“Yet here we are.” One of his brows rose, the color of chocolate, and she wondered if his hair was that color also. The color of the plowed fields about the vicar’s cottage before the wheat was planted in the spring. The sight brought a pang to her chest, a yearning for that long-gone home.
“Ah, well. It is not as if I shall be admitted to Almack’s anyway.” She didn’t need to glance about the room to know a great number of people were staring at them. At Lord Rudyard, dancing withher.
If only she knew why.
“Do you desire entrée to Almack’s?” he asked.
“No. I mean, yes, as Cici wishes to go.”
“But you do not?”
“The question is moot, as my aunt has not been supplied with vouchers.” She concentrated on her steps, biting her lip. “What else do you wish to know about Cici?”
One corner of his mouth quirked. He did have the most pleasing arrangement of features. She’d been right to call him too handsome for his own good. “Are you interrogating me about your cousin?”
“Are you not here to learn what you can from me? Why else lead me out?”
They twined arms to turn in a figure, and Lucasta focused on her feet rather than the brief press of their bodies. She must not give rein to her sharp tongue. When thepassébrought her about to face him, his lips quirked in a smile, unamused.
“If I wished to pursue an acquaintance with Miss Pevensey, one imagines I would address her.”
His guard was up. The cool reserve he’d held with Lady Cranbury had slipped for a moment, but it was back now. He thoughtshemeant to use their dance to throw Cici at his head.
For he was Rudyard now, and in possession of every virtue an ambitious mama could desire. Heir to grand estates and a title, not known to be profligate or of questionable habits, young, healthy, and not, she could grudgingly concede, a horror to the eye. Every matron in the room with a marriageable daughter would be taking a crack at him.
And he’d caught Lucasta evaluating him, but that was what one did at these functions. An insult from her could not reach him, high as he was, though through no deserving of his own. She was a flea biting the hock of a draught horse, a fly buzzing the ear of the King.
Besides, she’d merely accused him of caring too much about his appearance. He’d named Miss Gregoire’s girls Gorgons.
Though she had to admit there was a certain pleasure in being thought fearsome, and the girls were like to adopt the label for themselves.
He had called Selina a zebra. Lucasta reminded herself of this as the dance turned her away from his too-keen regard. He held the common narrow bigotry of his class, and all the power with which the upper circles suffocated those of whom they disapproved.
Lucasta was glad her mother had left that shallow world for a life of deep contentment with her father. She was glad she’d been raised in what anyone in this room would consider abject poverty. The Season in London was a circus tightrope, everyone performing the same tricks, everyone watching one another, eager for a slip or a fall. And the scales weighed not one’s character or actions, but one’s appearance, charm, and pounds of income a year.
“I have lost you in thought,” Rudyard remarked as the figure brought them together.
“I was only thinking of something Lady Cranbury said,” Lucasta said, watching the other dancers to follow their steps. “About how high my cousin might marry. She possesses all the usual accomplishments, in spades. She sings, she plays, she paints, she embroiders, but all that others weigh of her is her dowry and her name.”
“That is the way things are done, I observe. Her father, the Baron, hinted to me at her come-out ball that she would make an excellent little wife.”
Lucasta frowned. “She is a dear, soft-hearted girl, and her one wish in the world is to have lots of babies. But she is seventeen, too young to be considering such a decision as marriage. Though young enough to be taken advantage of by those older and far more jaded than she.”
“Suitors like me, do you mean?” His shoulders went taut, his arm stiffening as he turned about, his expression bland when he faced her once more. “Very well, if you insist, I’m afraid the Baron must be disappointed.”
Lucasta could have cried with relief. He would overlook Cici. He had as much as promised, and gentlemen were absurd about keeping their word.
That did not mean anyone else was safe from him, however.
“But would you desire vouchers to Almack’s nevertheless?” he said in that silky voice. “I could secure them for you.”
“I was not aware you had been made a patroness of Almack’s,” Lucasta said without thinking.
He laughed, and she flushed with mortification as heads turned in their direction. Everyone would think she was flirting with Smart Jeremy. Her friends would think she was flirting with Smart Jeremy.
Selina would think Lucasta was flirting with Smart Jeremy. After what he had said, and done, to Selina.
“I might be able to procure you a Stranger’s Ticket,” Rudyard said. “Or I could speak to Lady Hillsborough about dispensing vouchers of your own. We happen to be friends.”
