Silk Is For Seduction by Loretta Chase Page A

believe such a thing, and she was neither.
    She knew he was watching her, though he excelled at seeming not to. In the last hour, though, he’d shed the pretense. He’d been prowling the ballroom, his friend trailing him like a shadow—a talkative one, by the looks of it.
    Then at last the Duke of Clevedon’s seemingly casual wanderings brought him to her.
    Men crowded about her, as they had from the instant she’d satisfied the ladies’ curiosity. He seemed not to notice the other men. He simply walked toward her, and it was as though a great ship sailed into port. The pack of men offered no resistance. They simply gave way, as though they were mere water under his hull.
    She wondered if that was what it had been like, once upon a time, for her grandfather, when he was young and handsome, a powerful nobleman of an ancient family. Had the world given way before him, and had it likewise never occurred to him that the world would do anything else?
    “Ah, there you are,” Clevedon said, as though he’d stumbled upon her by accident.
    “As you see,” she said. “I have not shredded the curtains, or scratched the furniture.”
    “No, I reckon you’re saving your claws for me,” he said. “Well, then, shall we dance?”
    “But Madame has promised this next dance to me,” said Monsieur Tournadre.
    Clevedon turned his head and looked at him.
    “Or perhaps I misunderstood,” said Monsieur Tournadre. “Perhaps it was another dance.”
    He backed away, as a lesser wolf would have withdrawn before the leader of the wolf pack.
    Oh, she ought not to be thrilled. Only a giddy schoolgirl would thrill at a man’s snarling over her, the way a wolf snarled when another wolf dared to approach his bitch.
    Still, this was the most desirable man in the ballroom, and his little show of possessiveness would have excited any woman in the room. Whatever else she was, she was still a woman, and a young one, and for all her worldly experience, she’d never had a peer of the realm warn another man away from her.
    Before she could tell herself not to be a ninny, he led her out into the dancing. Then his hand clasped her waist, and hers settled on his shoulder.
    And the world stopped.
    Her gaze shot to his and she saw in his green eyes the same shock that made her draw in her breath and stop moving. She’d danced with a dozen other men. They’d held her in the same way.
    This time, though, the touch of his hand was an awareness so keen it hummed over her skin. She felt it deep within, too, a strange stillness. Then her heart lurched into beating again, and she gathered her wits.
    Her face smoothed into a social mask and his did, too. Their free hands clasped in the next same instant, and he swung her into the dance.
    T hey danced for a time in silence.
    He wasn’t ready to speak. He was still shaken by whatever it was that had happened at the start of the dance.
    He knew she’d felt it, too—though he couldn’t say what it was.
    At the moment, her attention was elsewhere, not on him. She was looking past his shoulder, and he could look down and study her. She was not, truly, a great beauty, yet she gave that impression. She was handsome and striking and absolutely different.
    Her dark hair was modishly arranged, yet in a slightly disarranged way. Had they been elsewhere, he would have dragged his fingers through it, scattering the pins over the floor. The slight turn of her head showed a small, perfect ear from whose lower lobe dangled a garnet earring. In that other place, elsewhere, he would have bent and slid his tongue along the delicate little curve.
    But they were not in another place, and so they danced, round and round, and with every turn the familiar waltz grew darker and stranger and hotter.
    With every turn he grew more intensely aware of the warmth of her waist under his gloved hand, of the way the heat made her creamy skin glow a tantalizing pink under the dewy sheen, and the way the heat enhanced her scent: the