Page 11 of Earl for the Summer
When Lady Selina nodded and was swept away by her next dance partner, Cassian immediately scanned the ballroom for Daphne Bridewell.
Their gazes clashed. She was watching him too. The oddest feelings overtook him—desire shifting something inside him, like the insistent roll of low tide. It had been so long since any woman had tempted him. Yet this one, who seemed content in her spot on wallflower row, made his breath hitch almost painfully in his chest.
He hated dancing, yet he still wanted to dance with her.
Lord help him, what was he doing?
He shouldn’t be thinking of her. The last thing he needed was to entangle himself with any lady.
He’d come here for Julian, and he tried to remind himself of that fact.
CHAPTER 3
Daphne knew something was amiss.
Lord Windham had never intrigued her, never made her pulse race with a single glance.
The man at last night’s ball was so different that it almost felt as if he was someone else entirely. With slightly longer, more tousled hair. With more curiosity in the deep moss green of his eyes. With a rakish scar that somehow made him more appealing rather than less. How had she never seen that scar before?
“Did you notice anything strange about Lord Windham last evening?” Daphne asked as she stood with her sister Ivy near the unlit fireplace in Lord and Lady Harrington’s drawing room.
Guests had gathered to make conversation as they awaited the sound of the dinner gong. Lady Harrington’s dinner parties were grand and well-attended. Though a dozen had already arrived, Daphne suspected more were expected.
“You mean aside from his reappearance after two weeks’ absence?”
“Yes, aside from that.”
Ivy turned one of her inquisitive gazes Daphne’s way. “I saw you speaking to him a while. Did you not ask where he’d been?”
“Recuperating from a cold, or so he said.”
“Goodness.” Ivy arched a brow. “I do believe I’m rubbing off on you.” She beamed proudly at that. “You sound as dubious of gentlemen as I usually do.”
“Not all gentlemen,” Daphne clarified. “Only some gentlemen. And at the moment, just one.”
“What makes you doubt his claim?” Ivy asked.
Daphne licked her lips and considered her reply. She had no logical reason to be musing about the man. Selina had seemed pleased by his return. Whatever misgivings Daphne harbored, her friend clearly had none.
Selina and Windham had danced and smiled with one another as if no time had passed at all. They’d seemed so amiable with each other that Daphne had half expected a note to arrive this morning. If he’d asked for her hand, Selina would be breathless to send news of their engagement.
And Daphne would be happy for them.
Of course she would.
And yet here she was still thinking of the earl. Something in her refused to stop pondering the changes in him—and the way he’d looked at her.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Ivy said, ever attuned to Daphne’s mood.
“I was simply considering whether it’s possible for a man to return from a head cold more handsome than before.”
Ivy gave her a look. “Oh, dear.”
Daphne swallowed hard and inwardly chided herself for letting that truth slip out. “He seemed different,” she said at last.
“Two weeks abed with a fever would change anyone,” Ivy said. “But you mean thatyounoticed him as you hadn’t before.” Her tone held an edge of mischief.
Daphne shot her a look. “I mean nothing.”
