Page 8 of A Perfect Gentleman

She might have turned from a wallflower into a seductress, but he’d be damned if he had become such an easy mark. The music finally started, and he swung her into the waltz with rather more vigor than was necessary. It gave him a petty satisfaction to see the surprise flash across her face. Her hand tightened on his shoulder.

“I would find it a trifle unusual,” he responded to her earlier question, “if that wife had not visited her husband in the previous ten years.”

Her eyes sparked with an answering anger, and that, too, gave him a little fillip of satisfaction. “My absence was at your request.”

“Yes. And I would prefer it to continue.”

“I know this will come as a shock to you, but you cannot control who does or doesn’t come to London.”

“Perhaps not, but my wife is under my control.”

She did not answer for a long moment, simply regarded him in a cool, level way that made him feel suddenly foolish and embarrassed. “You gave up your role as my husband long ago, as I remember it.”

He felt a flush rising in his cheeks, which only increased his irritation. “I will not allow you to insinuate yourself into my life. You will not sweep in and take over my home.”

“I would never presume to enter your sacred ancestral home. I am staying at the Langham Hotel.” She held his gaze, her eyes and voice as cool as his were heated.

“It will only cause more talk for you to live in a hotel instead of Montclair House.”

“Really, my lord, you cannot have it both ways,” she said in the tone of one humoring a madman. “I must stay at one place or another.”

“What you can do is leave the city.”

“Oh, I will.” Once again her lips curved up in that delicious way. “When I’m ready.”

chapter 3

It was clear she was trying to goad him. No doubt she hoped to provoke some intemperate response. The only way to counter her was to tamp down even more firmly on his temper. Taking a deep breath, he went on in a lowered voice, “I could not care less where you go or what you do. But I will not stand idly by while you bring scandal to this family.”

“Perhaps you might have considered that before you decided to add me to your family.”

“I can assure you, I did so through no desire of my own.”

“I am well aware of that.” She looked away, and for the first time the lightness leached from her voice.

“I apologize. That was rude.” Guilt snaked through his irritation. Reminding himself that her father, too, had been a master manipulator, he forged on. “Rumor has it you are looking to become a matchmaker.”

“A matchmaker?” She sent him an incredulous look.

“Yes. To find impoverished British nobles to wed American heiresses.”

Her laughter was brittle. “I hardly think my experience in that regard would be any recommendation. Few brides are looking for a husband, aristocratic or otherwise, who will repudiate them on their wedding night.”

“I didn’t—you know very well it wasn’t like that! You were the one—” He stopped suddenly, realizing that his voice had risen.

Abigail quirked a brow. “I thought your purpose here was to avoid a scandal, not precipitate one.”

Graeme clenched his jaw, swallowing the hot words that bubbled up in his throat. “At least before, you weren’t so bloody infuriating,” he muttered.

To his surprise, she began to laugh. And when she laughed, he discovered, her face was entrancing. Graeme could not even begin to identify the feelings roiling inside him. It was all he could do to shove them back down before they tumbled out.

Fortunately the orchestra blared into its last soaring notes and stopped. Graeme dropped her hand as if it burned and took a half step back. He had a cowardly impulse to just walk away, but of course one could not leave one’s partner stranded on the dance floor. Sketching a bow, he offered his arm. She took it, though with such a knowing look in her eyes that he wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her or—well, best not to delve into that.

As they crossed the floor, he kept his lips firmly clamped shut and his eyes turned away from her. It was rather more difficult to ignore the feel of her hand curved around his arm. He wondered where to take her—it was tempting to think of thrusting her on his grandmother and walking away.

A man angled toward them, clearly intent on intercepting them. This, Graeme thought, must be the American with whom his aunt had said Abigail kept company. Something about his carriage marked him as not British, but it was the proprietary, even combative look in his eyes that made Graeme certain the stranger had an interest in Abigail.

Graeme slowed and stopped, regarding the man coolly. He was much older than Abigail, at least forty; his dark reddish hair was graying at the temples. Shorter than Graeme, he was built solidly, and his square face had an equally implacable look.