The girl looked terrified. Why were women always so weak-bellied? Did she expect him to toss her over his shoulder and carry her off, when there must be at least fifty people inside who’d stop him?
Or perhaps she was playacting, like most women, feigning emotions to fool him into doing their bidding.
“Who are you,” she said, “and what are you doing here, hiding in the shadows?”
He lowered his hands.
After a pause, she spoke again, her voice a low whisper. “A-are youreal?”
Of course I bloody am.
She dropped her gaze to his hands as he gestured his response.
“What are you doing?” she said. “Do you dismiss me as if I am nothing?”
He cocked his head to one side. The fear in her voice had been replaced by another emotion. Sorrow. And despair.
Perhaps she believed that she did not belong here.
Neither do I.
She tilted her chin. The action emphasized their difference in height, and, given the fear that had transfixed her at first, like a rabbit caught in a fox’s stare, he had to applaud—albeit grudgingly—the courage with which she looked up met his gaze straight on. Few men dared stare at him so openly.
He exhaled, and she set her mouth into a firm line, a flicker of defiance in her eyes.
“Will you not introduce yourself, at least?”
He arched an eyebrow. Most women he could read as if they wore placards declaring their intentions. But the little creature before him now—he couldn’t make her out. Pretty enough, though as unremarkable as most women. But he had to admit that the expression in her eyes spoke of a little more intelligence than the typical female.
Perhaps that was why she believed she did not deserve to be here tonight. According to Society, intellect was a flaw for which the woman could not be forgiven. When entering the marriage state, a woman relinquished her fortune and her person. But intellect could not be surrendered. And no man wanted a woman who could outdo him in a battle of wits.
As he continued to stare at her, she folded her arms.
“I see,” she said. “Like all the others, you think me unworthy.”
Allthe others?
He glanced toward the terrace doors. Had she been mistreated?
He curled his fists, tempering the anger rising in his gut as the memory pushed into his mind—a group of boys, bare-teethed and grinning, issuing taunts, pushing him, pinching his flesh while the schoolmasters were occupied elsewhere, then feigning innocence when adult eyes turned to them once more, before he returned hometo an unforgiving father.
I showed them. I showed themall.
His skin itched at the memory of fighting back—the feeling of triumph when, after learning to defend himself, his fists had at last connected with his tormentors. The fear that plagued his nightmares had dissipated and been reborn in their minds—until, at last, the tormentors feared the boy they had tormented.
Was this little thing standing before him also prey to tormentors? If she believed she didn’t deserve her place in Society, then the worst of the predators would sniff her fear out and exploit it.
Until she learned to fight back—or was crushed beneath their spite.
Don’t be a fool.
He gritted his teeth to dispel the brief flare of compassion. He couldn’t afford such weakness in a world where compassion and tenderness had no value.
At length he became aware of a soft voice, and he resumed his focus on the young woman before him.
“…don’t you think?”
Bugger.She’d been speaking.
