London, 1887

They stood at opposite sides of the ballroom, she two steps up on the landing near the terrace doors and he at equal height on the stairs leading to the dance floor below. In the middle of the room, finely dressed gentlemen swept brightly frocked ladies in dips and whirls, their movements like bobbing waves to Sophie, keeping her and the man still holding her gaze afloat above the crowd.

            The corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile that spoke to the humor of their shared privacy in a room full of people, and he started down the last few stairs. Sophie knew without a doubt he was coming straight to her. She also knew this was the man she’d been waiting for all night, the one who was supposed to ruin her.

            He made his way through the swirling couples, his unusually broad shoulders cutting a path through the taller and leaner men of the crowd. And if the graceful and predatory way he walked wasn’t enough to single him out, his thick brown hair, worn unfashionably long down to his shoulders, marked him as different. It was like watching some exotic beast wind through a meadow of sheep, and Sophie found herself as entranced as any lamb.

            He glided past the last few couples, their thinning numbers allowing him to recapture her gaze, and as Sophie curled her toes over the edge of the top stair, she noticed two things. The first was his eyes. They were brown like his hair, but they had some kind of heady light to them that changed their color into something richer. It reminded Sophie of late nights at her brother’s pub, and the last thing he would do every night was pour himself a shot of brandy and sit by the fire while he drank. The way the light kissed the liquor and made the brandy deeper, almost more potent—that was the color of his eyes.

The second thing she noticed was he was openly smiling now, both sides of his mouth pulled up into a grin she recognized well—a conspirator’s smile of trust and secrets, but no less captivating even though she knew it to be false. This man was danger, and if these fools letting him glide through their very heart couldn’t see that, then they were blind.

“Dance with me,” he said, looking up at her from the edge of the dance floor. The low timbre of his voice went straight to Sophie’s belly like a gulp of her brother’s drink. She knew his roguish grin wasn’t for her, that it was part of the game, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a little affected by it.

She looked to the side, to the direction she’d last seen Mr. and Mrs. Stoakley headed, and could spot no trace of the couple whose daughter she was pretending to be.

 “Dance with me,” he said again, drawing her attention back, and she could tell he had never looked away from her eyes.

That damn smile of his was going to ruin everything. Sophie was simply too rattled to remember what to do, how to act now that the man who was blackmailing the Stoakleys was standing right in front of her.  

He stepped onto the first stair and was only a few inches below her now, standing so close his shins brushed the hem of her dress. Sophie could feel the shiver of fabric through every borrowed layer she was wearing, down to the fine linen drawers trembling against her skin. The only problem was she couldn’t tell if the trembling was coming from him or from her. He lifted one hand, catching hers as though his fingers curled under hers by accident, and without closing his grip, but rather leaving it still and open, brushed a kiss across her satin-covered knuckles while still never looking away from her eyes.

“Dance with me,” he said one last time, and the husky tone of his voice in the din of the room made Sophie think she felt his question rather than heard it. Even though she knew this was all an act and he was only here to cause mischief to Emily Stoakley, the girl he thought she was, she couldn’t stop the flutter of longing that washed across every pore of her body. But she could smother the awful desire to fling herself into his arms and say yes to the dance and so much more. Sophie Keane was made of stronger stuff than a two-bit Romeo from the East End, even if his touch warmed her like nothing before.

She pulled her hand from his like further contact would cause mud to drip down her fingers, turned her back and walked away.