“Wouldn’t mind finding out,” came a sly response.
The giggles grew bolder, and the crowd roared back to life as the string quartet swept bows across strings and played on with renewed vigor. The clamor to gossip about this new and intriguing development eluded Olivia, even as it possessed everyone around her.
Unable to take her eyes off the viscount’s face composed entirely of angles and shadows, she felt a twinge of something she couldn’t identify and quickly dismissed the feeling as nothing more than simple curiosity.
Why on earth would she feel anything more? The man was nothing to her.
“Have you ever seen such a pair?” came Mariana’s whisper in her ear.
“I think not,” was all Olivia could speak through parched lips.
“Come, let’s waggle an introduction from the Dowager.”
As Mariana pulled in one direction, Olivia leaned in the other and slipped her arm free. “I’m afraid not tonight. I have a splitting headache.” At Mariana’s bewildered expression, she continued, “You can fill me in on all the details at my soirée in a few days.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, sister.”
Without further hesitation, Mariana was off on her mission, leaving Olivia on her own, a strange relief at her sister’s departure stealing through her. Recently reunited with her husband, happiness radiated off Mariana in waves. Olivia wouldn’t weigh down Mariana’s newfound joy with her problems and anxieties. In this way, she knew she wasn’t alone, for she had a full life and a supportive family, but she was alone in her choices and the path she wanted to forge. It was simultaneously exciting and terrifying.
Her gaze again stole toward the staircase where Lord St. Alban stood quietly surveying the room. Except his eyes weren’t quiet. They were absolutely fierce, only softening when he bent his head to make a comment to his daughter. The girl nodded once while staring straight ahead and drawing her embroidered silk reticule close to her chest. Deliberately, protectively, he placed a hand at her elbow. His message was clear: his daughter was a peer of this room as much as he.
The fearsome display of love elicited a confusion of emotion within Olivia, strange and alarming. She couldn’t help thinking of Lucy and Percy, of how he hadn’t been that father to her, and a hard knot twisted inside her chest, even as a warm shiver purled down her spine.
Instinct urged her to run as fast and as far away as her feet could carry her from this scene. After the scandalous six months of gossip she’d provided theton, confusions of emotion were best left unexplored and avoided at all costs.
She would make her excuses, kiss her good-byes, and forget all about the unsettling Right Honourable Jakob Radclyffe, Fifth Viscount St. Alban. By tomorrow morn, she would be settled and ready to begin her independent future, decidedly free from all confusions of emotion.
Chapter 2
Jake couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d been so thoroughly ogled by a room full of strangers. He may as well have entered the ballroom wearing nothing but his smalls and a tiara for all the rapt attention centered on him.
And on Mina.
Pride swelled within him for the way she stood, facing down a visibly inquisitiveton. “Ready to board the first ship back to Singapore?”
Her lips twitched, and her gaze cut toward his before returning to the crowd. They were here to stay. Any suggestion otherwise was pure fantasy. Reflected in one hundred pairs of eyes below them was reality.
Misgiving snaked through him as he stared across that uniform sea of faces. These people would make a spectacle of Mina. They would never accept her, not fully.
Even though she was the daughter of a viscount, her father’s birthright would be the condition of her position. Not her beauty . . . or her intellect . . . or even her father’s money. Forever she would be reduced to a novelty.
This was his fear and sometimes, like now, it threatened to erupt into a full-blown panic. Yet he had no choice. This was the life they’d been handed, and the one they’d accepted.
The gossipy tongues of London wouldn’t know more than the truth presented them. He and Mina were safe here, half a world away from Japan, from the truth of her birth. If the people populating this room ever uncovered that particular truth, they would do more than observe her in idle curiosity, they would shun her, completely, forever.
Well, that wouldn’t happen. The past was locked away, and he alone held the key.
Below him, a thoroughly bejeweled matron began ploughing up the staircase with an alarming tenacity for a woman of middle-to-late years. This must be the Dowager Duchess of Dalrymple.
“St. Alban, my dear,” she puffed, placing her hand on his arm for support, “it has been entirely too long.”
Too long? He wasn’t aware of ever having set eyes on this woman in his life. Still, he inclined his head in agreement. “Your Grace.”
“You were such a tiny lad when last I saw you. And now”—She snapped her fingers—“you’re a man full grown. One can’t tell from letters how very tall a person might be. And you were a sailor all these years on the Eastern seas?”
He nodded. “All my life in one form or another.”
