Considering fireworks were loud, bright, and overpowering, Annabelle wished she could have been spared the delight as well. But just as she’d resigned herself to dancing at least one with Nathanial, she spied a tall gentleman approaching, daggers in his eyes aimed straight for her heart.

“Lady Annabelle,” he said when he reached them, his voice all soft menace. She felt the danger of it curling around her. “Just the lady I was hoping to see.”

Nathanial caught her eye, and she knew if she gave him the signal, he would step in for her. But she shook her head.

This was something she needed to do. And if he thought he was going to take advantage of her, he was going to have another think coming.

“Lord Sunderland,” Theo said, not bothering to curtsy. The tension deepened and everyone must be able to sense it. People turned to them.

The Marquess either didn’t notice or didn’t care. His eyes glittered as he looked at Annabelle again, and she had that same urge to throttle him. Maybe stab him with a hairpin or two. He had no right to look at her with that air of night and unspeakable sin as though she should have something to apologise for.

I’m ever so sorry for having a dowry you covert, my lord. Evidently you despise it as much as I do.

“Would you do me the honour of this next dance, my lady?” he asked, still looking straight at Annabelle. Her toes curled as she looked back. I hate you, her eyes said.

His smouldered. I know.

“Actually,” Nathanial said, but she cut him off, not looking away from the Marquess.

“Very well,” she said, letting her reluctance colour her voice. “One dance.”

“Believe me, I would not ask for more.”

She doubted that, but said nothing as he brought her into the middle of the floor. Of course, fate was not on her side, and the next dance was a waltz. Naturally it would have been impossible for her to dance with her nemesis to anything else.

He looked down at her, gaze moving from her eyes to her cheekbones to eventually her lips, and back to her eyes. Fury was alive in his face, and it was a dark thing, ravenous. A starving wolf confronted with a rabbit.

She lifted her chin. If he decided to take a bite, he would discover she was no rabbit.

“So,” he said, a hard edge to his words. “I hear you have been busy.”

“Not as busy as you.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and she narrowed hers right back. Two could play at that game. But when his hand gripped hers and his other, rather scandalously, landed on her waist and drew her close, her expression slipped, mortification creeping in. This was not how gentlemen danced the waltz—or at least, not how they danced it in public.

It would have been too much to ask for him not to go out of his way to humiliate her at every given opportunity.

“I thought we agreed not to tell anyone about our little jaunt in the garden,” he said, bowing his head to hers. The dance began and she felt his proximity like a flare. Her skin tingled even though he wasn’t touching her directly, because she could remember the way he had.

Darkness. Warm breath. That heady sense of being wanted.

“I said nothing,” she hissed back.

“And yet here we are.”

“Because of you.”

He frowned, eyes slits now. “No, little bird. Because of you. My brother died before you could get your hands on his title, so you supposed you could entrap me into marriage. But if you ever thought that would succeed then I’m delighted to disappoint you.”

She would have jerked away if he wasn’t holding her so tightly. “Entrap you?”

“Well, what would you call it? I am a marquess and you are the daughter of a man whose only defining feature is his propensity to lose at the card table.”

Annabelle forgot she was in full view; she forgot they were outside with the darkened sky and flaming torches, and that a quartet played slow, gentle music around them. All she could think about was how much she hated Jacob Barrington.