Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid - Julie Johnstone Page 0,30
I know of no other lord better suited to playing the besotted suitor with a devilishly wicked flair than Kilgore. I vow to you, Greybourne will not leave this ball tonight with any reason to pity you.”
The words were exactly what Lilias wanted but did not offer the comfort she was hoping for. She would, she realized, trade pride for love if given the chance, but Nash had not given her such a chance, nor even the smallest reason to hope he would. So tonight would be about pride, endings, and moving on. It was not as she wanted it, but it was how it was.
Nash spent the first hour of the ball trying to keep his sights on his sister. It wasn’t until Adaline was finally dancing with a man who looked to be as harmless as a flea that Nash leaned against a column to relax. And of course, in that moment when his guard was down, he saw Lilias.
It was like being struck in the heart by a thousand arrows. The ground beneath him shifted, the air charged with a strange current, and his chest tightened as if a band had been placed around it. He could not look away. He was trapped by years of repressed longing. He was a fly in the web that was sweet, wonderful, untouchable Lilias.
She was a vision of sin with her blond hair flowing uncontrolled, evoking the desire to lay her on his bed and spread her flaxen tresses around her bare shoulders. Couple that with her ruby-red gown, which stirred the throbbing yearning to put his hands on the dips of her waist, and he could not stop his physical reaction to her. He went hard as a stone, and a feral instinct to stride through the crowd and rip her out of the arms of the man who was currently holding her too damn close pulsed to life within him.
Where the devil was Owen?
Nash jerked his focus away from Lilias to scan the annoyingly crowded ballroom. He roamed his gaze quickly over the guests, dismissing them as fast as he took them in. Fop. Lecher. Drunkard. Mother on a hunt for a husband for her daughter. Bored husband with an even more bored wife. Widow searching for a lover.
And Carrington, his longtime friend.
Nash pushed away from the column, and with his attention divided between his sister and Lilias, who luckily were dancing near each other, he strode across the ballroom toward Carrington. Carrington would be able to tell him who was dancing with Lilias and possibly where Owen was. He had not seen him all night, and that had been fine with Nash—until now. He’d assumed Owen was somewhere in the ballroom cherishing Lilias, protecting her as he damn well should be, and that was not something Nash had any wish to watch. He would rather gouge out his eyes than stand by observing the two of them together. He needed time. A couple hundred years ought to suffice.
As he threaded through the crowd, bursts of conversation and muted laughter came to him, but he pushed it all away, considering what to say to Carrington.
Carrington was the one person Nash trusted completely to be discreet, and Nash needed discretion now. Four years of friendship had begun with Carrington observing a man pickpocketing Nash’s coachman in a boisterous inn in Scotland and the same night had ended with Nash taking a bullet in the arm meant for Carrington. He’d been shot by a member of a pickpocketing gang the two of them had fought, and the evening had led to Carrington telling Nash that he owed him a life debt. Nash had never called in the marker, but tonight might be the night.
He could feel interested gazes upon him as he continued through the heated press of bodies. He didn’t care to stop and be cordial. He knew he should, but it was taking all the strength he possessed to stay away from Lilias, so whomever he offended could go to the devil. As he drew closer to Carrington, his friend’s wife appeared by his side and whispered something in his ear.
Damn. Nash could not ask about Lilias without drawing her curiosity. Carrington may wonder why Nash was inquiring about Lilias’s dancing partner, but he would not ask Nash about it. It was an unspoken code among men, but Lilias’s friend would undoubtedly poke about if he inquired about her.
“Greybourne,” Carrington said as Nash approached. His friend’s tone seemed