Lady Hallmere’s eyebrows arched upward.
The duke’s right hand curled about the handle of his jeweled quizzing glass.
Lord Hallmere grinned.
The duchess laughed.
“You will offend me if you quiz Miss Martin on that score any further, Freyja,” she said. “She has leftEleanorin charge, and I am quite confident that my sister is very competent indeed. She is also delighted, I might add, Miss Martin, that you have shown such trust in her.”
And there spoke the genuine lady, Claudia thought ruefully, smoothing over a potentially awkward moment with charm and grace.
The Marquess of Attingsborough cupped Claudia’s elbow again.
“Lauren and Kit and the Portfreys and Kilbournes will be keeping places at their table for us,” he said. “We must go and join them.”
“I do beg your pardon—yet again,” Claudia said as they made their way toward the door. “I teach my girls that courtesy must take precedence over almost any personal feeling at all times, yet I have just ignored my own teachings in rather spectacular fashion.”
“I believe,” he said, and she could see that he was actually amused, “Lady Hallmere intended her question as a mere polite conversational overture.”
“Oh, notthatwoman,” she said, forgetting her contrition. “Not Lady Freyja Bedwyn.”
“You knew her before her marriage?” he asked.
“Shewas the pupil I told you about,” she said.
“No!”His hand closed more tightly about her elbow, drawing her to a halt beyond the ballroom doors but just outside the supper room. He was grinning openly now. “And Bewcastle was the one who so ruthlessly directed you to fend for yourself? You thumbed your nose atBewcastle? And strode off down the driveway ofLindsey Hall?”
“It was not funny,” she said, frowning. “There was nothing remotely amusing about it.”
“And so,” he said, his eyes alight with merriment, “I took you from the frying pan into the fire when I led you straight from McLeith to the Bedwyns, did I not?”
She regarded him with a deepening frown.
“I believe, Miss Martin,” he said, “you must have led a very interesting life.”
Her spine stiffened and she pressed her lips tightly together before replying.
“I have not—” she began.
And then saw the last ten minutes or so as they must have appeared through his eyes.
Her lips twitched.
“Well,” she conceded, “in a way I suppose I have.”
And for some inexplicable reason they both found her admission enormously tickling and dissolved into laughter.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said when he could.
“And I yours,” she replied.
“And to think,” he said, taking her elbow again and leading her into the supper room, “that I might have gone to Lady Fleming’s soiree this evening instead of coming here.”
The Duchess of Portfrey was smiling and beckoning from one of the tables and the Earl of Kilbourne was standing to draw out a chair for Claudia.
It was unclear to Claudia if the marquess regretted the choice he had made. But she was very glad he had come. He had somehow restored her disordered spirits—even if hehadbeen the unwitting cause of some of them. She could not remember when she had last laughed so hard.
She was in grave danger, she thought severely as she took her seat, of revising her opinion of him and actuallylikinghim.
