“We weren’t at one another’s throats,” Grace protested. “We were just—”
“At one another’s throats.”
“Oh, hush.” Grace nudged Felicity’s shoulder with her own. “How would you know, anyway? It’s been years since you’ve been to London!”
“I do have a rather robust memory,” Felicity said dryly. “You’ve been complaining of him for just ages and ages. You called him an arrogant prig, if I recall.” She tapped her chin with her forefinger, arranged her features in an expression which suggested she was searching back through the myriad grievances which Grace had expressed across the years. “And there was something about a stick lodged up his—”
“Felicity,” Grace grumbled. “And anyway, that was before—before—”
Before he had discovered her secrets. Before she had discovered his. Before he had accepted her tutelage in the art of sleight of hand, and been grateful for the opportunity. Before she had had occasion to notice the raw desire that he had somehow kept pinned and leashed beneath all the trappings of the consummate gentleman. Before he had been a little less gentlemanly with her than he ought to have done, and before she had realized she had wanted that. Before he had called herremarkable, and meant it.
“Tansy likes him,” she muttered beneath her breath, with an awkward roll of her shoulders.
“Youlike him,” Felicity accused. “Better than you ever liked Lord Latimer, if I had to guess, and you were very nearly engaged to him.”
“I came to my senses in time.” Though it had not been a difficult thing to do. Every bit of affection she had felt for the man—which had, admittedly, been rather pale in retrospect—had died the instant he’d suggested she might benefit from a slimming regimen. A man who required her to alter herself to be worthy of his love was not worthy of hers.
Henry liked her precisely as she was.Desiredher precisely as she was. With a figure too full to be fashionable, and sticky fingers, and an aptitude for coarse words that rivaled a sailor’s. Still, he desired her.
And Tansy liked him. It said something of a man’s character, didn’t it, when an animal who liked nearly no one else likedhim? Twice this week alone he’d had to return her once it had grown dark and she had shown no signs of wandering back on her own. Once more she’d caught him dangling a sprig of catmint above Tansy’s head, enticing the cat to play with it.
He’d developed a fondness for the animal he’d once claimed to loathe. Perhaps he’d developed a fondness for Grace, as well? Something that ran deeper than desire. Something more meaningful, more lasting.
“Oh, look,” Felicity said brightly as she nodded toward the ballroom doors. “I suppose you were right after all. Lord Lockhart has indeed arrived.”
And there he was, coming through the doors at last. Late, but here. His dark hair combed away from his face, impeccably dressed in dark eveningwear, cravat expertly knotted. He scanned the ballroom as he entered, grazing over face after face until finally that crystal blue gaze landed straight upon her. Lingered. Admired.
He ought to have taken the time to greet the hostess, to exchange the expected pleasantries, but no—he was making straight for her, weaving through the crowd like a man on a mission.
Grace’s heart fluttered against her ribs.Fluttered. Like a damned swarm of butterflies!
Somehow, suddenly, this pretend courtship that they had concocted between them had begun to feel all too real.
Or perhaps she only wanted it to be real.
∞∞∞
“You were late,” Grace accused as Henry offered her his arm to lead her to the ballroom floor.
He had been. But she had saved him a dance anyway. A waltz, near the end of the evening—which meant he had had to watch her dance with three other gentlemen before his turn had come up at last. “I was,” he said. “Tansy found her way back into my house.” Still, no one in the household was quite certain how she kept managing it. “She had what looked to be an extremely satisfying nap right upon the clothes my valet had laid out for me this evening. Again.”
Grace wanted to laugh. He could see it in the faint tremble of her lips as she pressed them tightly together. “I swear, Henry, if Tansy comes home missing evenonehair—”
“How could you tell? She’s so damned fluffy, I could probably shave a strip straight down her back and no one would ever notice.”
That had done it. She could not restrain the silvery laugh that trickled across her lips and shivered down his spine. Her hand tightened on his as he steered her through a turn. She hadn’t laughed with any of the other gentlemen she’d danced with before him—at least, not that he’d seen.
Had she laughed like that with any of the gentlemen she’d danced with before he’d arrived? Each ball for which they had both been present, he had had exactly once dance with her—the tacitly understood limit for any one gentlemen, unless a couple was on the verge of announcing an engagement—but Grace had never been left lingering at the fringes of a ballroom for long. Even if she had claimed to have no suitors at present, he’dnoticed at least a handful of gentlemen whom he suspected of some manner of interest.
Whether or not that interest had been expressed to her, whether she would welcome it—hell, even whether she had entertained callers other than himself were beyond his knowledge.
“Still,” Grace said primly, once she had recovered herself. “It’s bad form to keep a lady waiting.”
“Were you waiting?” The question slipped out before he could think better of it.
A tiny, inquisitive tilt of her head. “What do you mean?”
“I sneaked a look at your dance card,” he said. “While I was writing my name in.” For the waltz he’d had to wait three damned sets to claim. “There were a fair few names upon it.”
