“My come-out ball will take place in a month’s time,” she said. “In London.”
“Congratulations.”
“I hope to see you there.”
“I’m not sure I’m invited.”
The smile about her mouth, twinkling in her dark eyes, grew mischievous. “Oh, you are.”
With that—and with an unmistakably saucy toss of her head—she turned on her heel and marched herself down the center aisle the way she’d come.
And like that, Bran found himself looking forward to a ball for the first time in his life.
Now, he cast his mind back to their more recent encounter—the one from an hour or so ago.
Though he’d only been able to make out the rough outline of her silhouette in the dim light, it was clear she wasn’t the woman he’d met a decade ago.
She’d held no smile for him today.
Nor he for her.
Another surge of bitterness and frustration washed through him.
Life just kept throwing one thing after another his way.
Now, Lady Artemis.
Well, as long as she kept to her side of the woods—and he kept to his—then there was no reason they had to cross paths again.
If only life would consent to work that way, for once.
CHAPTER THREE
CHÂTEAU BOTTOM’S ROOST, NEXT EVENING, MIDNIGHT
Artemis’s boots crunched loud against gravel as she dashed across the Roost’s wide forecourt on swift feet.
She was late.
Midnight supper parties were the stuff of London—not the Yorkshire countryside.
She’d even taken a leaf from Mother’s book and sneaked a nap after tea this evening.
Yet, strangely, her footsteps were the only kinetic sound in the still night air.
How was that possible? Shouldn’t she have been stepping out of the way of late-arriving carriages? Shouldn’t muted drifts of conversation and laughter be floating out from windows open to cooling night air?
But as she approached, she detected no evidence of a supper party in progress.
A feeling niggled.
What was Sir Abstrupus about?
The fact was she shouldn’t have accepted the invitation that had arrived with her morning tea. Sir Abstrupus ever had secret motives and games at play. It was how he kept himself occupied.
Still, that wasn’t the reason she shouldn’t have come.
She shouldn’t have come because of Lord Branwell Mallory.
