With a groan, she turned her shoulder on them, but she could, like phantoms, feel them as if they were still about her throat, at her ears, on her wrists.
She’d been mad indeed to think that, in that arena, she could hope to stand against him and prevail.
Her eyes narrowed as she thought back over the entire episode. Turning, she looked at the pearls again. Her first impulse had been to bury them at the bottom of her trunk. Pride dictated that she wear them every night. He’d comprehensively won that round, but she couldn’t let him know it.
Which meant . . . that she would indeed remember every touch of the pearls, warm from his hand, against her bare breasts. Would indeed wonder . . .
She was getting very close to being out of her depth. She couldn’t let him win the next round.
And she couldn’t call a halt to the game.
She was doing it again—pulling back, tumbling obstacles into his path.
Across Lady Cottlesford’s ballroom, Sebastian watched Helena with something very like aggravation simmering behind his façade.
Time was running out. He hadn’t imagined, when he’d set out to make her admit she wanted him, that it would take this long. There were only five days left to Lady Lowy’s masquerade, the event that in recent years had heralded the ton’s exodus from London.
He had five more days—five nights, more accurately—to gain her capitulation. To gain some indication that she would welcome his advances quite aside from a formal proposal of marriage. That was the minimum he would accept.
Five nights. Plenty of time normally. Except, with her, he’d already been laying siege for seven nights. Although he’d dented her walls, he hadn’t yet set them crumbling, hadn’t yet convinced her to lower her drawbridge and welcome him in.
“How’s the wife hunting going?”
Martin. Sebastian turned as his youngest brother clapped him on the shoulder.
One glance at his face and Martin took a step back, held up his hands. “No one heard, I swear.”
“Pray that that’s true.” Yet another irritation.
“Well? Do you still have your eye on the comtesse? Fetching piece, I admit, but sharp, don’t you think?”
“Let her hear you speak of her like that and she’s liable to demand I string you up by your thumbs. Or worse.”
“Fire-eater, is she?”
“Her temper is marginally better than mine.”
“Oh, all right, all right, I’ll stop teasing. But you can’t deny the issue has a certain personal relevance. You can hardly expect me to be uninterested.”
“Uninterested, no. Less interested, certainly.”
Martin ignored that and looked around. “Have you seen Augusta?”
“I believe,” Sebastian said, studying the lace at his cuff, “that our dear sister has quit the capital. Huntly sent word this morning.”
Martin glanced sharply at him. “She’s all right?”
“Oh, entirely. But she and I agreed she’d had enough of the ton for the nonce, and as I’ve asked her to organize the festivities at Somersham, she had plenty to distract her.”
“Ah!” Martin nodded. “Excellent strategy.”
“Thank you,” Sebastian murmured. “I do my poor best.” Would that he could do better with a certain comtesse.
“There’s Arnold. I must have a word.” Martin clapped him on the back. “Good luck, not that you need it, but for God’s sake don’t fail.”
With that injunction, he took himself off.
Sebastian resisted the urge to frown; instead, he looked across the room again—and realized he’d lost Helena.