Free A Bride Unveiled by Jillian Hunter Page B

resist your swordplay.”
    “Dear God, Violet,” he said in an undertone. “How could I not have realized it was you in the hall? You look much the same, but you’re so beautiful—”
    “Meaning that I wasn’t beautiful before?” she asked, her voice amused.
    “Not in the way you are now,” he said, his eyes drifting from her face over her curvaceous form. “And I never thought about you like that before.” But he did tonight, God help him. The sight of her was going to feed another decade of dreams.
    “You’re quite handsome yourself,” she said with a quick smile.
    He shook his head. “It might be a good thing I didn’t recognize you right away. I probably wouldn’t have been able to perform. I would have impaled someone on my sword if I’d known you were watching.”
    She laughed at that. “I doubt it. You controlled that sword as if it were part of your arm. I admire you more than I can say. You’ve come a long way, Kit. From a workhouse in Monk’s Huntley to a mansion in Mayfair.”
    “It doesn’t feel like it right now.” He still wanted to be the center of her attention. “What are you doing in London?”
    She sobered. “Getting married.”
    He glanced across the ballroom, his face disapproving. It couldn’t be. “Not to the haberdasher?”
    She frowned. “That isn’t very nice.”
    Neither was the haberdasher. And now Kit had another reason to dislike him. “Isn’t that what he is?”
    “He started out as a haberdasher,” she said. “But he owns the entire emporium and plans to buy another arcade.”
    “Well, joy to the world,” Kit said. “That’s just what it needs.”
    Violet arched her brow. “I can see someone still has a little of the wicked left inside him.”
    “That might be true,” he admitted. “But God knows I’m better than I was before.”
    “After what I saw of you tonight, I’d have to agree. How did it happen?” she asked in a whisper. “When I last saw you, I wasn’t sure how you were going to end up.”
    “That’s a kind way to put it. What you mean to say is that you weren’t sure I wasn’t going to come to an end.”
    “No. I didn’t.”
    “We all thought that I was done for, Violet.”
    “I was half convinced your departure would be the end of me, too,” she confessed.
    “Well, thank God it wasn’t,” he said with passion.
    “You’ve turned out finer than anything I could have hoped for.”
    He wished his heart would stop racing. There had never been anyone else like her in his life. “If you give me a chance, I’ll tell you more after the dance ends. That is, if it ever—”
    The chamber music built to a majestic swell and broke across the ballroom before Kit could finish. Footmen lowered candles in the outer girandoles and escorted onlookers to chairs. Gentlemen discarded their dress swords at the last instant and handed them off for the safety of the other dancers.
    Kit shook his head and moved closer to her, realizing that the other dancers were lining up for him to lead. Meeting Violet on the night of his grandest benefit almost made him believe in destiny. He wasn’t sure whether she ought to view it as good fortune or not. Or whether she’d want anything to do with him after this.
    Careful.
    Watch your opponent.
    Parry.
    Save your best move for the last moment.
    Except that she had saved him a decade ago. She was anything but an opponent. Every fight he’d won since then was dedicated to her. He didn’t want to engage her in a duel—he wanted to engage her in another kind of battle, one that didn’t have to come to a bad end, or end at all. This was a night for charity. Could he plead that he needed her again?
    “Do you remember the ‘Bleeding Idiots’?” she asked.
    He pretended to look puzzled. “Is that a division of the infantry?”
    “Pardon me,” she said so softly that he had to lean toward her to listen, and his chin grazed the lush hair that her pearl comb could barely tame. “I must have mistaken you