Feign indifference. Pretend she had never known him. Never loved him.
God, what a fool she was. Not even she believed her own inner reassurances.
Hannah watched her sisters being swept to the dance floor, and she had to admit they looked a matched pair with their beaux. Lord Denton’s golden hair was the same shade as Evie’s. Evie was petite, scarcely reaching his shoulders. Lord Foy was dark-haired and dark-eyed as Adele was. Her twin sisters were opposites in appearance and temperament. But both beloved to her.
The orchestra struck up the strains of a country reel, and she forced herself to observe for another moment before taking the opportunity to flee. She was overheated. And she needed a minute to regain her composure. Perhaps two. Certainly no more than three. Though the December air was unseasonably cold, the immense garden of Abingdon House beckoned, just beyond the doors of the ballroom.
Without thought, she quit the room. She did not dare set her eyes upon him again.
She would carry on, as she always had done. She would do so for her sisters’ sakes. And that of her pride. She would simply pretend he was not here. That he did not exist.
She firmly ignored any voice to the contrary as she swept into the cold night air.
She was here.
Han.
Hannah.
Lady Fawkesbury now, Graham reminded himself, the thought like a stab to his gut.
For five years, he had managed to avoid her, though memories of her continued to plague him. She had buried herself in the country with Fawkesbury. She had been beyond reach and out of sight, but she had never been far from his mind.
Indeed, her mere appearance here, in Oxfordshire, at the country house party he was attending in an effort to do his bloody duty to the line and obtain a bride made him wonder if he had conjured her. How odd was it—nay, how impossible—that the only woman he had ever wanted to marry should appear when he had finally decided to take a wife?
Impossible, said a voice deep inside himself.
And yet, it was true. She had come. She was here. In the same house, beneath the same roof. Closer than she had ever been in years. Their gazes had fleetingly met across the sea of merrymakers, clashing. He had lost his breath. His heart had hammered faster than the hooves of a runaway stallion pounding over the earth.
He despised his reaction to her.
The way it had all come rushing back to him. One look was all it had required. And he could envision the sensation of her velvet-smooth skin beneath his questing fingertips. He could hear her sweet gasp of pleasure. He could feel her body under his, giving, surrendering, fooling him into believing she would be his only.
His always.
She had never been his.
Graham’s fists were balled at his sides, and he realized, quite belatedly, he was clenching his jaw with so much force, it ached. He took a breath. Then another.
By God, he needed a drink.
“Bloody hell, Haven, you look as if you have just seen a ghost,” observed his friend, Lord Percival Vale.
Percy, like, Graham, had been born a second son. Unlike Graham, however, Percy’s brother, the wastrel Duke of Bellingham, was still very much alive. Gervase was not so fortunate, and neither was Graham. The Haven marquisate was a curse and a burden, and Graham had damn well never wanted it.
“I have seen a specter of sorts,” he forced himself to say. “Are they serving anything aside from orgeat and negus? Something stronger, perhaps?”
It had taken less than a minute to alter his life. With Gervase’s fall from a horse five years ago, Graham had become Marquess of Haven. But each time someone referred to him as Haven, he felt a horrible ache. A hot spear of anguish, knowing his brother was forever gone. That Graham himself was nothing but a usurper.
“I believe there are some brandy stores in the library,” Percy observed drily. “Shall we reconnoiter there and see if we can liberate some?”
“Not just yet,” he found himself saying, his gaze traveling, inevitably, back to Hannah.
He wished he could say the last five years had been unkind to her. She was still the most haunting beauty he had ever beheld. Her golden hair, which he knew possessed a natural curl and felt like spun silk sifting through his fingers, was lustrous as ever beneath the blazing light of the chandeliers. She looked slimmer than he recalled. It appeared as if she were playing the