Seduction of an English Beauty. Miranda Jarrett

come through, half expecting to see Miss Wood charging up after her. How much time had passed since they’d left the carriage?

      “Buona sera, bella mia.” The words came in a deep, rumbling whisper from the shadows behind her. “The moon is like molten silver tonight, is it not?”

      Diana whipped about, peering into the shadows. “Who’s there?” she called sharply. “Who speaks? Show yourself, sir!”

      “Ah, but you show yourself too much,” the man said. “Come beneath these arches with me, and see what a pleasurable difference a bit of shadow can make.”

      “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” she declared, folding her arms over her chest. “If you’ve come here seeking the use of a—a harlot, then you have made a most grievous mistake.”

      “I think not,” the man said with an easy confidence. “I came here seeking you, lovely lady of the moon, and I’ve succeeded, haven’t I?”

      Diana gasped indignantly. She didn’t like how he seemed to have all the advantages, hiding there in the dark where she couldn’t see him. It was worse than not fair; it was cowardly. “How dare you say you sought me, when you don’t even know who I am?”

      “But I do know you, cara.” His laugh was as rich and dark as the shadows that hid him, a masculine laugh that, under other circumstances, would have struck her as infinitely appealing: no wonder he was so irritating to her now. “One glimpse was enough to know our souls were meant for one another.”

      “That’s rubbish,” she said tartly. “You mean nothing to me. This city is overrun with conceited Italian men like you.”

      “How barbarously wrong you are, sweet,” he said easily, as if he’d expected no less from her. “I assure you, I’m quite unique.”

      “And I’m just as sure you’re not,” she insisted. “You’re only another preening cockerel who believes he can seduce any woman he spies.”

      Determined that that would be her final word, she turned away, giving her skirts an extra disdainful flick. The man in the shadows didn’t deserve more. Clambering after Edward would be preferable to listening further to this nonsense.

      But the man wasn’t done. “Not any woman, my Lady Diana Farren. I prefer only the rare birds, like you.”

      She stopped abruptly, stunned that he’d called her by name, and he laughed softly.

      “You see, I do know you,” he continued. “I spoke to you in your own language, didn’t I? I know that pasty-faced mooncalf’s unworthy to spread your…fan for you. And I know how much you delight in the silver glow of the moon’s own fair goddess. Oh, yes, I know you, cara.”

      How had she not noticed that he’d addressed her in English? How had he known her name, her title? How could he make every word he spoke sound so wicked?

      “You were eavesdropping on me with Lord Edward, weren’t you?” she demanded, turning back to confront him. “You were spying! He’s ten times the gentleman you’ll ever be—no, a hundred times! You followed us, and listened to our conversation, and—”

      He laughed again, infuriating her all the more. “Do you truly believe that I care what another man says to you?”

      “I know that I do not care what you say!”

      “How cruel,” he said mildly, and took a step towards her. One step, but exactly enough to carry him from the shadows and into the moonlight.

      He was dressed in plain black, his broad shoulders relaxed, his weight on one leg, his elbow bent where he’d hooked his thumb into the pocket of his waistcoat. The muted light sharpened the strong planes of his face and accentuated his jaw and a nose that, from the bumps and bends across the bridge, must have been broken at least once. His long black hair was shoved back with careless nonchalance, a single loose lock falling across his broad brow.

      But what Diana noticed first were his eyes, pewter pale against so much somber black. She’d always recollect eyes like those, but the unabashed male interest in her that now lit his gaze was so blatant that she felt her cheeks grow hot.

      “You were in the carriage with your mistresses,” she said slowly. “I saw you from the balcony.”

      “I knew you wouldn’t forget, cara.” His smile came slow and warm and seductive, and she recalled that from the balcony, too. “Not you, not me. Not ever.”

      Chapter Three

      So she was brave, Anthony decided with satisfaction. He’d guessed as much from that first glimpse of her on the balcony in the Piazza di Spagna, and how she’d held his gaze without flinching.

      Now he had the proof. When he’d stepped from the shadows like the villain in a bad opera, she hadn’t shrieked, or run away, or worst of all, fainted in a white-linen heap at his feet. Instead Lady Diana Farren had stood her ground, and spoken up for herself in a way that was both unladylike and un-English. Bravery like that was a rare quality in a woman, and one that would be altogether necessary for the little game they were about to play together.

      No, the game they’d already begun. She just didn’t know it yet.

      “How ridiculously arrogant you are!” she exclaimed, her blue eyes round with her outrage. “To think that I would ever remember you longer than—than this!”

      She raised her hand and snapped her fingers, and though the effect was muted by her gloves, the look of indignant triumph on her lovely face more than made up for it.

      “Longer, indeed,” he said easily. “As long as it took you to remember seeing me from your balcony. And you were mistaken about my companions in the carriage. They were my friends, not my mistresses.”

      “They’re of no importance to me either way. I remembered because you reminded me,” she said, so promptly that he nearly laughed. Brave and quick, and unperturbed by possible rivals: a most unusual combination. His life was so filled with beautiful women that a new one needed to be extraordinary to catch his interest. And wager or no, this one was extraordinary.

      “The only reminder I gave you, cara, was to stand before you,” he reasoned. “If that was enough, why, then I must already have been in your thoughts, and in your—”

      “I don’t even know you,” she said imperiously, every inch the peer’s daughter with her aristocratic nose in the air. “Who are you? What is your name? Answer me, sir, answer me at once.”

      He smiled, and took his time with his reply, knowing that nothing would vex her more. “Orders, orders, like a petticoat general,” he scolded mildly. “It’s hardly becoming to you, mia signora di bella luna.”

      She glared at him, her uncertainty so transparent that he spared her and translated.

      “‘My beautiful lady of the moon.’ Diana was the Roman goddess of that luminous orb over our heads, you see.”

      “I know that,” she protested sharply. “I’m hardly so ignorant that I wouldn’t recognize my own namesake.”

      “Ignorant, no,” he said. “Ill-mannered, perhaps.”

      “You are the one who’s ill-mannered, sir. What kind of gentleman withholds his name from a lady?”

      He brushed an invisible speck from his sleeve. “Who said I was a gentleman?”

      “You did,” she insisted, seemingly unaware of how she was inching closer to him, her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. “That is, you pretend to be, by addressing me with such—such familiarity, as if we were equals.”

      He made a mock bow, waving his hand through the air. “I’m honored, my lady, to have my nobility confirmed simply because