Nick took a deep breath and stepped toward her. “My social habits were accepted just swimmingly before you decided to crusade against living, my lady.”

“You call ruining a woman’s life living? I call it dishonorable, despicable, and completely unacceptable for society.” Her eyes flashed behind the calm façade, but still, she stepped back when he advanced, keeping at least two steps between them until she was backed against the pillar.

He had apologized, spouted ridiculous compliments, and nearly walked a marathon around the ballroom with her. What more did the woman want? Should he beg on one knee and recite poetry?

Nick leaned to look around the three-foot wide pillar. She had inadvertently stepped back between the drapes. Now she was cornered between the pillar, the drapes, and him. If anyone happened to walk behind the pillar, it would look as though he had trapped her there. If it hit the papers, he would either be run out of Paris or locked up in an asylum.

Nick had never been fond of asylums. They were cold and dark, and they always smelled as atrocious as their century-old décor. Along with all that, one must not forget the lunatics who might stick a knitting needle in one’s neck at any moment.

Nick shuddered.

He wanted to turn around and never step foot in this house again, but if he did, he would be leaving much more than this ballroom. He would be leaving Paris, his mission. She would destroy any chance he had at gaining entrance into Parisian high society, and his investigation would be over.

It was worth a short stint in an asylum to keep any more children from being taken.

He took another step, closing in what little space was left and completely disappearing behind the drapes.

Little wrinkles appeared between her eyebrows.

“Ruining a woman’s life is dishonorable, despicable, and completely unacceptable for society,” he repeated her words back to her. “I agree with you on that point. I have never left any woman ruined, only satisfied.”

Nick waited for her to reply, but she turned her face away from him.

He cocked his head to catch her attention again, and let out a frustrated breath when she still wouldn’t face him.

Back to the silent treatment, was she?

“Is it such a crime to have cared for the natural hungers women are forced by society to ignore?”

He appreciated a well-behaved lady as much as the next gentleman, but the cost of one liaison was too harsh and wholly unfair. He had always taken great pains to keep his mistresses a secret for that very reason unless she had no reputation to lose, or the entire point of the affair was to create a scandal.

“Love is as natural as breath,” he muttered. He wished he could capture the feeling and implant it into her frozen heart so she could understand. “If anything is right in this world, it is lying in a tangle of sheets, hot and perspiring from exertion, satisfied and spent from hours of pleasure. Bodies still tingling and trembling, drifting off to the most tranquil slumber you have ever known with a lover in your arms, languid and content. Ah, my lady. None hath lived who hath not yet loved.”

Her eyes widened and focused on him, her lips pressed in a thin line.

He couldn’t make her understand a feeling. He would have to appeal to her intellect.

“How many of your ladies dancing in this very room do you suppose have lovers? Ten? Twenty?” His brows lifted in inquiry. “I would say fifty, at least. I wonder what they would think if their lovers were suddenly absent from their boudoirs. How quickly would they turn on the one who chased them away?”

She glanced away again, but not before he saw her mind working. He was getting to her.

Bracing his hand on the pillar behind her, he leaned in, his breath stirring the small hairs curling around her ear that had somehow gotten free from their pins. “Think of yourself, love.

“This decorous ballroom’s a chessboard,

’Tis naught but a game we play.

Your guests, being pieces you strike with,

Could easily win this day.

But know this battleground’s a crossfire,

Both parties will suffer pain.

You will worry your pieces conspire,

And I shall ne’er be seen again.

Still, there is time for amity,

Aye, a chance for peace,

For this sinner seeks your pity,

and your soul begs release.”

His lips brushed her ear to whisper the last line before moving away. Gad, but she smelled marvelous.

The touch was made to seem like an accident, but nothing Nick did was an accident. Usually.

Obviously, he was not great at pulling sonnets out of thin air. Though, the sonnet being subpar was more an unfortunate side effect of poor planning than an accident.

He stepped back a few inches and tilted his head to see her eyes, which were squinting at the floor—not exactly the reaction he had been expecting. That heady, half-sleeping look was probably too much to ask for, and a slap to the face, while most probable, would be highly undesirable.

The expression he received when she finally did look up at him was more of utter shock and incredulity.

Good Lord, he had charmed her stupid. Perhaps a sonnet had been a bad idea, even a poorly thought-out one. All he had wanted to do was explain that he wasn’t her enemy, and she was more than likely upsetting a fair amount of her fellow Parisian elite.

He studied the wide eyes looking up at him, noticing the specks of green in their honey-brown depths. They were intelligent eyes, framed by long, dark lashes, settled perfectly over a small, refined nose and a set of full lips.

His eyes dropped to her lips. How easy it would be to sneak a kiss in this little alcove. He could wrap his arms around those slender curves and feel her pressed against him. The only person to know would be Lady Dumonte.

That thought was like taking a much-needed bucket of ice water to the groin, bucket and all.

He straightened and took a full step back. Twice. He was now completely viewable by at least a small portion of the room.

“The only reputation I have ever ruined is my own,” Nick said, hoping to snap her out of it so he could save himself and get the hell out of there. “Your innocent lambs are safe from me.”

“That—that was a poem,” she stated, watching him with that disturbing expression.

“Are you not fond of poems, Lady Dumonte?”

Had he truly just waxed poetic to Lady Dumonte, the woman bent on destroying every rake in Paris? Had he completely lost his mind?

“You called me ‘love.’”

Oh, dear.

“Part of the poem,” he lied casually. “If I were truly a devil, I would call you ‘my sweet’ and ‘blossom.’”

She shook her head slightly. “It was not a full sonnet. You are missing the last two lines,” she pointed out matter-of-factly. “Though your voice rumbles so smoothly at that volume one almost forgets to count.”

“Is that so?” he asked with a knit brow, unwilling to believe his ears.

“Mm.” She nodded. “And when your breath warms the ear, it is extremely difficult to concentrate.”

“Uh-huh.” Now it was Nick’s turn for incredulousness. At least he managed to cover it with a wobbly smile as he took another step away from her.

Scoundrel or no, being alone with that woman for too long would drive any man to deplorable acts of depravity… or homicide.