A Masquerade in the Moonlight - By Kasey Michaels Page 0,36

Donovan—at once, before someone comes along and my reputation gains itself another black mark in society’s copybook.”

When Thomas spoke again, which he did immediately, his voice was once more teasing, jaunty, as if to give the lie to his earlier remark, as if to prove he had not been at all affected by their kiss. Not truly, as she had been. “Your reputation. Ah, yes. I know all about that. Young ladies aren’t the only ones who talk out of turn. You’re known far and wide as the Autumn Miss—something about your penchant for being courted by gentlemen who will never see the summer of their lives again, I suppose. I wonder why you’re so interested in them. Even more so, I wonder—are you still so enamored of old men, Marguerite, now that you have tasted a young one?”

She still refused to look at him, or to further react to either his insult or his distressing, persistent interest in something that was none of his business. Why did he have to come to England? Why did his government have to send him to deal with two of the same men she was out to destroy? Why did she have to be so overwhelmingly attracted to him?

Could her world get any more complicated?

“We must go now, Mr. Donovan,” Marguerite said at last, refusing to be baited, then stood, feeling strangely dizzy as she walked back to Trickster, as if all the blood in her brain had somehow been transported to her feet—which it probably had, or else she wouldn’t have acted in such a reckless, dangerous manner. “And I did not give you permission to call me by my Christian name, Mr. Donovan!” she added lamely as she stopped beside the mare.

“You damn well gave me permission for nearly everything else,” Thomas told her as he boosted her into the saddle, then mounted his own horse before she could think of anything else to say that might finally succeed in shutting his infuriatingly frank mouth.

Together, in complete silence, they held the horses to a respectable trot on the short trip back to Portman Square.

Marguerite realized she now hated the quiet she had hoped for and felt as if the journey lasted three lifetimes.

Thomas dismounted first, asking the waiting groom to walk his horse in the square while he helped Miss Balfour down. “So what happens now, Marguerite?” he asked a moment later, looking up into her face as she remained seated on Trickster so that she couldn’t ignore his blue eyes, or his tanned skin, or that damn, insufferable mustache that had faintly abraded the tender skin above her upper lip.

“What happens now?” Marguerite repeated, frowning. “Grandfather won’t be announcing any banns at our church in Chertsey, if that’s what you mean. What do you expect will happen now?”

“I’ve been racking my brains for an answer to that question all the way back from the park. Do you propose we should pretend this morning never happened? To pretend the only thing that kept either of us from tearing off our clothes and making frenzied, impassioned love to each other was the fact we were in the middle of Hyde Park? Not that such a minor inconvenience would have stopped me for much longer if you had kept on mewling softly in your throat as my fingers explored the lovely contours of your extremely inviting body.”

“You’re coarse.” Marguerite whispered hoarsely, feeling her cheeks flame with embarrassed color. She knew she had behaved like an absolute wanton, but it was not his position to point it out to her. “Coarse, and vulgar, and common, and—and American. I never want to see you again.”

She froze as she felt his hand slide beneath the hem of her divided skirt, his fingertips running from the top of her boot, up and over her knee, and onto the bare skin of her thigh. No one had ever touched her so intimately. No one save Thomas, who had touched her breast. Her breast! Dear God! Her breast! And now—now her leg! As if she belonged to him, her body if not her soul his possession.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t react, couldn’t slap at him with her riding crop, couldn’t admonish him without causing a scene. No one in the square could see what he was doing—not even the groom. But she knew. Oh, God. She knew. She knew, and she was not about to make a single move to discourage him. How could she—when the feeling was so