“About balconies? Or trysting?” Not that he cared.
“About either, honestly.”
He should not have experienced satisfaction at the answer.
She continued, “Would you believe that I enjoy conservatories?”
“I would not,” he said. “And besides, the conservatory is off-limits.”
She tilted her head. “Is it?”
“Most people understand that dark rooms are off-limits.”
She waved a hand. “I’m not very intelligent.” He did not believe that, either. “I could ask you the same question, you know.”
“Which?” He didn’t like the way she wove the conversation around them, twisting it in her own direction.
“Are you here for a tryst?”
For a single, wild moment, a vision flashed of the tryst they might find here, on this dark balcony in the dead of summer. Of what she might allow him to do to her while half of London danced and gossiped just out of reach.
Of what he might allow her to do to him.
He imagined lifting her up onto the stone balustrade, discovering the feel of her skin, the scent of it. Uncovering the sounds she made in pleasure. Would she sigh? Would she cry out?
He froze. This woman, with her plain face and her unremarkable body, who talked to herself, was not the kind of woman Devil ordinarily imagined taking on walls. What was happening to him?
“I shall take your silence as a yes, then. And give you leave to tryst on, sir.” She began to move away from him, down the balcony.
He should let her go.
Except he called out, “There is no tryst.”
The nightingale again. Quicker and louder than before. Whit was annoyed.
“Then why are you here?” the woman asked.
“Perhaps for the same reason you are, love.”
She smirked. “I have trouble believing you are an aging spinster who was driven into the darkness after being mocked by those you once called friends.”
So. He’d been right. She had been chased. “I have to agree, none of that sounds quite like me.”
She leaned back against the balustrade. “Come into the light.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not supposed to be here.”
She lifted a shoulder in a little shrug. “Neither am I.”
“You’re not supposed to be on the balcony. I’m not supposed to be on the grounds.”
Her lips dropped open into a little O. “Who are you?”
He ignored the question. “Why are you a spinster?” Not that it mattered.
“I’m unmarried.”
He resisted the urge to smile. “I deserved that.”
“My father would tell you to be more specific with your questions.”
“Who is your father?”
“Who is yours?”
She was not the least obstinate woman he’d ever met. “I don’t have a father.”
“Everyone has a father,” she said.
“Not one they care to acknowledge,” he said with a calm he did not feel. “So we return to the beginning. Why are you a spinster?”
“No one wishes to marry me.”
“Why not?”
The honest answer came instantly. “I don’t—” She stopped, spreading her hands wide, and he would have given his whole fortune to hear the rest, especially once she began anew, ticking reasons off her long, gloved fingers. “On the shelf.”
She didn’t seem old.
“Plain.”
Plain had occurred to him, but she wasn’t plain. Not really. In fact, she might be the opposite of plain.
“Uninteresting.”
That was absolutely not true.
“I was tossed over by a duke.”
Still not the whole truth. “And there’s the rub?”
“Quite,” she said. “Though it seems unfair, as the duke in question never intended to marry me in the first place.”
“Why not?”
“He was wildly in love with his wife.”
“Unfortunate, that.”
She turned away from him, returning her gaze to the sky. “Not for her.”
Devil had never in his life wanted to approach another so much. But he remained in the shadows, pressing himself to the wall and watching her. “If you are unmarriageable for all those reasons, why waste your time here?”
She gave a little laugh, the sound low and lovely. “Don’t you know, sir? Any unmarried woman’s time is well spent near to unmarried gentlemen.”
“Ah, so you haven’t given up on a husband.”
“Hope springs eternal,” she said.
He nearly laughed at the dry words. Nearly. “And so?”
“It’s difficult, as at this point, my mother has strict requirements for any suitor.”
“For example?”
“A heartbeat.”
He did laugh at that, a single, harsh bark, shocking the hell out of him. “With such high standards, it’s unsurprising that you’ve had such trouble.”
She grinned, teeth gleaming white in the moonlight. “It’s a wonder that the Duke of Marwick hasn’t fallen over himself to get to me, I know.”
The reminder of his purpose that evening was harsh and instant. “You’re after Marwick.”
Over my decaying corpse.
She waved a hand. “My mother is, as are all the rest of the mothers in London.”
“They say he’s mad,” Devil pointed out.
“Only because they can’t imagine why anyone would choose to live outside society.”
Marwick lived outside society because he’d made a long-ago pact never to live within it. But Devil did not say that. Instead, he said, “They’ve barely had a look at him.”
Her grin turned into a smirk. “They’ve seen his title, sir. And it is handsome as sin. A hermit duke still makes a duchess, after all.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s the marriage mart.” She paused. “But it does not matter. I am not for him.”
“Why not?” He didn’t care.
“Because I am not for dukes.”
Why the hell not?
He didn’t speak the question, but she answered it nonetheless, casually, as though she were speaking to a roomful of ladies at tea. “There was a time when I thought I might be,” she offered, more to herself than to him. “And then . . .” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what happened. I suppose all those other things. Plain, uninteresting, aging, wallflower, spinster.” She laughed at the list of words. “I suppose I should not have dallied, thinking I’d find myself a husband, as it did not happen.”
“And now?”
“And now,” she said, resignation in her tone, “my mother seeks a strong pulse.”
“What do you seek?”
Whit’s nightingale cooed in the darkness, and she replied on the heels of the sound. “No one has ever asked me that.”
“And so,” he prodded, knowing he shouldn’t. Knowing he should leave this girl to this balcony and whatever future she was to have.
“I—” She looked toward the house, toward the dark conservatory and the hallway beyond, and the glittering ballroom beyond that. “I wish to be a part of it all again.”
“Again?”
“There was a time I—” she began, then stopped. Shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve far more important things to do.”
“I do, but as I can’t do them while you’re here, my lady, I’m more than willing to help you sort this out.”
She smiled at that. “You’re amusing.”
“No one in my whole life would agree with you.”
Her smile grew. “I am rarely interested in others’ opinions.”
He did not miss the echo of his own words from earlier. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
She waved a hand. “There was a time when I was a part of it. Right at the center of it all. I was incredibly popular. Everyone wished to know me.”
“And what happened?”
She spread her hands wide again, a movement that was beginning to be familiar. “I don’t know.”