“Another time,” he said. A far distant one, if at all possible. It wasn’t why he’d come here tonight, though he could hardly say as much with at least a hundred pairs of ears striving to catch every word he spoke.
And Em knew it. He could see it there upon her face. Probably Phoebe had told her—or at least told her enough. “Oh!” she said, as if it had just occurred to her that the entirety of her event had come to a screeching halt with his arrival. “What has happened to the music? Play on, if you please.”
A strange grumble of disappointment swept through the crowd as Em tugged at his arm, dragging him with her to the far corner of the room, and the musicians once again took up their instruments. The last dance had come to a premature end, and the dancers scrambled to find their next partners.
“Phoebe’s gone to the garden,” Em said beneath her breath. “You’ll need to wait here a bit. You’re still too much a curiosity to escape unnoticed.”
Yes; she was likely correct there. Still several sets of eyes lingered upon him, as if waiting for him to perform some outrageous act. He reassured himself that at this distance, in what was clearly meant to be a private conversation, no one would overhear.
“I’ve got a small speech prepared, which I intend to give when the next set concludes,” Em said. “I should capture most everyone’s attention for at least a few minutes. That’s when you’ll slip out.”
Good God, women were a wily lot. Had they planned everylast detail? “To the garden?”
“Youmustbe interrupted during a private moment,” she said. “It’s critical. I shall have to make some sort of a fuss to gather what witnesses I can to find you there. The worst of the gossips, to ensure there’s no wriggling out of it—for either of you.”
Apart from treason, Chris suspected he could wriggle out of a great many things. He was already a man of tenuous honor and no respectability; the only one truly trapped would be Phoebe.
“Of course, I shall expect a sizeable contribution,” Em said breezily. “For services rendered, you understand.”
Chris squinted, his hand fisting upon the handle of his cane. “’Ow sizeable, exactly?”
“Two thousand pounds.”
“Two thousand? You’re out of your gourd.”
“Well, really, Kit, it is for a good cause, and it isn’t as though you can’t afford it. Besides, you owe me for every year you’ve not even sent a polite refusal,” Em said with a sniff of offense. “I expect a bank draft in my hand before you leave. Now, do make your way toward the terrace and be ready to slip out promptly.”
And as she turned to wade once more into the thick of the crowd, Chris sighed and conceded that, given his circumstances, two thousand pounds was probably a bargain to secure himself a highborn wife.
Chapter Five
She was shorter than Chris had expected. Not small, exactly, but just…smaller. She’d had a rather more commanding presence from the other side of the wall, and it was damned difficult to judge height when staring down from a balcony.
She hadn’t noticed him yet. Instead, she was running her gloved fingers across the frilled edge of a rose that had cast itself away from its brethren and across the stonework path that wound across the lawn. She’d meandered away from the windows, thank God, but not so deeply into the garden itself that she had been difficult to find.
What was he meant to say to a lady? He’d so seldom been in the company of one, he hadn’t the slightest idea. And Em hardly counted. She’d always known better than to expect gentility of him.
He settled for, “Is every garden absolutely rotten with roses?”
She jumped, squeaked—turned. Not beautiful, but then he’d known that already. A man tended to note a beautiful woman, and he knew she’d been present at Em’s wedding and he had paid no particular attention to her then, even if he had been half out of his mind on a liberal dose of laudanum owing to his shattered knee. Still, he’d have noticed.
But pretty enough, he supposed. In that pale, pampered woman sort of way. Chris had always thought her sort looked as if they were suffering from consumption. A hairsbreadth from wasting away. They all took great precautions to appear as if they’d never felt the touch of the sun in the entirety of their lives, allowing not so much as a single freckle to blemish their skin. Sometimes applying bleaching lotions and creams to achieve that end.
Though if gossip were to be believed, Phoebe was not quite so diligent with the wearing of a bonnet as might be expected.
“Nearly all, I expect,” she said. “Have you not got roses in your garden?”
“No,” he said. “Just a pond. What, you’ve never looked down into my garden?”
“Regrettably, the only balcony we’ve got is attached to my parents’ bedchamber,” she said. “And none of the windows can quite manage the angle necessary. I have tried.”
Eyes somewhere between blue and grey; a shade that was difficult to pin down. Fair hair glowing in the moonlight, wrought into some contrived cluster of curls that didn’t quite suit the delicacy of her face, held back with some sort of bandeau.The fashion, he thought Brooks would say.
Fuck the damned fashion. She’d look better with it left down.
“How long have we got?” she asked, her gaze straying toward the windows.
Chris inclined his head, listening intently. “Em’s still talking,” he said. “Give her a minute, perhaps two, to finish up. And then another three to gather the audience.”
