Harry bowed over, kissing the back of it a little clumsily.
“May I make my old friend Harry Merton known to you?” Benedick asked formally. “As he said, he’s an ass, but a good-hearted one. Harry, I believe you might know Lady Carstairs.”
“Of course,” Harry said automatically, starting to rise when Benedick’s words sank in, and he stumbled, a horrified expression on his face. “I mean, I know of…that is…” He finally managed to pull himself together, but it was a Herculean effort. “I knew your husband, Lady Carstairs. Sir Thomas was a good man.”
“Not really,” she said, and her frankness did little to calm Harry’s amour propre.
Benedick decided to deliver the coup de grâce. He pulled Melisande’s arm through his, drawing her close to his side in a proprietary gesture. “You’ll excuse us, won’t you, Harry? Melisande is famished and I promised I would feed her.” He could feel her sudden start, and he simply pulled her closer, smiling down at her with only a touch of malice. She really was the most delicious creature. “Shall we go join the others, my sweet?”
Oh, she didn’t like that, he thought with satisfaction. And there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t pull away; she could only let him draw her up the wide marble stairs, feel his body heat leaching into hers, his hand on hers as he led her across the crowded floor of Lady Elsmere’s formal salon. It was a Pyrrhic victory—the feel of her against his body was playing havoc with his own hard-won sense of self-control. He was as unsettled as he was hoping to make her, and he wanted to curse, but he simply smiled down at her, noting the confused, slightly nervous expression in her eyes.
“Don’t look so anxious.” His voice was barely audible. “I’m not going to throw you down on the floor and molest you.”
“I didn’t think you were,” she said, managing to sound both dignified and vulnerable at the same time. “You would never be so clumsy as to have to use force.”
He smiled at her. “You’re learning, my love.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“I’m afraid I must. I have a reputation to uphold, and if people suspect I have another reason for bringing you here we’ll be scuttled before we even leave land.”
“I get seasick.”
“I’m a very experienced sailor. Put yourself in my hands and I promise you a smooth sail.” He let his fingers stroke the back of her hand, so gently that she probably didn’t notice it, any more than she understood his double entendres. But he’d underestimated her.
“Save it for when people can hear us.”
“I’m getting in practice,” he said, his upper arm pressing against the side of her breast. It was most disturbing—the longer he was in her company the more aroused he became. Right now even the thought of Violet Highstreet couldn’t distract him. For some reason the thought of Charity Carstairs kept distracting him.
He should have done something to assuage the state of arousal that burned inside his body, but the uncomfortable truth was that right now he wasn’t interested in any of the demimondaines available to him. There were no new and nubile widows and wives among the ton eager for a bit of sport, at least, none that tempted him. His determined debauch had been a sad failure so far, and it was all Melisande Carstairs’s fault. Every time he thought to lose himself in some Cyprian’s ripe flesh the thought of her determined blue eyes distracted him, and he ended up feeling vaguely empty and unsatisfied.
He glanced down at her. A dark, wicked thought had come to mind, and try as he might to dismiss it, it remained stubborn. Lord and Lady Elsmere were at one end of the large room, greeting their guests, and as he waited for the butler to announce them he leaned down and whispered in Melisande’s ear, “I’m afraid I might have to seduce you, my precious,” he whispered, feeling her sudden start.
But a moment later they were announced and all eyes were upon them as the cream of the ton looked up and wondered what in the world Charity Carstairs, the saint of King Street, was doing with one of the wicked Rohans.
Lady Elsmere was an ancient, heavily painted dowager with a taste for young men, and she greeted them with her usual assessing gaze. “Good God, Rohan. What are you doing robbing a nunnery?”
He put his face close to Melisande’s, pressing his forehead against