Her eyes raked his face. Was there still anxiety there? If so, it was overlaid with faint question. Or was it disapproval?
“I suppose you are excessively eligible. Oh, wait. Marquis? I was not attending very closely, I’m afraid. My head still feels a trifle cloudy.”
She was either pert beyond words or too innocent for her own good. Raoul suspected the latter. A suspicion burgeoned. “Do you know anyone in this assembly?”
“Only my guardian and Mrs Sprake.” Consternation entered her eyes. “Oh, he told me not to say that.”
Intrigued, Raoul eyed her. “Who is your guardian?”
“Lord Maskery.”
That fellow? He knew him, too well and with good reason. Raoul hesitated, reluctant to release the words hovering on his tongue. He kept them back. “Let us find a quieter spot, Miss Temple,” he said instead.
She made no demur, but her gaze continued the hunt as he eased her around the back of the crowd and out into an adjoining saloon. It was by no means empty, being occupied by several partnered couples from the auction, along with a few elderly persons who preferred to sit and talk rather than watch the farce inside the ballroom.
Raoul found a free sofa and obliged his prize to sit, taking his place beside her and signing to one of the hovering waiters. “You will take a glass of something, Miss Temple?”
She was fiddling with her fan, her eyes on the uncarpeted floor, but she looked up at this. “Yes, if you please. Not wine. I must keep my wits about me.”
He wondered if she meant against himself and was amused again. Or was there once more a touch of apprehension in those eyes?
“Lemonade for the lady,” he told the waiter who was bowing before them. “I’ll take Burgundy, if you have it.”
Evidently the Latimers could still afford a decent cellar, for the man made no demur. The moment he departed, Miss Temple turned a little towards him.
“You may as well know now as later, sir.”
Startled, and reluctantly interested, he raised his brows. “Know what, Miss Temple? Are you about to reveal some dreadful secret?”
Her direct gaze did not flinch. “Yes.”
This girl was singularly intriguing. He attempted a light note. “But why not keep the feminine trick of maintaining an air of mystery?”
“I cannot.”
Was there a note of anguish? The scent of danger was in his nostrils. Was this a ploy? Almost he did not ask, but the words slipped out. “Why not?”
She looked away and back, then down to the fan, now folded and clenched between her fingers. Her voice dropped to a murmur. “Because I suspect I have been tricked.”
It was so unexpected Raoul simply stared at the bent head for a moment. What in the world did this mean? He recalled her confession that she knew no one here beyond Maskery and a duenna of sorts. Instinct urged him to extract himself from a threatening imbroglio, but this wretched little redhead had touched a nerve. Innate chivalry? He was not quite a monster, though Angelica was apt so to condemn him.
“What is it you fear, Miss Temple?”
His tone of careful quiet seemed to soothe her for she looked up, meeting his gaze in that candid way she had. “I think they have abandoned me. I have not seen either for more than an hour.” Her fingers fiddled, spreading the fan open in her lap and closing it again, her eyes registering discomfort as they flicked away and back again. “I beg your pardon. I suppose I should not trouble you with all this. I ought to engage you in light-hearted banter. Is that not how it is done? I’m afraid I have no feminine arts.”
He was oddly touched. “Light-hearted banter bores me. I am besides inured to the lure of feminine arts.” A tiny smile flitted across her face, wrinkling the freckles. Raoul watched them straighten again. He raised his quizzing-glass to his eye. “Fascinating.”
Her eyes grew wide. “I beg your pardon?”
“When you smile, your freckles shift like a dance of tiny creatures on your cheeks.”
Her mouth dropped open and a little peal of laughter escaped, transforming the piquant face. Her eyes warmed.
Raoul was conscious of a flitter of something in the region of his chest. Dropping the glass, he suppressed it swiftly, adept through long habit.
Miss Temple’s brief instant of merriment disappeared equally fast. “Is that meant for flirtation, sir?”
He raised his brows. “Did it sound like it?”
