“Trevor?”
Her cousin watched them from the side of the room with a baleful glower. Her fellow Gorgons regarded them with considerable interest as well.
In fact, every eye on the room, save those of their fellow dancers and the musicians, appeared glued to Jem and Lucasta. Her stomach twisted in knots.
“I will call upon you in two days.” They reached their place and completed the figure. As Lucasta executed her final curtsy, Rudyard caught her hand and kissed her fingertips. It was no more than a slight pressure on her glove, yet she felt as if she’d touched a live coal.
But then he raised his head and glanced about the room, as if confirming that every eye rested on them. Satisfied to find this the case, he held her hand a bit more than was proper, let his gaze linger on her face a beat too long.
The sense of betrayal nearly made her stagger. Her knees went liquid and her mind blanked.
Lucasta, though, had trained for performances. Smart Jeremy was putting on some sort of display, and though she didn’t understand his intentions, she could guess her role. She smiled, nodded her head with cool politeness, and withdrew her hand.
And promised herself that, for the rest of the evening, she would not watch his progress, see whom he spoke with, take note of the least thing he did or said.
He wanted something from her. She had to figure out what it was.
But he didn’t wanther.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“He’s besotted with you,” Judith declared. She sat before the spinet, Lucasta at her elbow.
Bertie looked up from the deep chair where she sat with her feet tucked beneath her, a novel on her lap and a dish of sweetmeats on the table beside her. “Indeed he is,” she murmured in agreement.
Lucasta blushed. “I am sure I don’t know who you’re referring to. Now, this passage?—”
“You know perfectly well.” Judith smiled. “I’ve never seen Jem so taken with anyone.”
“The only interest your brother has in me is as a music tutor,” Lucasta said briskly. “And refurbishing my wardrobe, it should seem.”
In the last few weeks, Mlle. Beaudoin had just so happened to come across several extraordinary fabrics which she made into gowns for Lucasta. As much as it embarrassed Lucasta to fear she might have become one of Jeremiah Falstead’s charity cases—or whether it were right to accept the gift—the relief of having properly modish gowns to wear when she conducted charity concert business outweighed her reservations about becoming too much in his pocket, or in his debt.
“Shall I run through this exercise once more?” she asked, determined to distract.
“I have most of it.” Judith played through the small piece, only pausing once or twice to ask Lucasta to clarify a passage or correct her fingering.
Lucasta sorted through the pages of musical scores she had brought, listening with pleasure. She had received a delightful response to her inquiry to Mélanie de Salignac, who promptly shared her system of using raised print in musical scores. While this meant Judith could use her fingers to read the musical notes, she really didn’t need notation. The girl’s ear was remarkable, better than Lucasta’s, and she needed only play a piece through twice to have it committed to memory.
Judith added a final flourish at the end. “Has he declared himself yet?”
Lucasta fanned herself with the sheet music. The small fire, built in the fireplace against the cool day, made the room absurdly hot. “There is nothing to declare.”
In all the time they had spent together the past several weeks, him whisking her from beneath Aunt Pevensey’s pinched stare to bring her to Rose Hollow, or the dances or conversation they shared when their paths crossed at yet another card party or rout, they spoke of nothing more than his family’s health, Mlle. Beaudoin’s shop, her preparations for the concert, or what Lucasta thought of the evening’s musical offerings.
There were no murmured compliments, no heavy-lidded glances, no pressing of fingers to suggest she meant more to him. She was not being wooed, therefore no reason existed for her insides to flutter like a flock of starlings taking flight each time she saw him. Absolutely no cause whatsoever.
“I suspect he has made a project of me,” Lucasta said.
“Pygmalion fell in love with his project,” Judith said.
“Galatea,” Bertie agreed, popping a bonbon into her mouth.
Bertie was much more relaxed in her cousin’s parlor than in her own. When Lucasta visited Arendale House for Bertie’s musical lessons, she was received stiffly in a cavernous formal parlor by Lady Payne, who always managed to imply she was standing guard so that Lucasta didn’t lift some priceless object off an occasional table.
In contrast, in the cozy parlor at Rose Hollow both Bertie and Lucasta were greeted with the warmest enthusiasm by the three younger Falstead siblings and the resident cat, a tray of pastries and tea whisked in by Mrs. Cadogan, and a lively go-over of absolutely everything that had happened in the intervening hours since they had seen one another. Judith hungered for tales of Lucasta’s glittering social round, demanding details of dress, furnishings, music, and conversation, as well as a full transcript of conversations, especially with the men who vied for her attention.
Jem often lingered in the parlor on one pretext or another, eavesdropping on this gossip as if he wasn’t also attending every function Lucasta did, watching with no doubt great amusement, and a great deal of self-congratulation, her absurd transformation into the Season’s toast.
