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aware of her scrutiny. He held her gaze a long, hard moment, then he dropped his gaze back to the card. Kit fought a blush. Whatever else he was, he was not shy of women.
    His eyes were grey, though of such a grey as to be almost blue, although that could have been caused by the dark blue coat superbly cut to mould across his equally superb shoulders.
    Kit had not seen such shoulders on a London gentleman before. Like the mandarin class of China, the pashas of Turkey, and the highest castes of India and Java, the members of the ton strove to appear as if they had never had to lift anything heavier than a spoon —and a gold or silver spoon, at that.
    Fashionable London might believe a gentleman should not have the build of a stevedore, but Kit could find no fault with it. London gentlemen padded their shoulders to achieve the correct shape, but if she was given the choice between muscles or padding... Unfashionable it might be, but such shoulders could rather tempt a girl to...to think thoughts she had no business thinking, she told herself severely.
    He had not the look of a man who'd had an easy life, not like many she'd met in the salons of the ton. He was not old —perhaps thirty or so—but lines of experience were graven into his face, and his mouth was set in an implacable unsmiling line. It was rather a nice mouth, set under a long aquiline nose and a square, stubborn-looking chin.
    Kit wondered again what he would look like if he smiled.
    His manner intrigued her. There was a faintly ruthless air about him, and the thought crossed her mind that he might be the sort of man Rose Singleton had warned her was dangerous to a young girl's sensibilities. Certainly he was most attractive, if not precisely handsome. And yet he was making no effort to ingratiate himself or to fascinate her. Kit was fairly sure that a rake would try both, else how would he succeed in his rakishness?
    He had made no effort to charm her. His manner was more... She searched for a word to describe it and, to her surprise, came up with the word businesslike. Yes, his manner towards her was businesslike. How very odd.
    A thought suddenly occurred to her. Was he doing the rounds of the Marriage Mart in search of a wife? Some men did approach marriage as a business...
    Kit swallowed and firmly repressed the thought. She was not here, like the other girls, to find a husband. She was here to fulfil her promise to Papa, her vow to retrieve the family honour. She was not interested in so much as looking at any man, unless it furthered her plan.
    Still, this man was most impressive, most intriguing. And she certainly looked forward to dancing with him. She had spent the evening dancing with effete aristocrats and an occasional elderly friend of Rose Singleton's —this man as like no man she had ever met before.
    He looked up, frowned, thrust her card back into her hand and strode off, very much with the air of a man who hand done his duty. She glanced down. His thick black writing dominated her dance card, claiming not just one dance but two. The second one, the waltz, was the supper dance. So, he wished to take her in to supper, did he?
    It was all most intriguing. She still had not the faintest idea who he was. What was his name? His name stood out against the others pencilled on the white card. A heavy black scrawl. She frowned at it. It looked uncannily like the word devil. How very melodramatic.
    She watched his retreat across the ballroom with narrowed eyes. He still looked, to her eyes, out of place in a ballroom, but she wasn't quite sure why. His attire was severe but extremely elegant and obviously expensive, from his dark blue, long-tailed coat to his black knee-breeches.
    Fastened in among the snowy fold of his cravat was a cunningly wrought gold tie pin; an exquisitely crafted bird, resting in what looked like a nest of flames, its ruby eye glinting. It was a phoenix, the fabled bird of ancient Egypt, who was destroyed by fire. But then a new