Page 54 of The Cornish Mermaid

Morvoren couldn’t answer, as the next part of the dance parted them.

In between their bouts of action, for this was a long dance, she faced Kit across the dance floor, which gave her a good opportunity to appreciate him.

He had to be the handsomest man in the ballroom. Tall, slim but strong, with delectably wide shoulders that had needed no padding from his tailor, and such a good dancer. Who’d have thought doing complicated steps in an old-fashioned dance would make a man seem so attractive?

He was unlike any other man she’d ever met. Perhaps it was the knowledge that under all the mannerisms of the gentleman, and that veneer of respectability he presented here at Ormonde, hid the soul of an adventurer engaged in smuggling in the home of his heart. The romance of his illusion had her snared, like a fish on a line, only one that didn’t want to wriggle and escape.

At last, the dance came to an end, and, pink-faced with exertion, Morvoren allowed Kit to promenade her around the ballroom and procure glasses of lemonade for them both. As they passed along one side, cool night air came spilling in through tall French windows standing open onto a lamplit terrace, and several couples had already ventured out into the moonlight.

“You didn’t yet tell me about your upbringing,” Kit said, as they walked. “I’m curious as to why you’re so different from any other girl I’ve met.”

Morvoren bit her lip. What to tell him? Would she ever be brave enough to consider revealing the truth? No. Especially not here. He’d think she was making fun of him. “I had liberal parents,” she tried. “Eager to allow me all the freedom I wanted. Eager for me to have as good an education as possible.” She paused. “For a girl.”

His dark brows rose, and he looked as though he would have said something, but they were interrupted. By Captain Carlyon.

He came striding over, looking a little flushed in the face, with Ysella on his arm, also becomingly flushed. “Kit, you’re hogging the prettiest girl in the room, apart, of course, from you, Ysella. Let someone else have a chance. Miss Lucas, Morvoren, if I may call you that as you are as good as a cousin, almost. I’d be enchanted if you’d allow me the pleasure of this next dance.”

Morvoren couldn’t miss Kit’s face darkening, nor the stiffness in his arm as he relinquished his hold on her. “Of course,” he snapped. “I bid you good evening.” And he was gone.

Before she knew it, Kit’s cousin had swept her out onto the ballroom floor again and they were dancing the cotillion.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kit

Damn Fitzwilliam. Damn, damn, damn him. But Kit couldn’t keep Morvoren to himself. That just wasn’t done. All the same, he’d so much rather have returned her to the safety of his mother or Mrs. Fairfield than allowed her to go off and dance with that rake.

Rafe Huxley, his old schoolfriend, materialized at Kit’s side as he stood dithering. “Who was that dazzling creature you were just dancing with?” He paused. “Clearly one my mater hasn’t spotted yet or she’d have her lined up waiting for me to procure an introduction and a dance.”

Kit was watching Morvoren line up for the next dance with Fitzwilliam, a slight look of trepidation on her face. Good. He didn’t want her falling for his cousin’s dubious charms. What girls saw in him was beyond Kit. “A friend of my sister’s whom we have staying at Ormonde at the moment,” he said to Rafe, attempting to keep his tone offhand.

“Lucky you.” Rafe grinned. “I only wish my sister had such lovely friends. She’s such a bluestocking herself, the only girls she ever invites to stay are ones with the same interests as her. I told the pater it was a bad idea sending her away to school, and I was right, but the mater was insistent. She has it in her head that all my sisters should get what she calls a good education, and she has my father wrapped around her little finger. Who she thinks will marry them when all they can talk about is Latin and Greek, I don’t know. A chap gets enough of that at Eton and Oxford. He doesn’t want his wife spouting it.” He rubbed his nose. “I think I might ask her for the next dance. Can’t let your cousin keep her to himself, now can we?”

For some reason Rafe’s words annoyed Kit immensely. He realized with a jolt that it wasn’t only his cousin he didn’t want dancing with Morvoren. He didn’t want anyone at all dancing with her. Which was ridiculous. He had to keep himself under control or he was going to end up losing his temper and planting someone a facer and that would never do. Not in public, anyway.

Rafe wandered away, and for a full minute Kit stood brooding over the sight of Morvoren and his cousin. At least the lessons had paid off and she was making a creditable attempt at the Cotillion. Although dancing was not her forte. She was a girl more at home on the back of a horse, very much like his own mother.

“She’s a lovely girl.”

He swung around. Caroline was standing beside him, fanning herself in the heat of the ballroom, her cheeks a pretty shade of pink. She curtsied with an inborn grace and smiled up at him, looking almost beautiful, and for a moment Kit wondered if he’d been wise to spurn his mother’s suggestion that she would make him the good and sensible wife she said he needed. One his mother would approve of, at any rate. Not that he wanted a good and sensible wife, or even a wife at all right now. Or did he? Then he remembered Ysella’s declaration that Caro was in love with a soldier.

“Is he here?” he asked, following her gaze and staring across the room toward a group of three scarlet-clad officers laughing together.

Caroline gave herself a little shake. “I see Ysella has been giving away my secrets. I shall have to reprimand her.”

“You should know better than to confide to her anything you want keeping quiet.”

She smiled. “I should. You’d think I’d know her a sight better by now, wouldn’t you?”

“I make it a policy never to tell her anything important.”

Another smile. “Like the fact that you’re in love with Miss Lucas?”

Color rose to Kit’s cheeks. “I’m not.”

Caroline’s smile widened. “You underestimate your sister, my lord. She isn’t the empty-headed chit you think her. She already told me this evening that you have fallen head over heels for Miss Lucas and that she has plans for you to be wed.” She chuckled. “And now I’ve seen you both together, I can see it plainly written over both your faces.”

“Since when have you stopped calling me Kit?” he blustered, aware of heat suffusing his entire body. If only they weren’t standing in such a prominent position. He caught her elbow and steered her toward a more shadowy corner of the room on hurried feet.