She stared blankly at his gloved hand, lifting her eyes to briefly skim his face, and then her gaze fell again.
She should have opted for the year instead.The misery of three hundred sixty-five days would have been nothing compared to the agony realized in that fleeting glance.Hair as black as night, vividly bright blue eyes under thick black brows.A face so ruggedly beautiful it made her heart pinch painfully.
The Marquis of Aylesbury possessed a smile that would steal a woman’s soul.
A smile...
With a frown, Fiona glanced up at him again, noting his taut expression, the faint brackets etched around his mouth and the slight downturn of his lips.Where was the smile?The light of humor in his eyes?
No, she berated herself.She might have to be here, but she wouldn’t care—not again.
“Fiona?Won’t you say something?”Eve prompted.
Mutely shaking her head, she looked pointedly away.
Really, what did a woman say to the man who had broken her heart?
* * *
“Eden, my love,” Glenrothescalled the loving sobriquet to his wife as he approached.“Look who I found among the crowd.”
They all turned, and a relieved but honest smile creased Fiona’s dimples as she recognized the handsome, sandy-haired gentleman her brother was bearing along with him.
“Lord Temple,” she said with an affectionate welcome, extending her hand in greeting.He took it, properly kissing the back of her hand before squeezing it between both of his hands warmly but solemnly.
Anthony Temple served with Richard and Vin during their years in the Scots Guard, fighting in Egypt and Burma.Though he had briefly incarcerated with Richard before they escaped from rebel forces in Egypt seven years before, the family’s genuine affection for him had been born from his rescue of Vin from those same rebels just two years before.Temple’s visits to Edinburgh had been rare, but his company had been pleasurable despite his typically somber demeanor.
He turned to greet Eve as well.“What a surprise to see you here,” she gushed, narrowing her eyes on Fiona.
A shadow of a smile crossed Temple’s lips, though it did settle in his eyes, lighting their amber depths warmly as he, too, looked back at Fiona.“A pleasurable one, I hope?”
“Very,” she rushed to assure him.A fool couldn’t have missed the incongruity between how she had greeted the two men, and Eve frowned even more fiercely.But Fiona pointedly ignored her and everyone else, focusing entirely on Lord Temple as if he were her savior.
“Would you care to dance?”Temple asked with a trace of a smile as the next dance was called.
“I would love to,” Fiona accepted with honest enthusiasm, taking his arm as he led the way to the dance floor without even looking over her shoulder.“The lads have done little more than trod upon my toes tonight.”
“I hope I make a better showing.”
“I promise you, you can do no worse,” Fiona assured him with a teasing grin.
“I wager I can,” he jested quietly.
Allowing her a moment to hook her train loop around her wrist, Temple took her hand in his and settled his other hand firmly at the small of her back as the opening bars began to play.With little reason to, Fiona hadn’t studied her dance card but was pleased to recognize the strains of a lively mazurka by Claude Debussy.
Lord Temple took a step forward, setting them in motion, and Fiona cast one last look at Lord Aylesbury before the spirited Polish folk dance required all her attention.
He was watching her, his expression more grave than she ever imagined it could be.
Good God, Harry Brudenall, is that really you?
If it was, he was nothing like the Harry she remembered.
* * *
“Are you quite all right, Lady Fiona?”
She looked back up at her dance partner with a smile.“My apologies, Lord Temple.I’m not as familiar with the steps of the mazurka as I should be.”
