He smiled as he looked her up and down and then began to pull her toward the door again. “No, Elise. It’s just perfect.”
Stenfax stood in the middle of the Marquess of Swinton’s ballroom, party in full swing around him, but he was hardly there at all. His mind kept taking him to Vivien Manning’s club. To Elise. To the fact that he’d gone back to the club three nights since he last saw her and not found her there.
It had taken everything in him not to go back to her dower house and confront her. Take her.
He blinked as the swarm of mamas and their eligible daughters who currently surrounded him all spoke seemingly at once, asking him questions and trying to make their charges the one in his sightline.
They were pretty enough ladies, of course. Some were accomplished. All would very likely make a fine countess.
But Stenfax had gone down this road before. Just a year ago, he had become engaged to Rosalinde’s sister, Celia. He’d sought out a woman who would never ask for his heart, a woman who he’d never be tempted to give it to.
The engagement had failed spectacularly, though it had given rise not only to Gray’s happy marriage to Celia’s sister, but to a friendship with Celia that Stenfax very much appreciated.
Still, he had no intention of trying to do that again. Certainly not during this Season of all Seasons, when he was tangled up in lust and confusion over Elise.
He smiled at the crowd around him, placating, noncommittal. It was funny, as much as he was the center of attention tonight, he had also sensed something else in the crowd when they looked at him. People would occasionally whisper behind their fans and stare.
He had no idea what that was about, but it was utterly tiresome indeed. He wanted to run.
Just as he was about to find a way to do so, his sister Felicity began to make her way through the crowd. “Ladies, might I borrow my brother for a moment?” she asked, her dark blue eyes snaring his in a pointed stare.
He wrinkled his brow. Felicity didn’t look very pleased. The women around him made various moans and groans, but she still took his arm regardless and led him away.
Only when they had paced to the edge of the ballroom did he feel as if he could breathe again. He faced Felicity with a smile. “Thank you for coming to my rescue. Was my drowning very obvious to you and Gray and Rosalinde from across the room?”
Felicity’s expression tightened. “I was not coming to save you,” she said, her voice strained. “I have heard…troubling things.”
Stenfax’s body went on guard because her expression was so dark and pointed. This did not seem a subject that should be discussed in the middle of an eavesdropping ballroom, so he caught her arm and guided her from the crowd, out into the hall and down to a parlor away from prying eyes and straining ears.
As he shut the door, he faced her. “What sorts of troubling things, Felicity? Is someone speaking unkindly about you?”
Her face lost all its color. “What would someone have to say about me, Stenfax?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea—certainly there is not a blemish on your character. But you seem so upset, I had to wager a guess that you had been hurt by someone.”
“This isn’t about me,” Felicity hissed, turning away from him. “Damn it, Lucien, I have heard you and Elise are…entangledagain.”
He froze in his spot, staring at his sister’s pained expression. “Who said that?”
She caught her breath. “You do not deny it first, but ask the source?”
He clenched his teeth, thinking of Elise’s admonishment at Vivien’s a few nights before. She said then that word of his barbaric, possessive display could possibly spread outside the club and into the ballroom. Now it seemed she was correct.
“Who?” he repeated.
Felicity folded her arms. “It was on the wind. And…and Gray verified it when we were speaking a few moments ago.”
Stenfax bent his head. “Damn it, Gray.”
Of course he should have known better than to believe Gray wouldn’t tell Felicity about Elise at some point. Oh, he’d protect her from the salacious details, of course, but the siblings didn’t keep secrets.
Sometimes they didn’t speak of things. But they didn’t keep secrets.
“Don’t you dare blame him,” Felicity croaked out. “I harangued it out of him and then I basically declared him to be a liar when he admitted the truth. But now I see this horrible thing he said is accurate.” Tears filled her eyes and her voice was choked as she said, “How can this be true?”
He flinched at the sight of her pain. At the reminder that it wasn’t only he who had been damaged by Elise’s actions three years before.
“Felicity,” he whispered, moving toward her. “Please.”
