more waiting for him inside.
“Bugger it,” he muttered as he marched up the stairs. He didn’t have an invitation – the ton’s hostesses had stopped wasting good paper and ink on him years ago – but he didn’t need one. His name was enough, and sooner than he would have liked he found himself walking into the ballroom.
“The Right Honourable Earl of Winchester!” announced the butler in a deep, carrying voice.
A gasp rippled through the crowd as everyone collectively stopped, some of them mid-waltz, and craned their necks to watch as Leo entered. A long, pregnant pause and then the music resumed and the rest of the room along with it, but there was nothing to stop the mad crush of curious onlookers who ran towards Leo as if they were a pack of starving dogs and he was a raw piece of meat.
“I say man, it is good to see you out and about again!” Lord Hamburg, a distant acquaintance from boarding school, slapped the earl on the shoulder and grinned broadly. His smile rapidly faded, however, when Leo simply stared at the gloved fingers stretched across his arm until Lord Hamburg released his grip and stepped back. “I’ll, ah, be over there,” he said before he hurried away, and after several similar encounters the rest of the guests followed suit, keeping their distance from Leo even as they watched his every move.
Frowning, he shoved his way through the crowd until he encountered a servant with a tray filled with champagne. Taking two flutes he drank the first in one swallow and held onto the second as he began to look for Helena and whatever poor chit she wanted him to dance with. The sooner he met the requirements of her favor the sooner he could get the hell out of this damned circus.
“My lord.” A beautiful brunette with the sort of body men praised the heavens for jumped suddenly in front of him, blocking his view. “You may not remember me, but I–”
“Go away,” he growled before he stepped around her.
The brunette gasped. “Why, I never.”
Leo barely heard her. He’d finally spied Helena standing by the terrace doors, looking resplendent as always with her bright auburn hair done up in a fanciful twist and pinned to the side of her head with some sort of feathery adornment. She’d been wearing feathers on the night they’d kissed, he recalled. After exchanging flirtatious glances all evening they’d snuck outside and stolen an embrace in the moonlight. Their kiss had been an impulsive, passionless exchange of spit that had left them both chuckling under their breath.
“Did you feel anything?” she’d asked, tilting her head back.
“No,” he’d admitted. “Did you?”
“Not a thing,” she’d said cheerfully. Then her eyes had brightened. “But there’s someone I want you to meet…”
That ‘someone’ had been Lady Heather Bingham, and the rest, as they said, was history. But as Leo stared at Helena from across the room it didn’t feel like history. It felt like it had happened yesterday, and there was a part of him that wanted to repeat their kiss if only to see if Heather would appear at the end of it. Then he glanced at the woman standing to Helena’s left…and everything inside of him flashed cold, then filled with heat. Because there, standing in a pool of shimmering candlelight, stood the infuriating minx who had fallen on him in the park.
The one who had wanted to know his name. The one who had asked him to pluck leaves from her hair. The one whose skin had felt like silk roses…and whose perfume had smelled like fresh soil and sunshine.
Without being fully aware of moving, Leo discovered himself transported across the ballroom. Helena grinned when she saw him, and started to say something, but his attention was too focused on the blonde beside her to make out any words.
In the park her beauty hadn’t made any noticeable impact on him. And why would it have? She’d had leaves in her hair, for God sakes. But now, seeing her in a pink, frothy ball gown that accentuated her narrow waist and slender shoulders and elegant collarbone, he didn’t know why – or how – he’d ever walked way.
Her hair wasn’t just blonde. It was tawny gold streaked with sunlight, and the tendrils that fell loosely from her temple framed a delicate countenance with high, arching brows; hazel eyes that widened at the sight of him; and a full, pouty bottom lip that his gaze