star-scattered inky blue of the night sky, before returning her gaze to him. Her eyes seemed to glitter in the moonlight. ‘No,’ she said softly, surprising him yet again with her candour. ‘I would not. Would you?’
‘I think you already know the answer to that question.’
‘I do.’
‘It seems we are two of a kind.’
‘Perhaps, when it comes to secrets.’ She looked directly into his eyes and again there was that coolness and distance. ‘But then again, I doubt you are anywhere as good at guarding your secrets as I am at guarding mine.’
‘I think you underestimate me, Miss Fox.’
‘No, Lord Linwood, I assure you the underestimating is all on your half.’
‘That sounds like a challenge.’
‘I do like a challenge,’ and her eyes held his and seemed to smoulder. The silence stretched between them, brimful with desire, before she turned her gaze to the garden once more. He felt the stirring of excitement, the need to know more of her. He studied her profile and did not want to take his eyes from her.
‘Were you on stage tonight?’
‘I am on stage every night. And every hour of every day. It is the price any actress must pay if she wants success.’
‘Are you on stage now, Miss Fox?’
She did not hesitate in her answer. ‘Of course.’ Another answer so contrary to everything he expected. And through him, over him, in him, he could feel the pull of the power that she held over men.
‘Are you always so honest?’
‘I am an actress, Lord Linwood. I am never honest.’ She smiled again and this time so did he, he who in all these past months had so rarely smiled.
‘And what of the real Venetia Fox, as opposed to Venetia Fox the actress? What of her?’ Questions he would never have asked any other woman. And yet he asked her, for he found that he wanted to know the answer.
‘What of her?’ She looked at him.
‘Is she content to stay hidden in the shadows of the divine Miss Fox?’
‘Divine...? You are flattering me again.’
‘And you are not answering my question.’
‘Then the answer is that she is very content to stay hidden.’
‘May I meet her?’
‘You would not care for her in the slightest.’
‘Why not let me be the judge of that?’ He was flirting with her, angling to catch just a little more of this fascinating woman—Linwood, to whom flirting and women should have been the last thing on his mind.
‘Expose myself to a stranger?’ She arched one perfectly shaped dark brow and leaned towards him ever so slightly so that he could not prevent his gaze sweeping down to the luscious curve of her breasts and imaging them naked and exposed before him. He knew she was toying with him, just like she toyed with all the others, but right at this moment in time he did not care. She was all that stood between him and the dread and bitterness of his memories and thoughts.
‘Maybe we will not always be strangers, Miss Fox.’ His gaze held hers.
‘Maybe,’ she said and smiled a slow sensual smile.
The music floated out from the ballroom, the notes so sweet and clear on the night air. ‘The Volga,’ she said. ‘My favourite dance.’
His eyes held hers. ‘I am afraid I do not dance tonight, Miss Fox.’ How could he, when so much hung in the balance?
She stepped towards him, slowly closed the distance between them until the hem of her dress was practically touching the toes of his boots. She angled her face up to his, and her eyes glittered full with secrets, and her lips made him want to place his own against them, to kiss her, to taste her, to take the temptation that she offered. It had been such a long time since he had had a woman. But when he would have yielded she moved her mouth away to whisper against his ear, and he could feel the warm caress of her breath against his cheek and smell the bittersweet heady scent of neroli, her lips so close yet not touching.
‘I was not asking,’ her whisper enunciated so clearly that it stroked the nerves that ran from his neck all the way down to his manhood. His blood stirred hot.
She paused before retreating beyond his reach.
‘Perhaps...we might go for a carriage drive one afternoon.’ The words were spoken before he could think better of them.
She held his gaze, her eyes the cool white-blue of sunshine on a winter sea, alluring and remote both at once