Free Winning the Wallflower: A Novella by Eloisa James Page A

feet that are tired. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Ravensthorpe, I must fetch my mother.”
    “One moment.” He took her hands, and before she realized it, she was again seated behind the three potted palm trees where her evening with Olivia had started so many hours earlier, hidden from the slowly emptying ballroom. And he was kneeling before her, gloved hands drawing off one of her slippers.
    “You mustn’t!” she gasped. But it was too late.
    Perhaps champagne had gone to her head as well.
    But it did feel nice to sit down. “You really mustn’t,” she repeated, with absolutely no force in her voice. And then she sat back and rearranged her skirts so that her ankle was clearly visible. It was a nice ankle, a trim, rather delicate ankle for one as tall as she.
    Cyrus looked up at her, and she suddenly realized that if a woman could flirt from under her eyelashes, so could a man. And Cyrus’s eyelashes were thick and dark. “Poor tired little feet,” he said, rubbing his thumb slowly across her instep. It felt so good that she gave an involuntary moan.
    “My feet are anything but little,” she pointed out.
    He raised an eyebrow. “They look very small to me.” Lucy had always thought her feet absurdly large, despite being proportionate to her large frame. But his hand was so large that her foot was delicate in comparison.
    The look in his eyes should be outlawed, she thought. Or at least bottled and sold to forlorn maidens.
    “Did you know that it’s begun to rain?” he asked. He drew off her other slipper.
    “No,” she said, allowing her head to loll back on the chair. “That feels so good.” Another little moan escaped her lips.
    “I could not allow my erstwhile fiancée to be in such discomfort.”
    “Erstwhile?”
    “Former fiancée has an unpleasant alliteration,” he said, sliding her slippers back on. “Let’s peek at the rain, and then you must wake your mother.”
    They managed to slip through the doors leading to the gardens without attracting notice from the cluster of people bidding farewell to Lady Summers.
    Just beyond the marble terrace the rain was falling like a silver sheet. It bounced off the marble balustrade, forming little fountains that caught the lamplight shining from over their shoulders.
    “Lovely,” she breathed.
    “Yes,” he said, and she turned to find that he was looking at her, rather than at the rain.
    “Don’t,” she said, but without heat. “I’ve been dealt more extravagant compliments in the last few hours than I’ve had in my entire life. At least you did me the courtesy of being honest.”
    “Your eyes are the same color as the rain,” he pointed out. “That’s not a compliment; it’s merely an observation.” He reached out and took a lock of her hair between his fingers. “A bit like your hair too. Except there are strands of honey here, like honey and moonlight and rain all mixed together.”
    She did not look at him. Rain pattered on leaves in an unhurried, syncopated rhythm; she leaned back against the cool stone of the house to listen.
    “I am curious; did you enjoy dancing with my cousin?”
    Lucy turned her head to look at him. All of a sudden she realized that Cyrus was wearing a purple waistcoat, which made Pole’s diatribe on the subject more understandable. “I think I shall like being a duchess,” she said, mendaciously. “My closest friend is betrothed to one as well. It seems to be an agreeable state.”
    He didn’t react, which meant that perhaps she hadn’t struck the right note.
    “I love thick, unruly hair like His Grace’s,” she said, ladling more conviction into her voice.
    She was wrong to think he wasn’t affected. The look in his eyes was pure rage, unadulterated, ruthless jealousy.
    The truth dawned on her rather slowly; she had never been very good at unpicking emotional puzzles. Humiliation socked her in the stomach, followed quickly by a blaze of pure anger. “I now gather you have drawn me out here because