Read Online Betina Krahn by The Last Bachelor - Free Book Online Page B

deep-set eyes were instantly recognizable, as was the insufferable self-assurance of his stance. He wore traditional male evening wear: a black swallowtail coat, white-on-white brocade vest, matching white silk tie, and slim-fitting black trousers with satin piping. But on him the uniform of the upper-crust male seemed somehow different, more imposing.
    Scrutinizing him, she realized that it was the fit of his garments that made the difference; his shoulders were just a bit too broad to be purely fashionable, and his exquisitely tailored evening coat had been cut to minimize them, with only partial success. It wasn’t the clothes, then, it was the shape of the man inside them that she had found so impressive. And the fact that in her mind she had just separated him from his clothing appalled her.
    “Landon? You cannot be serious.” Lady Constance stared at her in surprise. Antonia gave her a determined look, and, intrigued by the volatile possibilities in such a meeting, Lady Constance promptly escorted her to the conservatory doors and introduced her.
    “A pleasure, Lady Antonia,” Remington said, his eyeslighting as he took her stiffly offered hand a bit too warmly and held it a bit too long.
    When he bowed his head over their joined hands, then raised his gaze to her, she felt her heart give an extra thud in her chest. At such close range his clear brown eyes were even more devastating than she remembered; meeting them felt like being immersed in warm chocolate. And his faint, knowing smile said that he was fully aware of their effect on women.
    “Then the pleasure is all yours, sir,” she said, abruptly withdrawing her hand and scrambling for something to say. “I am here to enjoy the music and then to set you straight on a number of matters concerning the marriage bill before Parliament. I trust you will make yourself available.”
    He blinked, appearing surprised by her bluntness, then smiled in a way that proclaimed to all watching that he was indulging her. “As you wish, Lady Antonia. I shall make myself available to you … anytime you say.”
    The suggestive tone of his comment raised an alarm in her as she turned away. But it wasn’t until she was seated among the other guests on the far side of the conservatory that she realized the full extent of its effects on her. Her heart was pounding so that she could scarcely get her breath, and her hands were icy inside her twenty-button evening gloves.
    He was one of those men who had an irritating knack for reducing every normal and necessary interaction to something appallingly intimate. His every word, movement, or expression was borne along on undercurrents of male presumption and sensuality that were meant to smooth the way for his will. She had experienced more than her share of such men while she was still a green young girl, and she knew exactly how to handle them. With devastating candor.
    Stealing a look across the room, she glimpsed him sauntering toward a seat on the far side. He charged the very air around him as he moved, and he knew it. Averting her eyes, she snapped open her fan and made brisk use of it.
    Before Madame DuPont’s second aria ended, word of Antonia’s prickly introduction to the earl was slowly passed behind fans and between bent heads, through the Ellingsons’ guests. Attention focused covertly on the pair of them, seated on opposite sides of the room but intensely aware of each other. Few of the gossip-hungry guests would remember much about the rest of the ample soprano’s musical selections.
    Lady Constance rose to lead the applause, then declared that the cold buffet was now being served in the dining room. She hurried to take Antonia’s arm and steered her toward the food, intent on knowing what was behind her audacious request for an introduction to the radical earl.
    “Come, come, Toni dear,” Constance crooned next to her ear. “After years of declining my invitations, yesterday you all but demand one. And in your