He stopped before them and bowed. “Ladies.”
The pink one gathered her wits with admirable speed. “Your Grace.”
The grey one regarded him as if he were a moral question on an exam paper. “Your Grace.”
He looked at Gwen last. She met him with a composure she had stitched quickly and well. “Your Grace.”
“I need a partner for the next dance,” he stated. “Lady Gwendoline will oblige me.”
The pink one sucked in a breath. The grey one made no sound at all.
Gwen smiled the politest of smiles. “I had intended to sit this one out.”
“Then you will have more vigor for the figures,” he returned. “Your card, if you please.”
She hesitated. It was a lovely hesitation, not coy, not unwilling, simply a moment in which a clever woman was debating whether to resist. Then she handed the card over.
He glanced down at it. The small, neat hand had written a single name:Sir Thomas Nobody.
He took the pencil that hung from the ribbon, his hand briefly brushing hers as he neatly erased Sir Thomas from existence. The faint blur of graphite remained like a ghost. In its place, he wroteGreystone. The slight tremors in her delicate fingers were not lost on him, and he fought the urge to let them go as his eyes met hers.
“Sir Thomas will forgive me,” he said smoothly.
Color rose in her cheeks. “He will have to.”
They took their places. The set formed around them like a picture. The Duchess waved her approval from her pavilion and turned at once to scold a marquess for stepping on her lawn. The music began.
Victor felt the old ease return to his body. Dance required balance and attention, both of which he preferred to supply. He guided without appearing to do so.
Gwen followed without ceding a single inch of herself. When they came together, he felt the whisper of silk and the sturdier promise beneath it.
“You chose a false name,” he said when the figure allowed talk.
“And you chose to remove it,” she returned. “It seems we are both fond of little fictions.”
“Mine was a correction,” he pointed out. “Yours was a disguise.”
Her mouth curved. “Perhaps I have grown used to them.”
“What were your little friends discussing when I approached?” he asked, sliding the question through a turn.
“My little friends,” she repeated, and the curve became a smirk. “How very vain you are, assuming we were speaking about you.”
“I did not assume,” he corrected. “Iknew.”
“How could you possibly know a thing you did not hear?”
“Because I composed the subject beforehand,” he said calmly. “One must seed a field in order to harvest it.”
She missed a step. Only a fraction. Her recovery was swift. “Youcomposed gossip?”
“I placed two truths where four people were likely to repeat them,” he explained. “The mathematics of reputation is not difficult. Your friends heard what I wished them to hear. There is a beast inside me, but he is very well trained.”
Gwen looked at him then, properly. Not as a nuisance, not as an enemy, but as if she had been handed a new map to a country she had thought she knew.
The look moved through him in a clean line from his chest to his belly. Hunger woke, not coarse, not manageable by simple count.
“You tell stories,” she said.
