And so she watched as he whispered in the ear of one lady, making her laugh, while his words to another caused her to dip her head and blush profusely, a shy smile curling her lips upward. To various other women he nodded or grinned—the grin given slowly and seductively as though the one to whom it was given was the only soul in the room for whom he had a care. He placed his hand over one lady’s, stopping her from moving a stack of wooden disks into the pile at the center of the table. Then, with a devastating wink that no doubt took the lady’s breath, he tossed one of the chips onto the mound.

Then he carried on striding through his dominion—

No, not through. Toward. Toward her.

Her heart kicked frantically against her ribs; within her gloves her palms dampened. She wasn’t yet ready to step out of the shadows into the golden glow of the gaslit chandeliers above. She wasn’t yet prepared to meet, to speak with this man who might prove to be her salvation—if only her courage would not desert her.

It was more than his good looks that unsettled her. It was the way he moved as though each movement was calculated to bring attention to him while giving the impression he wanted none at all. The manner in which he observed so keenly, so thoroughly, as though he could decipher all mysteries, make them blossom before him. Choosing him could turn out to be a colossal mistake because she had secrets to hold close. If she were wise, she would turn on her heel and flee. But if she’d never fled the circumstances of her marriage, she certainly wasn’t going to run off now, simply because his thorough gazing of her was disconcerting in the extreme. No man had ever looked at her as though she were a confection to be nibbled and enjoyed.

He stepped from the light into the gray and leaned one shoulder negligently against the wall papered in curlicues of dark burgundy and light rose. The shadows prevented her from discerning the exact shade of his eyes, but not his keen interest in her, not the slight tilting up of one corner of his mouth. “You’re new here.”

His diction was more polished and refined than she’d expected, not fully aristocratic, but close. She wondered if his father had seen him educated. Not that it mattered as his schooling wasn’t a deterrent to her purpose, although her nerves were certainly vying for that role. Somewhere within the recesses of her soul, she found the wherewithal to shore up her confidence and force it into her words. “You can’t possibly know that. I’m masked.”