The Dangerous Love of a Rogue. Jane Lark

faded.

      The next move was a closer turn, shoulder to shoulder, he pressed close. Heat scorched down her arm, and burned inside her, her heart thumping hard. She opened her mouth to breath, but there was no air.

      “Mary,” he leant a little to whisper to her ear. “Did you receive my letter?”

      “Yes.”

      “Will you write to me?”

      There was no time to answer. They were parted by the figures of the dance.

      She faced his friend again, her heart pounding as she sought to watch Drew through the corner of her eye. There were no other moments to speak with him, and the rest of the dance seemed endless as the complicated patterns moved Drew further and further away.

      * * *

      During supper, Drew stood apart from everyone, hands in pockets, as he watched those eating. Miss Marlow was in the bosom of her family, again, surrounded, laughing and happy. Happy? Now there was a word, a word like, love. Had he ever known what it was to be happy? How the hell did he know who was happy?

      He’d laughed last night, though, laughed and got very drunk. He’d called at White’s after he’d left her, searching for his friends.

      They’d not been at White’s, but he’d tracked them down in a gambling den not far from St James.

      He’d dragged them all from their game, and Peter and Harry from the whores draped about them, and taken them back to his bachelor residence for a more intimate night of masculine companionship.

      On the way there he’d explained his plight.

      How was he to convince the girl to love him? How did a man use romance and not sex to woo a girl?

      Harry, particularly, had laughed heartily.

      Drew could see the humour in the situation, the renowned seducer smote by a lack of love.

      What the hell did he know of love?

      His friends had spent the next three hours in drunken hilarity, advising him on the subtleties of love, and its difference from desire.

      The letter had been Peter’s idea.

      He’d leaned back in his chair, lifting his glass of brandy and grinning. “What you need my friend, is a bloody good poet. Prose is your key. All women fall for it. They like to be told their eyes are like this, their lips like that, they love to have their beauty praised.”

      Between them then, through much laughter, they’d constructed the basics of the letter. The prose, had in fact, been mostly Peter’s. This morning Drew had re-written it with a sober hand and sent if off.

      Yet, having played a part in the game of catching Mary Marlow, his friends had declared their interest in attending the next ball. They were eager to see the outcome of this new, more tactical, game. They’d considered it brilliant luck that Mark knew the Harding twins, Pembroke’s cousins, and then another plot had begun to spin, one to gain Drew access to Mary at the ball.

      The Hardings were not as high in the instep as the Pembrokes. Lord Oliver had not even lifted an eyebrow at Mark’s request.

      The plan was, once Mark had the introduction he would introduce the others and then they’d all dance with her, and if Drew merely passed her during moving sets, her family would not suspect any particular intent.

      But the reality proved frustrating. He could only speak to her for an instant here and there.

      He’d asked if she had the letter, if she’d write, if she’d missed him, she’d had no chance to answer anything to any real degree. Then he’d resorted to brushing her shoulder with his fingertips once.

      It was hardly enough to win him a wife. He was not going to be able to convince her to take him like this.

      Turning on his heel he walked from the supper room, he needed to think, he needed to settle his mind. He’d go for a smoke. Then he realised, suddenly, in a blinding thought, he’d asked her to write, but she didn’t know his address. He could hardly put it in a letter, her parents might see it.

      Changing direction then, he searched out a footman in the hall, and asked for a quill, ink and paper to be brought to the gentlemen’s smoking room.

      He let her dance with her friends, for the first and second dances after supper, but then he asked Peter to lead her out.

      The dance was a pattern of four. Drew picked a quiet little wall-flower of a woman to partner him.

      Two movements into the dance he and Peter swapped partners. It was not a requirement of the dance. He’d agreed the move with Peter to gain longer access to Mary.

      Of course Mary realised instantly what they’d done and her jaw dropped on the verge of exclamation, but he caught her fingers in his as part of a turn and squeezed them hard. It effectively silenced her. The little wall-flower seemed to think they’d made a mistake. She was smiling at Peter as though she thought him foolish, but then knowing Peter, he was probably charming the girl and making her think he was the one who’d planned the swap.

      “Lord Framlington,” Mary whispered in a harsh tone. “Why are you playing this game?”

      He bent his head and although he felt like being harsh in return because she had returned to distancing him with the use of his surname, he softened his voice to honey. Some elements of seductive skills could still apply when making a girl fall in love… by convincing her you suffered the same condition… “My dear, it is no game. I told you, I want you for my wife. I am not backing down. Steadfastness is surely an element of love.”

      Lord Framlington bore arrogance tonight. He obviously did not like losing. She had enough brothers and male relations to know how stubborn they could be.

      “It is no statement of love to want to win at any cost.” She did not like being used like a puppet.

      “You are on your guard, Mary, darling. I told you, I will not hurt you.”

      “Anything between us will hurt me, when it will hurt my family…”

      “But what if it hurts you and I more to be held apart. Does my steadfastness not express my heart’s devotion?”

      “You are determined, Lord Framlington, I give you that. But devoted, I question, I do not think you devoted to anything beyond my dowry.”

      “Call me, Drew–”

      “Lord Framlington.”

      His eyes shone with condescending humour. “Must I be set back so far?”

      “You have not been set back at all. There is simply no going forward. Is there? Our—”

      “Affair…” He leaned forward and whispered the word. It vibrated through her nerves.

      She took a breath. “Hardly that, but whatever it is; it is over – and was always folly. I cannot hurt my family.”

      “Folly,” he whispered. “I have heard it said, Miss Marlow, that each of us has a soul mate, and if I am yours, if we are each-others, would you throw that away because your family did not like the man of your heart, and hurt that man, who ought to be higher in your heart – your future husband. Families rear us; then they are meant to become second in our lives.”

      His words struck her like a slap – and if I am yours, if we are each-others, would you throw that away because your family did not like the man of your heart, and hurt that man…

      That was bloody prophetic. Where the hell had it come from? Drew would be spouting this drivel as second nature soon. But he would do anything to win her, including prattling, idiotic, poetic words.

      The dance separated them for several movements. But his gaze clung to her face.

      She was intoxicatingly beautiful. Whenever he looked at her a jolt sparked in his chest as well as his groin. His thoughts were forever transfixed by