“I haven’t guided him anywhere,” Vix said, sudden and sharp, startling both Asters enough that there was a hiccup in the drowning environs around Ambrose. “He was knighted on his own.”
Helena blinked, her pale lashes fluttering with irritation. “Of course, my dear,” she said, recovering smoothly. “I suppose that happened before you agreed to wed him. A woman such as yourself likely needed an indication of direction for the future.”
“In fact, I needed the opposite,” Vix said, tilting her head to the side. “I’ve direction in spades. What I needed was levity and worth, both of which Ambrose already had in spades. He has much improved me, my lady. Not the other way around.”
There was a long pause, his mother’s smile going tight around her mouth and her eyes. “I see,” she said, sharper this time, disappointed. “Perhaps you are more predictably matched than I believed.”
“Perhaps we are,” Vix agreed, moving to touch Ambrose, to weave her fingers through the crook of his arm. “I should be honored that anyone would think so.”
“I require refreshment,” she said, not going quite so far as to frown, but dropping the smile entirely. “We shall speak more later in the evening.”
She turned, swishing away with her usual gaggle of admiring onlookers, her hair glinting like spun silver in the candlelight. The farther away she got, the easier the air became to breathe.
“You did not have to do that,” he said, when he felt he could speak again, looking apologetically down at his wife. “You did not have to say those things. She really could give you access to the cream of Society.”
“I don’t love the cream of Society, Ambrose,” she snapped, glaring up at him. “I love you.”
She paused, her face bunching up in realization of what she’d said, then she shook her head and glared at him again for good measure. “Yes,” she reiterated. “It is true.”
He could only stare down at her in a kind of numb wonder. “Vix, you wicked woman,” he finally said, sighing. “Why would you tell me that in public, when I cannot kiss you for your trouble?”
“Because I am terribly broken, Ambrose,” she replied, just as acidic and impertinent as always. “I need champagne.”
He watched her storm away to seek out her comfort with his heart gone to goo in his chest. And he realized, in the watching, that the color had come back to the room and the feeling had returned to his chest.
The numbness that had threatened to overtake him had retreated.
It had lost.
Like so many other shrinking adversaries, it had stood not a chance opposite Vix Aster.
CHAPTER 23
Vix did not know where to put her rage.
First she looked for Teddy, but he was dancing with Hannah. Evidently, hedidknow how to waltz, no matter how much he insisted otherwise. She watched that for a time, glowering prettily, before she turned to look for alternative quarry.
Rosalind and Mae, sadly, had been cornered by the Duchess of Canterbury, and Vix herself had already had her fill of that particular woman tonight.
She did pass close enough to hear a snippet of their conversation, however.
“My dear, you have the most unusual complexion,” the duchess was saying to Mae. “Do your people hail from the West Indies? Or perhaps directly from Africa?”
“Oh, far more exotic than that, I’m afraid,” Mae said somberly. “We’re four generations of native London.”
“I see,” said the duchess, in a voice that indicated she very much did not.
“I’m from Scotland,” volunteered Rosalind in an unambiguous Aberdeen brogue. “If you were wondering.”
“Is that so, my dear?” said the duchess, sounding very tired.
It was a small balm, Vix thought, but one all the same.
And then she remembered, turning abruptly toward the hydrangeas, and the original terror of her childhood.
Mrs. Baxter was older now, yes, but still just as fearsome, still just as flinty-toothed and scaly as any hydra or gorgon. And if Vix could not defeat her, perhaps she could at least get her to lecture her appropriately for just announcing to her husband that she loved him as though she were telling him he had a bit of spinach in his teeth.
Yes, Baxter. Yes.
