Angelica pulled her arm away from her older sister’s firm grip. “Stow it, Maia. At least one of us ought to enjoy ourselves,” she muttered, “and it best be me. Heaven knows you don’t know how. Have you even dancedoncetonight?”
“While our brother is quite possibly lyingdeadsomewhere?” Maia pressed her slippered foot down hard onto hers, but Angelica was nimble enough to pull her toes out before they were smashed, and without stumbling and making a scene in front of her client.
Angelica slipped a sharp elbow into her sister’s side as she turned and smiled at Miss Yarmouth. “I shall meet you in the ladies’ retiring room in thirty minutes to examine the item you’ve retrieved from him. Don’t be late.”
“Thirty minutes?” Miss Yarmouth’s lips opened in shock. “But?—”
“Yes. Half past midnight. You’ll have to work quickly and intelligently,” Angelica told her. “My services do not comecheaply or simply, but they are worth it.” Then she turned her back on the lemon tree and her client, and faced her sister.
She opened her mouth to tell Maia that she knew Chas wasn’t dead…but then closed it. Even now, even to put her sister out of her obvious misery, she wouldn’t go on that path. She couldn’t allow herself to do so, to open herself—and her family—up to such a Pandora’s box.
Maia didn’t understand why Angelica felt compelled to do what she did, assisting the other young women of theton.
Maia, the older sister, was affianced to a handsome, kind man for whom she had great affection, but that was only because she had a forceful way about her, and because Chas, for all of his constant traveling, loved and cared for his sisters dearly. There were plenty of other young women who made miserable—or worse—matches with men much older than they were. At least Chas wouldn’t force any of them into something they didn’t want.
Maia was the eldest of the three of them, not counting their brother. He was older than all of his sisters and, since they had been orphaned for ten years, he was also the head of the family, which, although it wasn’t titled, held a lovely county seat in Shropshire and a smaller estate in Derby. This made the Woodmore sisters welcomed in most homes of theton,as well as fine wifely candidates for the bachelors thereof.
Chas was twenty-seven, and Maia was nearly twenty—just ten months older than Angelica. Sonia was only thirteen, and she was currently tucked safely away in a convent school in Scotland.
In addition to their comfortable wealth, the Woodmores were a particularly fertile family. And thanks to Angelica’s great-great-grandmother, who, after the death of her older, wealthy husband, had become enamored with a handsome young groom, they also had acquired a bit of Romanian blood that cropped upevery generation or so. Chas and Maia hadn’t been blessed (or cursed, depending upon whom one spoke to) with the Sight, but their two younger sisters had.
“And Ihavedanced—twice,”Maia retorted from between tight lips. “Despite the fact that one of my partners couldn’t seem to find a spot on the floorbetweenmy feet during the entire set.”
“So you danced with Flewellington? I warned you about him.” Angelica’s ire faded quickly, as it often did, and she smiled at her sister in sympathy. It had taken only one set with Baron Flewellington for her to learn the same lesson: avoid the man and his large, clumsy feet at all costs. “At least you didn’t sit against the wall like you normally do. And, drat it, Harrington isn’t here tonight.”
“I haven’t seen Corvindale yet, either,” Maia said, changing the subject and reaching over to adjust one of her sister’s curls. “Hold still. This one is coming undone, Ange.”
Angelica obeyed as deft fingers adjusted the little pin that held one of the curls in place at her temple. “I’m not certain I would recognize him even if I saw Corvindale,” she said. “Are you certain he’s to be here?”
“Everyone who is everyone is here tonight. I think it’s disgraceful he hasn’t made any attempt to answer the message I sent him yesterday. We haven’t heard from Chas for a fortnight, and I’m only following his directions in contacting the earl. I made that perfectly clear in the letter.”
Angelica had no doubt of that. If nothing else, her sister was exceedingly capable of expressing herself and her intentions clearly.
And despite the fact that sheknewhe wasn’t dead, Angelica had to push away the pang of worry for her brother. He traveled to the Continent quite often, for purposes that remained unclear to his sisters, but he always made certain to be in touch with them regularly by post or other message. The aunt of a distantcousin, Mrs. Fernfeather, and her husband, as necessary, acted as chaperone in those instances. But Chas’s last letter had given an unusually terse command that if they didn’t hear from him in two weeks that they were to contact the Earl of Corvindale immediately.
“I’m not certain why the earl needs to be brought into the situation,” Maia continued. “Chas knows we can take care of ourselves. Don’t we always? Mrs. Ferny lacks much in the way of her chaperone skills. And from what I’ve heard, Corvindale’s a… Well, he’s not particularly kind or generous. But Chas trusted him and has always spoken well of the man.”
She’d finished attending to Angelica’s hair and was now standing next to her, shoulder to shoulder, back to the wall, clearly scanning the large room and out into the grand foyer. “I recall him being very tall, and so it ought to be easy to spot him if he were here. But I don’t see anything of him at all.”
The skirts of their frocks, made of the lightest, frothiest silk imaginable, pooled around each other’s slippers in delicate swirling crinkles. While the bodices were tight, tied or gathered just beneath the bosom, the remainder of the fabric fell loosely to the floor, which gave them relative ease of movement. Angelica’s gown was spring yellow, in deference to the Romanian undertones of her skin and her dark hair and eyes. Maia, who had more of a classic, Roman goddess look to her beauty, had a fairer, peaches-and-cream complexion that looked lovely when she wore pale blue.
“But Corvindale needn’t be rude about it all,” Maia said. She re-donned the glove she’d taken off a moment earlier to fix Angelica’s hair and patted the sapphire and pearl earbobs she wore, as if ensuring they were still hanging there.
“If you do see him, you can’t simply walk up and start lecturing him, Maia.”
Her sister frowned, her pretty heart-shaped face sharpening with determination. “I certainly shall. It could be a matter of life and death. And aside from that, I’m betrothed. It’s not as if I’m a young debutante in my first Season, looking for a husband.”
Angelica opened her mouth to argue, but Maia continued, “I shall be discreet or subtle about it. But I will if I—oh. Is that him?”
Angelica looked over toward the threshold of the ballroom, where it met the foyer, and saw three gentlemen standing there. “Isn’t Corvindale dark? They aren’t…” Her voice trailed off as coldness curled around her heart. She recognized one of them. The man from her dream.
2
IN WHICH MISS YARMOUTH AND VISCOUNT DEWHURST ARE DISAPPOINTED
“Corvindale isn’t here,” Voss observed, stepping into the ballroom ahead of his companions.
He’d scanned the room whilst standing at the top of the three steps leading to the grand foyer. The space beyond was a kaleidoscope of senses: swirling gowns of every pastel color imaginable, an aromatic soup of lily and rosewater, lavender pomade, powder—and the scent of too much physical exertion—along with the enthusiastic strains from a brass quintet in the corner.
