CHAPTER TWELVE
From the corner of his eye, Dev watched Lady Beatrix.
Any moment now, she would stand and draw every eye toward her.
She wouldn’t like thedrawing every eyepart of this business.
But that was rather the point.
Just when he began to doubt her nerve would hold, she shot to her feet like a spring and all but dashed down the center aisle.
She was going through with it.
He slid his pocket watch from his waistcoat and held it discreetly palmed in his hand. He would give it three minutes before he followed.
As the soprano’s voice lifted into another impossible register and swirled through the air, he experienced the twin thrills of anticipation and momentum—that feeling when a plan was proceeding precisely as it should.
Lady Beatrix was playing her role.
He was playing his.
And unbeknownst to her, Imogen was playing hers.
She was in attendance, as he’d known she would be.
And tonight, for the first time since she’d impossibly married Bridgewater and become a countess, Dev had ignored her—or pretended to. He hadn’t attempted eye contact or proximity.
Not even when he felt the heat of her gaze upon him.
He sensed a question therein—and that was good.
He would have her wondering about this change in him. Imogen had always been so sure of herself. It served him tonight if she were a little less so of him. Otherwise, how could he convince her that he was besotted with Lady Beatrix St. Vincent?
The minute hand of his pocket watch struck twelve. The three minutes were up.
He’d taken a seat in the second row, so he would have to inconvenience every lady and gentleman he passed on his way to the center aisle. Annoyed shifts of knees to the left and right… A few ladylike huffs of annoyance…
He’d made a spectacle of himself.
They would remember.
Earlier, he’d walked from the ballroom to the conservatory, so he knew the path to take. Lady Beatrix, of course, wouldn’t have needed to exercise such precaution. She would know this mansion, as she knew fifty others like it populating the West End of London. This was her world, lest he forget.
And that was the interesting thing—when he was around her, he tended to.
She wasn’t like other aristocrats.
And it wasn’t because she was poor, as he’d so eloquently informed her.
There was no artifice to her.
When he’d suggested they be friends, admittedly, it had been strategy. The next several weeks of being in one another’s company would proceed better if they weren’t adversaries.
But also…
He’d said it because he thought it could be true.
He and Lady Beatrix could be friends.
