Dicing with the Dangerous Lord - By Margaret McPhee Page 0,3

‘That would not do at all.’

Play the part. It is just another role. He is just another man. ‘So...what is your excuse?’ She held his gaze, her appearance once more the cool, calm, enticing Miss Fox, but beneath the surface her composure was still ruffled. ‘Why are you braving the chill of a November evening instead of enjoying the hospitality of the green room?’

His eyes moved back to the Bow Street view. ‘I have things on my mind.’

‘You disappoint me. There was me thinking that you had come outside alone to wait for me.’ He glanced round at her and she curved her lips to show that she was teasing him, even though her heart was still beating that bit too fast. ‘Things from which an evening at the theatre cannot distract you?’

‘Quite.’

‘They must be serious or perhaps it is a comment upon Miss Sweetly’s and my acting abilities.’

‘Rest assured your acting abilities remain unchallenged.’

‘You flatter me. And flattery is not permitted out here. I have a rule that it must remain confined to the green room.’

‘The truth is quite the contrary, Miss Fox. I enjoyed the performance very much.’

She smiled a wry smile and let her gaze wander back to the view. ‘In that case I am intrigued as to precisely what it is that so preoccupies your mind, sir.’

The sounds from the streets below drifted up to her. The silence seemed so long that she wondered if she had gone too far in asking so blatantly.

‘Trust me, you do not wish to know.’ And there was something in the way he said it, a dangerous, haunting honesty that quite chilled her to the bone.

She turned her gaze away, watching the view once more so that he would not see the truth in her eyes. ‘We all have things on our minds.’

‘Learning your lines, or deliberating in your choice of Hawick or Devlin?’ he asked.

‘Not quite,’ she said, and thought with irony of just what she had come out here to do to him.

‘Then what, may I ask?’

She looked at him across the small distance and wondered, just for the tiniest of moments, what he would do if she were to tell him and the thought made her smile in earnest. ‘You are asking me to spill my secrets and you have not even told me your name, sir.’ She arched a perfectly groomed eyebrow, the ultimate femme fatale. ‘What manner of woman do you take me for?’

He glanced at her again, the dark eyes studying her face.

Their gazes held and even though she was prepared this time, the same prickling sensation stroked against her nerves. Her heart was racing and not only because she feared that he meant to walk away.

‘Forgive me,’ he said at last and gave a small bow of his head. ‘I am Linwood.’

‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Lord Linwood,’ she said with mocking polite formality.

‘And I yours, Miss Fox.’ Just the sound of his voice, rich and dark as chocolate, sent goose bumps erupting over her body.

She focused. Breathed. Let her gaze drop to his lips, to linger there for the smallest moment before returning to his eyes.

‘So now we are properly introduced.’ She lowered the pitch of her voice.

‘We are,’ he agreed.

She smiled, a slow, seductive, suggestive smile.

‘You can go ahead and tell me what is on your mind,’ he said.

‘Oh, you really do not wish to know, Lord Linwood. Trust me.’ It was a parody of the words he had used to her.

‘Touché, Miss Fox.’ There was a hint of amusement in his voice, although his face betrayed nothing of it.

Her mouth curved as she turned her attention once more to the London streets beyond and below. ‘So what brings you to the green room tonight? I have not seen you here before.’

‘I accompany my friend Razeby. To use your own words, he wishes to be seduced, or, perhaps more accurately, to do the seducing.’

‘And you?’

‘I am not in the market for a mistress, Miss Fox.’

‘Nor I in the market for a protector.’ Her eyes were cool and disdainful with truth.

‘Hawick and Devlin seem to be under another impression.’

‘Hawick and Devlin are mistaken.’ She let just enough steel show.

His eyes slid to hers. He paused. ‘And had I come outside alone to wait for you...?’

‘Just the two of us, out here, alone in the darkness...’ She raised her eyebrow ever so slightly. ‘Who knows what might have happened?’

Neither made any move, only looked at one another across the small space