Cinderella in the Regency Ballroom: Her Cinderella Season / Tall, Dark and Disreputable

And her mouth. His own went dry—because all the fluids in his body were rushing south. A siren’s mouth: wide and dusky pink and irresistible. He stared, saw the sudden trembling of that incredibly plump lower lip—and he realised just what it was he was looking at.

Immense sorrow. A portrait of profound loss. The sight of it set off an alarm inside of Jack and awoke a heretofore unsuspected part of his character. He’d never been the heroic, knight-in-shining-armour sort—but that quivering lower lip made him want to jump into the fray. He could not quell the sudden urge to fight this unknown girl’s battles, soothe her hurts, or, better yet, kiss her senseless until she forgot what upset her and realised that there were a thousand better uses for that voluptuous mouth.

He swallowed convulsively, tightened his grip on her arm … and thankfully, came back to his senses. They stood in the middle of a busy London street. Catcalls and shouts and several anatomically impossible suggestions echoed from the surrounding bustle of stopped traffic. A begrimed coal carter had stepped forwards to help his brother calm the bays. Several of society’s finest, dressed for the daily strut and starved for distraction, gawked from the pavement.

‘Come,’ Jack said gently. Her steps wooden, the girl followed. He led her out of the street, past the sputtering red-faced gentleman, towards the Grosvenor Gate. Surely someone would claim her. He darted a glance back at the man who had fallen into step behind them. Someone other than this man—who had apparently left her to be run down like a dog in the street.

Lily was lost in a swirling fog. It had roiled up and out of her in the moment when she had fully understood her predicament. Her life was never going to change. Just the echo of that thought brought the mist suffocatingly close. She abandoned herself to it. She’d rather suffocate than contemplate the stifling mess her life had become.

Only vaguely was she aware that the stampeding horses had stopped. Dimly she realised that a stranger led her out of the street. The prickle of her skin told her that people were staring. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

‘Lilith!’ Her mother’s strident voice pierced the fog. ‘Lilith! Are you unharmed? What were you thinking?’

Anger and resentment surged inside of her, exploded out of her and blew a hole in the circling fog. It was big enough for her to catch a glimpse of her mother’s worried scowl as she hurried down from Mr Wilberforce’s barouche, and to take in the crowd forming around them.

Her gaze fell on the man who had saved her from herself and she forgot to speak. She stilled. Just at that moment a bright ray of sunlight broke free from the clouds. It shone down directly on to the gentleman, chasing streaks through his hair and outlining the masculine lines of his face. With a whoosh the fog surrounding her disappeared, swept away by the brilliant light and the intensity of the stranger’s stare.

Lily swallowed. The superstitious corner of her soul sprang to attention. Her heart began to pound loudly in her ears.

The clouds shifted overhead and the sunbeam disappeared. Now Lily could see the man clearly. Still her pulse beat out a rapid tune. Tall and slender, he was handsome in a rumpled, poetic sort of way. A loose black sling cradled one arm and, though it was tucked inside the dark brown superfine of his coat, she noticed that he held it close as if it ached.

His expression held her in thrall. He’d spoken harshly to her just a moment ago, hadn’t he? Now, though his colour was high, his anger seemed to have disappeared as quickly as her hazy confusion. He stared at her with an odd sort of bated hunger. A smile lurked at the edge of his mouth, small and secretive, as if it were meant just for her. The eyes watching her so closely were hazel, a sorry term for such a fascinating mix of green and gold and brown. Curved at their corners were the faintest laugh lines.

So many details, captured in an instant. Together they spoke to her, sending the message that here was a man with experience. Someone who knew passion, and laughter and pain. Here was a man, they whispered, who knew that life was meant to be enjoyed.

‘Lilith—’ her mother’s voice sounded irritated ‘—have you been hurt?’

Lily forced herself to look away from the stranger. ‘No, Mother, I am fine.’

Her mother continued to stare expectantly, but Lily kept quiet. For once, it was not she who was going to explain herself.

Thwarted, Mrs Beecham turned to Mr Cooperage, who lurked behind the strange gentleman. ‘Mr Cooperage?’ was all that she asked.

The missionary flushed. ‘Your daughter does not favour …’ he paused and glanced at the stranger ‘… the matter we discussed last week.’

‘Does not favour—?’ Lilith’s mother’s lips compressed to a foreboding thin line.

Mr Cooperage glanced uneasily at the man again and then at the crowd still gathered loosely around them. ‘Perhaps you might step aside to have a quiet word with me?’ His next words looked particularly hard for him to get out. ‘I’m sure your daughter would like the chance to … thank … this gentleman?’

‘Mr …?’ Her mother raked the stranger with a glare, then waited with a raised brow.

The stranger bowed. Lily thought she caught a faint grimace of pain in his eyes. ‘Mr Alden, ma’am.’

‘Mr Alden.’ Her mother’s gaze narrowed. ‘I trust my daughter will be safe with you for a moment?’

‘Of course.’

The crowd, deprived of further drama, began to disperse. Lily’s mother stepped aside and bent to listen to an urgently whispering Mr Cooperage. Lily did not waste a moment considering them. She knew what they discussed. She remembered the haze that had almost engulfed her. It had swept away and left her with a blinding sense of clarity.

‘I admit to a ravening curiosity.’ Mr Alden spoke low and his voice sounded slightly hoarse. It sent a shiver down Lily’s spine. ‘Do you wish to?’ He raised a questioning brow at her.

‘I’m sorry, sir. Do I wish to what?’

‘Wish to thank me for nearly running you down in the street while driving a team I clearly should not have been?’ He gestured to the sling. ‘I assure you, I had planned to most humbly beg your pardon, but if you’d rather thank me instead …’

Lily laughed. She did not have to consider the question. The answer, along with much else, was clear at last. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘even when you phrase it in such a way. I do wish to thank you.’

He looked a little taken aback, and more than a little interested. ‘Then you must be a very odd sort of female,’ he said. She felt the heat of the glance that roamed over her, even though he had assumed a clinical expression. ‘Don’t be afraid to admit it,’ he said. He leaned in close, as if confiding a secret. ‘Truly, the odd sorts of females are the only ones I can abide.’ He smiled at her.

She stared. His words were light and amusing, but that smile? It was wicked. ‘Ah, but can they abide you, sir?’

The smile vanished. ‘Perhaps the odd ones can,’ he said.

The words might have been cynical, or they might have been a joke. Lily watched his face closely, looking for a clue, but she could not decipher his expression. His eyes shone, intense as he spoke again.

‘So, tell me …’ He lowered his voice a bit. ‘What sort of female are you, then?’

No one had ever asked her such a thing. She did not know how to answer. The question stumped her—and made her unbearably sad. That clarity only extended so far, it would seem.

‘Miss?’ he prompted.

‘I don’t know,’ she said grimly. ‘But I think it is time I found out.’

The shadow had moved back in, Jack could see it lurking behind her eyes. And after he’d worked so hard to dispel it, too.

Work was an apt description. He was not naturally glib like his brother. He had no patience with meaningless societal rituals. A little disturbing, then, that it was no chore to speak with this woman.

She stirred his interest—an unusual occurrence with a lady of breeding. In Jack’s experience women came in two varieties: those who simulated emotion for the price of a night, and those who manufactured emotion for a tumultuous lifetime sentence.

Jack did not like emotion. It was the reason he despised the tense and edgy stranger he had lately become. He understood that emotion was an integral part of human life and relationships. He experienced it frequently himself. He held his family in affection. He respected his mentors and colleagues. Attraction, even lust, was a natural phenomenon he allowed himself to explore to the fullest. He just refused to be controlled by such sentiments.

Emotional excess invariably became complicated and messy and as far as he’d been able to determine, the benefits rarely outweighed the consequences. Scholarship, he’d discovered, was safe. Reason and logic were his allies, his companions, his shields. If one must deal with excessive emotions at all, it was best to view them through the lens of learning. It was far more comfortable, after all, to make a study of rage or longing than to experience it oneself. Such things were of interest in Greek tragedy, but dashed inconvenient in real life.

Logic dictated, therefore, that he should have been repelled by this young beauty. She reeked of emotion. She had appeared to be at the mercy of several very strong sensations in succession. Jack should have felt eager to escape her company.

But as had happened all too frequently in the last weeks, his reason deserted him. He was not wild to make his apologies and move on. He wanted to discover how she would look under the onslaught of the next feeling. Would those warm blue eyes ice over in anger? Could he make that gorgeous wide mouth quiver in desire?

‘Mister Alden.’

His musings died a quick death. That ringing voice was familiar.

‘Lady Ashford.’ He knew before he even turned around.

‘I am unsurprised to find you in the midst of this ruckus, Mr Alden.’ The countess skimmed over to them and pinned an eagle eye on the girl. ‘But you disappoint me, Miss Beecham.’

The name reverberated inside Jack’s head, sending a jolt down his spine. Beecham? The girl’s name was Beecham? It was a name that had weighed heavily on his mind of late.

They were joined again by the girl’s mother and the red-faced Mr Cooperage, but Lady Ashford had not finished with the young lady.