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hostess across the ballroom while the crowds parted to let them through. His appearance had definitely caused a buzz, he noticed with rueful amusement, though whether it was a buzz of indignation or one of speculation he neither knew nor cared. He was noticing that by a stroke of good fortune the Duke and Duchess of Anburey were engaged in conversation with a couple behind them, Stennson had disappeared, and Attingsborough was directing his attention and his gallantries toward a blushing, giggling young lady who had just stepped off the dance floor. Miss Edgeworth stood virtually unattended for the moment, still looking about her, still wearing that fixed half smile.
    “Miss Edgeworth.” When Lady Mannering addressed her by name, she turned her gaze toward the newcomers, and her eyebrows arched above her eyes even as the motion of her fan was suddenly arrested. “Viscount Ravensberg has asked for the honor of an introduction.”
    She regarded him with large, dark-lashed violet eyes, the exact shade of her gown—surely the most beautiful feature in an extraordinarily beautiful face. Quite a perfect knockout, in fact.
    But it was a face he had surely seen before, Kit thought—and recently too. For a moment the exact occasion eluded him. But then he remembered last week’s fight in Hyde Park and the embrace with the milkmaid. When he had looked up after kissing her, he had found himself locking eyes with a shocked beauty—clearly
not
of the milkmaid class—some distance away and wishing fleetingly and naughtily that it was she who was caught within his embrace. But before he had been able either to grin or to wink at her, she had whipped her head about to present the back of an elegant bonnet to his gaze. When he had looked for her a short while later, she had disappeared among the crowds strolling on Rotten Row.
    He had not thought of her since—until now.
    Kit executed his most elegant bow.
     
    Lauren felt a shock of recognition the moment she set eyes on him, even though he looked very different tonight—he was
clothed
from the neck down. He was dressed with impeccable elegance, in fact, in a black, form-fitting evening coat, cream silk knee breeches and embroidered waistcoat, and pristine white linen and lace.
    He was not outstandingly handsome. And he was no more than two or three inches taller than she, Lauren was surprised to discover. Yet there was an aura of confident vitality about him that gave the illusion of extraordinarily attractive good looks. His face was tanned and good-humored, and his gray eyes smiled with some inner
light.
    He was the sort of man whose acquaintance she should avoid at all costs, Lauren thought in the few seconds that elapsed after Lady Mannering’s introduction, while Lord Ravensberg bowed and she curtsied. Even if she had not been a witness to his unseemly behavior in the park, she surely would have sensed the indefinable air of raw masculinity that he somehow exuded. There was something very different indeed about him from the eminently respectable parade of gentlemen Wilma and Lord Sutton had been presenting to her thus far this evening. She felt an unexpected wave of amusement as she realized that her aunt and uncle and Joseph were bringing their attention back to her and looking concerned—as if she were a green girl who was quite incapable of taking care of herself. And Lord Sutton was approaching purposefully from a short distance away with a portly, earnest-looking young man—as if she were a dull, aging creature quite without the charms to attract any gentleman who was not coerced.
    Viscount Ravensberg had not been coerced.
    “My lord,” she murmured.
    “Miss Edgeworth? Charmed.” The smile lurking in his eyes spread to the rest of his face to reveal very white teeth and laugh lines at the outer corners of his eyes. Lauren revised her first impression that he was not particularly handsome. “I begged for the introduction since I simply had to get close enough to