Free Between the Devil and Ian Eversea by Julie Anne Long Page B

through. For at least a little more charged conversation.
    Now that was how one flirted, Miss Danforth, he was tempted to instruct.
    “Have you an occupation, Mr. Eversea?” Miss Danforth tried, a trifle sharply.
    “I do. Primarily it’s scandalizing decent people.”
    He had the grace to regret it. It was a terribly unfair thing to say. Glib and arrogant and more impulsive than he normally was. It was just that life suddenly seemed too short for waltzes like this one.
    Color flooded her cheeks. Again. The girl blushed as regularly as the tides moving in and out. And he knew he’d neatly cornered her: asking him to expound would be tantamount to wanting to hear scandalous things, which would of course mean she was indecent.
    She clearly hadn’t the faintest idea what to say.
    It was poor form to punish the girl for being innocent and sheltered and inexperienced, and uninteresting to him because of it.
    “Why do people call you Tansy?” he said, as if he hadn’t just been unthinkably rude.
    “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “nicknames are usually shortened names, are they not? For instance, if the diminutive derived from the first syllable of the name Jonathan is Johnny, what would my nickname logically be given my name is Titania?”
    “Well I suppose one would call you Tit . . . sy.”
    An infinitesimal moment of horror passed.
    He was halfway into the word before he fully realized what he was saying, and momentum carried him all the way through it.
    He stared at her as if a mourning dove had just sunk fangs into his hand.
    Had . . . had this delicate well-bred “wallflower” actually led him right into saying “Titsy” to her?
    Surely that hadn’t been her intent?
    But now he was thinking about her breasts.
    Really wondering about them.
    He would be damned if he would look down at them.
    Perhaps quite literally damned.
    She gazed back at him evenly. He thought, though he could not be sure, he detected a glimmer of triumph or defiance there, but that may have just been the light of the chandelier glancing from her clear, innocent eyes.
    “You see, one can hardly call me that, Mr. Eversea,” she said somberly.
    “I suppose not,” he said shortly.
    The final moments of the waltz were passed in utter silence between them.
    And as he bowed farewell, he did look at them on his way down.
    They were excellent, indeed.
    T ANSY RETURNED TO her chambers late, late, very late, quite foxed on ratafia, champagne, and compliments, both given and received.
    She stood motionless for a moment in the center of the sea of carpet, riffling through memories and moments, smiling softly over each little triumph, each glance, each laugh won. Until she got to the only one that truly mattered.
    And then her smile slowly dimmed.
    She groaned and covered her face in her hands and rocked it to and fro.
    She had been grace personified with everyone else. With him, she’d brayed like a mule with laughter and enthused over everything he’d said with the force of an animal released from a trap. Graceless and appalling. She’d watched it happening, as if she were floating over her body in the ballroom, and there was nothing, nothing at all, she could do to stop it. What was wrong with her? If this was love, it was dreadful.
    The difference, primarily, was that she’d never before needed to really try for a man’s attention. Or try very hard, anyway. More specifically: she’d never before wanted a man’s attention the way she wanted his.
    “Titsy!” she moaned. “I made him say Titsy!”
    It wasn’t as though he hadn’t deserved it.
    She yanked off one satin slipper and hurled it across the room. It bounced very unsatisfactorily off the thick carpet, soundlessly.
    “He’s a boor ,” she said aloud to the room and the great arrangement of flowers, now drooping.
    So few good opportunities existed to use that word.
    And then she yanked off her other slipper, looking about for something to throw it at.
    She threw it at the