“Did you see who turned the pages?”
“Quite attentive, do you not think?”
“Most husbands do not bother.”
“They are not wed. Not yet. Not yet engaged,” someone corrected, delighted. “That is what makes it so interesting. Attentive as he is now, what sort of grand romance might this all bloom into?”
Arabella sat rigidly in her chair, her gaze fixed upon them with a look that had shed all traces of injured innocence. There was unvarnished fury there now, and something more calculating beneath it. Mrs. Hartington leaned toward a neighbor and said something too low to catch, but the neighbor’seyes flew at once to Jillian and Miles and widened with avid interest.
Jillian’s stomach dropped.
Miles must have seen it too, because the faint satisfaction that had touched his features when the guests applauded faded into something tighter. He inclined his head to her, very correctly, then moved away to speak to Henry, forcing a measure of distance between them. It did nothing to lessen the impression already formed in the room.
She endured a few more minutes of conversation—Mrs. Templeton’s kindness, the Harper sisters’ effusions—then seized the first respectable excuse to cross to the sideboard where the refreshments stood momentarily unattended. She had just taken up a glass of wine when a familiar presence appeared at her side.
“This was,” she said, without preamble, “a spectacularly ill-conceived idea.”
Miles’s mouth quirked humorlessly. “I am aware.”
“They will talk about it for days,” she went on, keeping her eyes on the ruby liquid in her glass rather than his face. “Weeks, if they are especially bored.”
“They would have talked if I had gone after you in the corridor as I wished,” he said quietly. “I chose the lesser foolishness. It appears I miscalculated.”
She stirred the wine, watching the surface catch the light. “You wished to go after me?”
“Yes,” he answered simply. “I thought better of it when half the house appeared. But I still wished it.”
The honesty of it made her fingers tighten around the stem. She drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. “Your warning is appreciated,” she said at last. “I confess I did not take their resentment as seriously as I should have.”
“You ought not have to,” he said. “Yet here we are.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “Then we must give them nothing further to work with. No more public gestures, no more conspicuous conversations. The truce was meant to ease matters, not make them worse.”
His eyes held hers, something dark and unreadable moving there. “You wish to avoid me.”
“I wish,” she said carefully, “to avoid giving this household any more spectacles at our expense. Whatever is… between us is our concern. I would rather not have it dissected in every sitting room from here to London.”
He hesitated, then nodded once. “Very well. In public, we keep our distance.”
“In public,” she repeated. The words tasted dismal, which annoyed her, since she had been the one to say them.
A burst of laughter rose from the far side of the room as someone proposed a country dance. Beatrice was already clapping her hands, calling for everyone to assemble. The company shifted, chairs scraping, skirts rustling. In the confusion of movement, Jillian and Miles stepped instinctively in opposite directions, like pieces on a board being reset.
He paused long enough to add, under his breath, “If you should find yourself cornered again, by anyone, you will tell me.”
The impulse to refuse out of habit flared and faded in the space of a heartbeat. She met his gaze, saw the sincerity there, the unwillingness to stand by while others attempted to make sport of her.
“Yes,” she said. “I will.”
He inclined his head, then turned away to join a group of gentlemen being dragged unwillingly toward the set. She watched him for a moment, then forced herself to move in the opposite direction, toward Helena and Aunt Gertrude.
Behind her, the whispers had already begun anew.
They could agree to avoid one another as best they liked, Jillian thought, schooling her features into pleasant unconcern as she reached her sister’s side. Fairhaven would see to it that even their absence from one another’s company made a story.
But for now, at least, they would not be the ones adding kindling to the fire.
Chapter
