advice, I will not stop you.”
She did not like how chilling and dismissive he sounded. Not that she expected anything from this man.
Did you miss me? she wanted to ask him against her better judgment. He had shown no marked attention that was positive. That she should wonder at his intentions at this point sparked her temper—more at herself than anything else. Maryann skirted around him.
“There is a man waiting for you there. Since your dowry is fifty thousand pounds, the plan is to see that you are well and truly compromised, to see you divested of your virtue if necessary…and then be discovered.”
The arrow that pierced her heart then had her pressing a hand to her chest. Her entire body felt cold. “To steal my virtue?” she asked faintly.
“To rape you,” he hissed, as if angered by the slow comprehension of the plot against her.
The words were like a rope around her throat, and she struggled to get her thoughts out. “Ophelia would never—”
“The design is not that of your friend. Her name was simply used to assure your participation.”
Maryann stared at him wordlessly, painfully aware that someone who had planned to…to compromise her most foully waited for her. Still, the very notion of what he claimed bordered on ridiculous and the mischief of some silly person who surely did not know Maryann’s strength or her papa’s consequences. Such a