They did not.
The truth was, he’d been inordinately pleased she’d asked him, even trusted him to read it and he’d reached for it the moment she left the room.
That was then, this was now.
If she felt she could flirt, under his nose, with practically every man in the room, it was time for Douglas to disabuse her of that notion.
He’d only made his decision when he caught her eye and she blinked at him, her laughter at something the idiot at her side was saying dying on her face.
He realised that she knew he was displeased and that satisfied him immensely. He watched as, in the next moments, she glanced anxiously at him a couple of times and grabbed Charlotte.
“If you’ll excuse me, Oliver, I think I’ll call it a night,” Douglas muttered to his friend, deciding quickly to make his move before Julia had any chance to make hers.
“Capital idea,” Oliver muttered right back.
Douglas’s angry, ground-eating strides went unfettered by the crowd as they parted to accommodate him. In reality, they had no choice; he would have simply run them over.
In no time at all he had hold of Julia’s hand. She was looking away to where Charlotte had escaped and he leaned forward and told her simply, “We’re going.”
Her frightened eyes flew to his face but he didn’t hesitate. He had her at the cloakroom within moments. He tossed her wrap to her, pulled her out the front door and practically threw her in the back of the Bentley that Carter had, thankfully, parked close to the front steps.
Then they were away into the night.
She waited a few minutes before she spoke. “Is… um, Douglas?” she hesitated. “Is there something wrong?”
He didn’t even attempt to mask his reaction to her as he had been doing, painstakingly, for the past three weeks.
He turned burning eyes to hers.
“Wrong?” he inquired, his voice steely.
The passing streetlights illuminated his face and she shrunk away from him but said, “Yes. Wrong.”
“Why would you think something’s wrong?” With effort, he tore his eyes from her.
He couldn’t look at her in that exquisite dress without tearing it off her equally exquisite body. He imagined Carter, who was now practically like her favoured uncle, would find something amiss in such an action.
When he’d first seen her earlier that night standing in the dining room wearing that remarkable dress and calmly adjusting her glove, he’d nearly lost all control.
He had never, in his entire life, been so enamoured of clothing the way he was of Julia’s… entire… fucking… wardrobe. It took everything in his power to compose his face and regard her blandly when she finally deigned to give him her attention.
She laughed, breaking into his thoughts, he heard the anxiety in the sound and he was unreasonably glad of it.
“Well, we practically ran out of there,” Julia stated nervously. “I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye.”
She stopped when his head swung around to regard her. “Who, may I ask, of all the many people you met tonight, would you have liked to wish a good evening?”
She didn’t answer for a few moments.
Then she surmised accurately, “Something is wrong.”
Douglas didn’t reply.
Fifteen very long minutes later, when the air in the back of the Bentley was so thick Douglas felt it hard to breathe, they glided to a halt in the drive of Sommersgate.
In an attempt at escape, Julia grabbed hold of the door handle before Carter could make it around.
Quick as lightning, Douglas caught her upper arm.