The Devil's Waltz

Miss Kempton really was the most delicious creature, Christian thought as he ambled away. He couldn’t remember meeting such a prickly, defensive, yet charmingly vulnerable woman in his life. Most of his female acquaintances were either great beauties or women of a certain…er…moral laxness, and the Honorable Miss Kempton was neither.

He’d touched a raw spot quite accidentally when he’d been flirting with her. She seemed to have no difficulty with him calling her “dragon,” but “pretty” and “little” seemed to bring forth her rage.

Well, in truth, she wasn’t little. At least not in height. But although her dull clothes were fairly shapeless, even the evening dress last night, he’d been able to ascertain that she was slender in the right places, full in the others.

The fact of the matter was, he considered her pretty. Not a great beauty, as was more his usual style. He loved her eyes, even when they flashed lightning at him, and he’d been wanting to taste her mouth since he’d first seen her using it to castigate him. It had been everything he’d wanted, and if her insults hadn’t been so diverting he would have been tempted to kiss her again.

He wanted to see her with her hair loose around her shoulders and out of those wretched clothes. He was tempted to crush the spectacles beneath his boot heel—he suspected she used them more as a defense than a tool to aid her vision. When people were truly shortsighted the glass distorted their eyes. Annelise’s eyeglasses seemed far too thin to be of much use.