The lady sailed onward to the reception room.
Eliza leaned closer to him, hereau de fleurdrifting up to his battered senses. “Sheknows.”
He could have sworn she held back a giggle. “Not funny.”
“Who would have guessed? But then she is a magpie. More than Lady Marsden.”
“We must keep our distance.”
“Why? Do you think I care what people say?”
“That’s not the point.” Others passed around them and he sought to keep his temper and his fear in check.
She stomped her foot. “What do you think the point is?”
“That you keep your reputation intact.”
“You’ve always helped me in that. As well as keeping my body intact from Father’s madnesses.”
He set his jaw and glared over her shoulder. “You must go in. Work your charm.”
“I wish to charm only one.” Gypsy that she was, she locked those green eyes of hers on him and, be damned, if his cock didn’t rise.
“I’ve work to attend to,” he said, hoping to persuade his errant body to end this ceaseless desire for her.
“Of course you do. Ever watchful. Everen garde.”
He challenged her with a ferocious shake of his head.
“That,” she said as she pressed the sticks of her fan to his breast bone, “always was your most enticing trait.”
He had to send her away from him. “Allow me to escort you to the door, my dear girl.”
“Trying to dismiss me, Octo?”
“Mine to serve. Yours to enjoy.” He extended a hand toward the open doors to the grand salon.
“Enjoy, I will. For now.” She winked at him. “I shall find you later. We can argue then without an audience.”
* * *
This meeting with Octo, Eliza had always known, would not be easy. He was, as they had just both declared, stubborn. At the ready to any eventuality. Prepared to fight, to conquer, to prevail in every minute detail. It was his core characteristic. Beyond humility, morality, loyalty to anyone or any thing, his was a sterling character few could match and fewer still could ever emulate.
But his rectitude could be his major flaw. The truth was that he was too secure—nay, too entrenched—in his own dedication to principles and yes, even to country, to be swayed by a mere female.
But then, Eliza counted herself as no mere female. To him, above all others, she was so much more. His equal. His torment. And soon…well, that was to be determined, wasn’t it?
Her challenge was to prove her ultimate worth to him and allow his masculine desires to emerge and claim her.
She had thought long and hard about her actions here at Lady Marsden’s party. This gathering by this noted lady of society was one many would mark as the highlight of this holiday. There was so much to celebrate. The victory at Waterloo. The end of the endless bloody wars against that heathen Napoleon. His deportation to the south Atlantic. The restoration of some order in France.
And even the restoration of those idiots, the Bourbons, to their throne. Long may they keep it. Though she doubted they could. She’d met the new king, Louis the Eighteenth and his brother Charles. Forgettable, the two of them. Fat-headed, bilious, neither would value the few good reforms the little Corsican had made, They’d return the country to the corrupt, graft-ridden autocracy their older brother had failed to reform. Then it would fall to Britain to turn the wrongs of Europe aright once more. And men like her two cousins who had died in Spain and Jonathan, Octo’s older brother, would spill their life’s blood on foreign fields because leaders could not keep their hands out of others’ pockets and their minds on the proper functioning of government.
She sailed through the reception, marking how Octo hovered over his staff like an archangel over the heaven he served. Then she filed into the dining room for dinner where the Countess of Marsden presided over the perfection that Octo had orchestrated.
Eliza had been invited here because she was a very good friend to Marjorie Craymore, one of the three sisters whom the Countess wished to marry off at this party. Marjorie, Eliza was certain, would have told her aunt that she was free this holiday from family obligations. Indeed, Eliza would be free forever more. She’d parted from her widowed father nearly four years ago after he’d picked up his cane in another of his rages. He’d not succeeded in hurting her. She’d grabbed his cane in a maneuver that still brought a rueful smile to her lips. She’d thrown it in the fire before he could strike her. And then she’d announced her intention to bar him from her sight for as long as he lived. What he’d done to her, or rather, attempted to do, all her life had been travesty. Not only had he controlled her purse, her education, her friends and her social life, but he had continued to meddle in her affairs. Only last Christmas, he had tried to foist one man on her as husband. A man she would not have. Ever. So vile was that animal.
Gladly, she came to this party. Delightfully happy, she arrived knowing she’d find Octo here. At last. She’d found him. The happy chance of her wishing to come here to be with her friends the Countess of Marsden and the three Craymore girls blended beautifully with her fortuitous discovery that Octavian Simms served here. She valued her friends greatly. But she knew she risked much by hoping she could persuade Octo to her own goals.
