An Honourable Thief. Anne Gracie

her elbow, frowning thoughtfully down at her. The impressive-looking man she had noticed earlier. Heavens! Up close he was even more impressive. Bigger. Darker. Colder. Examining her with a curious mixture of frigid intensity and detachment.

      Kit’s heart started beating rapidly. She swallowed.

      The grey eyes met her gaze coldly. A frisson of déjà-vu passed through her.

      Who was he? Why was he staring at her in that way? Did he know her from somewhere?

      “Will you honour me with a dance, Miss Singleton?”

      It was not a request, but a demand, snapped out in an arrogant, care-for-nobody tone. Kit did not care for it. She lifted her chin and rewarded the gentleman with a frosty look and a disdainfully raised eyebrow. She was not supposed to talk to anyone she had not been introduced to.

      “Yes, of course she will,” Aunt Rose responded for her. Rose must have introduced them, Kit realised belatedly, but she hadn’t caught it. Rose smiled, nodded approvingly at Kit and drifted off towards the card room.

      Kit silently held out her card. His dark head bent as he scrawled his name on it, and she peered surreptitiously to try to catch the name, without success. His hands were large, square, long-fingered and well-shaped. Oddly, they were scarred and nicked in a number of places. London gentlemen took great care of their hands; some had skin almost as soft as Kit’s—softer, in fact, for she’d had occasion to work hard at times.

      Interesting. This man seemed to flaunt his imperfections…no, not quite flaunt, he seemed indifferent to them. Or was it people’s opinion of him he was indifferent to?

      She leaned back a little and allowed her gaze to run over him.

      Up close he still retained that aura of aloneness. He made no small talk. He simply claimed her for a dance. He was either a little shy in the company of women, or very arrogant.

      His eyes flicked up suddenly, as if aware of her scrutiny. He held her gaze a long, hard moment, then he dropped his gaze back to the card. Kit fought a blush. Whatever else he was, he was not shy of women.

      His eyes were grey, though of such a grey as to be almost blue, although that could have been caused by the dark blue coat superbly cut to mould across his equally superb shoulders.

      Kit had not seen such shoulders on a London gentleman before. Like the mandarin class of China, the pashas of Turkey, and the highest castes of India and Java, the members of the ton strove to appear as if they had never had to lift anything heavier than a spoon—and a gold or silver spoon, at that.

      Fashionable London might believe a gentleman should not have the build of a stevedore, but Kit could find no fault with it. London gentlemen padded their shoulders to achieve the correct shape, but if she was given the choice between muscles or padding…Unfashionable it might be, but such shoulders could rather tempt a girl to…to think thoughts she had no business thinking, she told herself severely.

      He had not the look of a man who’d had an easy life, not like many she’d met in the salons of the ton. He was not old—perhaps thirty or so—but lines of experience were graven into his face, and his mouth was set in an implacable unsmiling line. It was rather a nice mouth, set under a long aquiline nose and a square, stubborn-looking chin.

      Kit wondered again what he would look like if he smiled.

      His manner intrigued her. There was a faintly ruthless air about him, and the thought crossed her mind that he might be the sort of man Rose Singleton had warned her was dangerous to a young girl’s sensibilities. Certainly he was most attractive, if not precisely handsome. And yet he was making no effort to ingratiate himself or to fascinate her. Kit was fairly sure that a rake would try both, else how would he succeed in his rakishness?

      He had made no effort to charm her. His manner was more…She searched for a word to describe it and, to her surprise, came up with the word businesslike. Yes, his manner towards her was businesslike. How very odd.

      A thought suddenly occurred to her. Was he doing the rounds of the Marriage Mart in search of a wife? Some men did approach marriage as a business…

      Kit swallowed and firmly repressed the thought. She was not here, like the other girls, to find a husband. She was here to fulfil her promise to Papa, her vow to retrieve the family honour. She was not interested in so much as looking at any man, unless it furthered her plan.

      Still, this man was most impressive, most intriguing. And she certainly looked forward to dancing with him. She had spent the evening dancing with effete aristocrats and an occasional elderly friend of Rose Singleton’s—this man was like no man she had ever met before.

      He looked up, frowned, thrust her card back into her hand and strode off, very much with the air of a man who had done his duty. She glanced down. His thick black writing dominated her dance card, claiming not just one dance but two. The second one, the waltz, was the supper dance. So, he wished to take her in to supper, did he?

      It was all most intriguing. She still had not the faintest idea who he was. What was his name? His name stood out against the others pencilled on the white card. A heavy black scrawl. She frowned at it. It looked uncannily like the word devil. How very melodramatic.

      She watched his retreat across the ballroom with narrowed eyes. He still looked, to her eyes, out of place in a ballroom, but she wasn’t quite sure why. His attire was severe but extremely elegant and obviously expensive, from his dark blue, long-tailed coat to his black knee-breeches.

      Fastened in among the snowy fold of his cravat was a cunningly wrought gold tie pin; an exquisitely crafted bird, resting in what looked like a nest of flames, its ruby eye glinting. It was a phoenix, the fabled bird of ancient Egypt, who was destroyed by fire. But then a new bird rose, fully fledged, from the ashes of the old.

      A most unusual piece. She wondered whether he had chosen the pin for the significance of the design, or merely because it was pretty. He didn’t look the sort to be attracted by the merely pretty.

      Who was the man? Why did he feel somehow familiar to her? And why, out of all the young girls arrayed in white, had he asked her to dance? For she had seen him ask no one else.

      If he had approached her with an eye to a possible bride, he was surely unique, for he’d barely glanced at her, except for that one icy, searing glance. Kit knew from her past experience that whatever the culture, men generally showed a great deal of interest in the physical attributes of the women they took to wife. In some places she had lived, even the woman’s teeth were inspected as a matter of course—not that Kit would stand for being inspected like a horse at market! But a little interest would not have gone astray.

      Kit watched as he inclined his head ironically to someone on the other side of the room. She followed the direction of his gaze. An elegant woman in an exquisite lilac silk gown glared at him, stamped her foot and turned her back on him. Kit recognised the woman: Lady Norwood, the mother of Lord Norwood.

      Kit wrinkled her brow in perplexion as Lady Norwood, exuding indignation with every step, stamped away to join her cronies, leaving the tall dark man to saunter away into the crowd. What on earth was all that about?

      Lady Norwood was a widow, notorious, according to Rose, for keeping company with rakes and ne’er-do-wells. Was the tall man one of her companions? Had they had a falling out?

      Rake or ne’er-do-well? He did not seem to fit either description. He seemed more like a big dark arrogant watch-dog; a little fierce, a little harsh, a little cold. But watchdogs guarded things. And people. Who or what was he guarding?

      And why was Lady Norwood so angry with him?

      She was not quite sure how she felt, but there was no doubt about one thing; she felt more alive than ever. The simple evening of pleasure before her had suddenly turned into a most intriguing event.

      “Devenish, old fellow. Didn’t think to find you in Town. Thought you preferred rustification—know I do.”

      The blunt, loud voice came from just behind Kit. She turned her head but could not observe the