Page 56 of The Earl’s Forbidden Temptation

His mouth curved. “I would not dare.”

She turned and walked away, disappearing through the ballroom doors.

Sebastian remained where he was.

Nearly a quarter of an hour ought to suffice.

He leaned one shoulder against the wall, yet his thoughts followed her into the ballroom. That look in her eyes remained with him, as did the sound of her laughter and the easy conversation they had shared throughout the evening.

He liked her company.

The realization arrived with such simplicity that it took him a moment to appreciate how extraordinary it was.

Sebastian had known many women. Desired them, pursued them, pleasured them, and been pleasured in return. Yet outside the wives of his closest friends, women had rarely occupied a place in his life beyond fleeting indulgence. Conversation before a tryst had generally served as a pleasant prelude to what both parties actually wanted, and whatever words were exchanged afterward seldom mattered enough to be remembered.

With Darcy, he could have talked for hours.

He enjoyed her wit, her unexpected boldness, the way curiosity overcame caution and sent some outrageous question tumbling from her lips. He liked making her laugh. Liked provoking her merely to watch indignation brighten her eyes. Even their silences possessed an ease he had never thought to seek with another woman.

Being with her simply felt…right.

His heart gave a hard, peculiar thump.

Sebastian straightened, disliking the sudden gravity of his thoughts even as he found himself unable to dismiss them. He had wanted women before. Red had proved how fiercely desire could seize him. But this was different. Wanting Miss Whitley near him when there was no promise of pleasure, discovering that her conversation alone could hold him more completely than another woman’s seduction, felt dangerously like something for which he possessed no experience at all.

Nearly fifteen minutes had passed.

Sebastian returned to the ballroom.

Music and conversation washed over him as he entered, candlelight blazing from the chandeliers and catching upon jewels, polished silver, and richly colored silks. His gaze moved through the gathering until he found her.

Darcy stood beside the Duchess of Basil, listening to something Her Grace was saying. Then Darcy laughed. The sound reached him even through the surrounding din.

That strange warmth returned to his chest. Sebastian crossed the ballroom toward her. Darcy saw him coming, and the pleasure that immediately entered her eyes made something inside him tighten all over again. He bowed before the duchess, exchanged the necessary courtesies, then turned to Darcy and held out his hand.

“Mrs. Whitley,” he said, “I believe you wished to dance until your feet ached.”

Her smile deepened as she placed her hand in his. “I did.”

“Then we had best begin.”

He felt the weight of surprise and speculation as he sought her out again for the next dance. When that set ended, he asked for another. And when the music faded once more, he simply held out his hand, making it clear he intended to dance with her again. Four times he danced with her. Four times Sebastian took her hand, leading her through waltzes and quadrilles, increasingly aware with each set that he was behaving in a manner entirely unlike himself.

The room remarked upon it. He saw it in the lifted brows, the whispered exchanges, the curiosity that sharpened with every repetition.

It was damn well scandalous. He did not care because Darcy delighted in it. She moved with increasing abandon, her laughter coming more freely as a subtle warmth lingered between them through every turn and step. And beneath it all, that same elusive tension, as though she held something back even as she yielded to the moment.

Sebastian had danced with countless women and desired many of them, but this felt different. As the night wore on, he became increasingly certain of one thing: He was no longer merely amused by Miss Darcy Whitley. He was becoming dangerously, irrevocably interested.

A full week had passed since the night of the ball, and on each of those days the earl called upon them. His visits delighted her sisters beyond measure. Sebastian spoke to them of their dowries and what such fortunes would mean for their futures. He escorted them to performances at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. There had been another picnic in Kensington Gardens and a visit to the Tower of London. Their last outing was an evening at Vauxhall once more; this time, they stayed out far later than before.

Above them, the sky had stretched wide and clear, the stars scattered in quiet brilliance across the dark expanse. Sebastian had arranged for an ascent in a hot-air balloon. The girls’ delight had been unrestrained. When they boarded, the balloon rose with slow deliberation, its great silk canopy catching the glow of the lamps below before yielding to the vastness of the night. A telescope had been secured within the basket, its polished frame glinting faintly beneath the starlight.

Sebastian watched them with a faint, contemplative smile: Sarah leaning eagerly toward the edge, her delighted laughter carrying on the wind; Jane calling out simply to hear whether her voice would echo; and Emelia casting aside her usual reserve to join Jane, their voices rising together in laughter and song beneath the open sky.

“Will you not look at the night sky?” Darcy had asked, laughter warming her voice.

He had told her then that his first ascent had been with his father when he was nine, and that the balloon was his own. Yet for all his attentions toward the girls, he never spoke with any certainty of the place he intended to hold in their future. Darcy knew his regard for them was neither whim nor idle generosity. There was genuine purpose behind it.