She shook off his hand, making him aware that his grip on her had tightened, that for some reason he was pulling her closer to him. He let go instantly.
“I do not have the power you grant me,” he said, the words grating through his teeth.
The admission went against his ingrained reserve, every defense Jem had built against his father and his father’s world. Why he would expose his vulnerability to this woman, Jem had no idea. It was an act of madness.
Her eyes narrowed, gold gleaming within the dark brown. “I think you mistake that, too.”
The music ended and the crowd around them finished the dance, making Rudyard aware that they’d been standing, locked in battle, in the middle of the room, exposed to all eyes. He took her arm and led her back to her friends.
“Miss Lithwick,” he said with a brief bow. “I strive not to give ear to the gossip of idle tongues. But I do hope I might prove, at least, I am better than you think me.”
He wanted her good opinion, and hated himself for currying to anybody. But the Frotheringale fortune would be good custom for his shop. He must make himself stoop, again and again, because his wealth was Judith’s shield.
Miss Lithwick drew away from him and took her cousin’s hand as the Major returned. As if she feared Jem would set upon the girl despite her warnings.
“Good evening, sir,” she said, and the Gorgons closed ranks about her.
Jem headed for Lady Clara, holding forth with a set of merry widows who were doing their best to become as dashing and influential as she had made herself. He nodded and smiled, a plan of revenge forming in his head. It was perfect, really. Like a Greek tragedy, the hero’s destruction brought about through his own fatal flaw.
Lucasta Lithwick thought him at best useless and, at his worst, vain and petty. And yet she must know she was about to suffer the same rise as he had, vaulting from a poor vicar’s daughter to an heiress. She would see what it was like to walk the hot coals of society’s approval, every part of her life subjected to ruthless interrogation, whether she wanted it seen or not.
He would simply give her a nudge onto the pedestal. If, indeed, Smart Jeremy had the power to bring someone into fashion, then he would do so for her.
And if she toppled from the pedestal—if she shrank from the cold scrutiny, crumpled before the relentless gossip, bled from athousand tiny cuts of disdain—well, it was no better than Judith could ever expect, no worse than many a debutante before her had endured, and none of his doing.
“By my word, Rudyard dancing! And in my parlor. I am quite overcome with triumph.” Lady Clara swatted Jem with her fan. “And with none other than Miss Lithwick. What was it you called her again? A Gorgon? I hope she did not turn you to stone over Miss Pevensey, who is quite a taking little thing.”
“I danced with Miss Lithwick on her own merits,” Jem said with a lazy smile. “And as for a Gorgon, I cannot think of an epithet less fitting.”
“You called her Medusa,” said Clara, with a quick, sharp look. Her companions tittered, and Jem knew how the barb had already reached Lucasta Lithwick’s ears. One more reason for her to spite him as she had.
He would return the favor. “If I have been transfixed,” Jem said in his smoothest voice, “then it is with awe. Miss Lucasta Lithwick is the most clever, the most interesting, the mostfascinatingwoman I have ever met.”
CHAPTER FOUR
He called her clever.
He called her interesting.
He called herfascinating!
The gossip flew with the first post across London’s fashionable streets and squares, landing on the trays of matrons taking their breakfast in bed and beside the plates of debutantes searching the morning papers for admiring mentions of themselves along with descriptions of their rivals’ dress.
Lady Pevensey, a pile of delicate ruffles in her morning gown and cap, wore a deepening frown as she sorted through the stack of letters growing beside her plate in the small dining parlor.
“Lord Rudyard called you clever? You,Lucasta? I own, I heard in the card room last night that someone had praised you, but I could not credit it.”
Lucasta buttered a slice of toast she was determined to force down her throat to fortify herself for the round of morning calls. She eyed the stack of foolscap, wanting, and dreading, to know what tale the watchers would tell of her interactions with Lord Rudyard the evening before.
Or rather, what slant her aunt would put on Lucasta’s bid to depress the pretensions of a man lauded for handing down lofty judgments. She, a vicar’s daughter, twitting a marquess’s heir.
At the time, she had thought herself striking a blow for Selina. But she might well have stuck a crack in the thin veneer upon which her status in this world, and her place in this family, rested.
Her hopes of a music conservatory rested on that same thin veneer.
“I would not credit that Lord Rudyard said anything of me,” Lucasta said. “He was too busy making mischief for everyone else.”
He had named her Medusa. Before, she had simply been invisible. Now he had made her an antidote. Prospective students would hesitate to approach her. Prospective students’ wealthy parents would imagine she was difficult.
