her head against all that masculine warmth and strength. She sidestepped instead. “I really must be getting back to the ballroom.”
He moved to the side to block her and her heart gave a panicky squeeze in her chest. The rich scent of earth and hothouse flowers made her head reel.
He leaned forward conspiratorially, as if the darkness engendered confidences. “So, what are you doing out here in the dark? Here to meet a lover?”
Emmy gasped. “No! I’m not meeting anybody! I just needed to catch my breath. It’s so crowded in there.”
Flustered, she turned and sniffed at the nearest flower, a peony in full bloom. Peonies were her absolute favorite, with their extravagant abundance of petals and gorgeous sweet scent. She closed her eyes. How on earth was she going leave, with him blocking the path?
* * *
Alex frowned at her tempting profile. The woman was utterly infuriating. Why couldn’t she be like all the other vapid, innocent women out there in the ballroom? He bit back a growl and studied the charming tilt of her nose, the satin softness of her sweetly lying lips. Why the hell couldn’t he be attracted to any of those other women?
Her presence out here had nothing to do with meeting a paramour. The only illicit assignation she’d arranged tonight was with Lady Carrington’s jewelry case.
Oddly, the thought of her meeting another man annoyed him just as much as the fact that she was a thief, but he didn’t want to examine that contradiction too closely. He didn’t care how many men she kissed in dark corners. Really.
He narrowed his eyes. Wearing those feathers in her hair was practically flaunting the fact that she was the Nightjar. She must think him as dense as the rock she’d labelled at the museum. She’d only been out of his sight for a few minutes, but he’d bet his life that if he ventured next door, he’d find one of those feathers in Lady Carrington’s jewelry box.
Fury burned in his chest, both at himself and at her. She was a scheming little liar, as guilty as he suspected. So why was he so reluctant to unmask her? Why did he want to stop time and stay in this state of not knowing just a little longer? Why did he feel the insane urge to hold her in his arms one last time before everything went wrong?
Self-loathing lashed him like a whip. He never learned, did he? He still wanted to ignore the facts, to believe in the innocence of a beautiful face, just as he’d done in Spain. He wanted to be blind to her sins. He choked back a bitter laugh. Maybe the injury to his eye was the perfect poetic justice, the physical embodiment of his greatest flaw: willful blindness.
She was stroking the waxy petals of an orchid now, and he tried not to remember the way those fingers had felt against his skin.
Concentrate.
She turned back to him, with those big wide eyes, and he experienced the usual jolt, that strange humming awareness of being alive. He’d felt the sensation once before, from an “electro-static machine” Lord Braxton had hired as a parlor trick. It had made his nerves tingle. Emmy Danvers produced the same reaction.
He couldn’t allow himself to feel anything for her. She was a criminal and he was sworn to uphold the law.
Yet here he was, breathless with desire.
The faint strains of a quadrille drifted in through the doorway, but he felt disconnected from it all, as if they were in another, more elemental world, one that consisted of darkness and earth. Her pupils seemed enormous, her skin luminous against the near-black of her dress, and he curled his fingers into his palms against the urge to put them around her throat. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to strangle her or ravish her.
He felt positively medieval, freed from the trappings of polite civilization by the shadows and the heat. There was no point in denying he wanted her. No point in pretending he wasn’t going to kiss her either. He’d thought of little else for days. Craved it like the laudanum they’d given him when he’d first been wounded.
She’d hidden the jewel somewhere on her person, he was certain. Finding it was going to be an absolute pleasure.
He closed the distance between them and the lush scent of her filled his nose, headier than all the flowers surrounding them. He slid his hand around her nape. She sucked in a surprised