“My dear Lady Billingstone, didn’t you just say that you can’t bear to see any of your children live in India?”
“Yes. But royalty! That does make a difference. Where is Alworth? You must introduce us at once.”
“My dear lady. I barely know the man…”
Pen snorted. If Lady Billingstone had high hopes of marrying off one of her three daughters to Indian royalty, she was about to be sorely disappointed.
And Alworth! He was engaged, once? What had happened?
Where was he anyhow? It took him a good time to fetch the refreshments. Her glance went over the crowd and froze.
There.
A tousled black head that stood out above all others.
Her heart started to hammer.
She pushed herself away from the marble statue. The head turned sideways, and she saw his profile. The prominent forehead. That classical nose. She’d recognise it anywhere.
Pen gasped.
“Marcus!” Her voice was shrill, but in the general hubbub of the crowd, it drowned completely.
She fought herself through the crowd. Where was he? Where had he gone?
But Marcus had disappeared into thin air.
“I know it was him!I’d recognise him anywhere. I know it, I just know it!”
Pen was hoarse with excitement. She rubbed her moist palms on the velvet seat covers of the carriage as she strained her neck to look outside the window, to see whether Marcus just happened to saunter by on the street.
“Calm yourself, Pen. You yourself just said that when you tried to go after him, he’d disappeared. He may have looked like your guardian from a distance, but likely he wasn’t. A trick of the eye.”
“I tell you, I am not mistaken. Never about Marcus.”
He threw her a probing look. “You seem uncommonly fond of your guardian.”
“He is—everything to me.”
“Lucky Marcus.”
His voice came from a dark corner of the carriage. Pen couldn’t see his face to discern whether he was being sarcastic.
The clattering of the hooves stopped as the carriage drew to a halt in front of Pen’s lodgings. “Oh. We’re here.”
In her excitement, when Alworth had asked her where she lived, she’d given him her direction, forgetting entirely that she did not want him to know where she lived.
Pen tore the carriage door open.
Alworth grabbed her by the arm. “Pen. Look at me.”
She met his eyes.
“Promise me you won’t go running back to the theatre, searching for Marcus.”
Pen hesitated. She’d been wanting to do precisely that.
“You know it would be an entirely nonsensical thing to do. If, indeed, it was him, he’s long gone by now. It is dark. You’d be unprotected. And, no, don’t give me that talk about having a pistol and being able to shoot.” He smiled vaguely.
