A gentleman appeared at once, polished warmth made flesh.
“A delight, Miss Hargrove,” Ashdown said. “An honor to meet the cleverest mind in London, if rumor may be trusted.”
“And Lord Rathbourne as well,” Lady Mordaunt added, gaze sliding to Graham. “How… convenient.”
“We met through mutual interests,” Graham said smoothly.
Lady Mordaunt laughed softly. “How very modern.”
Eleanor began what she did best. She watched.
Within minutes she saw it: a small blue forget-me-not pinned at a lady’s shoulder. Another at the wrist of a matron. A third tucked near the knot of a gentleman’s cravat—too tasteful to shout, too specific to be accident.
Graham circulated with a glass he never drank from, drifting with the ease of a man born to rooms like this—if one did not look too closely at his eyes.
Lady Mordaunt maneuvered Eleanor into a small circle by the windows. “I was surprised you accepted my invitation,” Mordaunt said, voice pleasant. “I had understood your father’s passing left you in deep mourning.”
“It did,” Eleanor replied. “But my father believed intelligence was best gathered in company, not solitude.”
Lady Mordaunt’s gaze sharpened. “And did he pass his habits to you? His legendary note-taking, perhaps?”
“Only the parts he wished found,” Eleanor said.
Mordaunt’s smile deepened by a hair. “I like you already.”
Across the room, Graham paused near the pianoforte. He leaned in as if sharing a harmless aside. “—midnight edition,” he said.
The effect was immediate.
A man in spectacles flinched and fumbled his glass. A woman with a blue pin stopped laughing mid-breath, her gaze flicked to Lady Mordaunt, then away.
Lady Mordaunt did not change expression.
Eleanor let her shawl slip from her shoulder as though carelessly overheated.
Graham’s attention snapped and he adjusted by a step—subtle, controlled—angling toward the reacting woman.
Mordaunt’s eyes returned to Eleanor. “You are bored already?”
“On the contrary,” Eleanor said. “I find the evening most instructive.”
“How flattering.” Mordaunt’s voice was honey. “Then we must spend some time with Lord Ashdown. He is dying to speak with you.”
She guided Eleanor toward the port table.
Ashdown’s ring caught the candlelight. A stylized forget-me-not.
Eleanor’s pulse sharpened.
“To memory,” Ashdown said, lifting Eleanor’s glass as if it were a toast to nothing at all.
“An admirable sentiment,” Eleanor replied. “Provided one remembers carefully.”
Something flickered behind his eyes—calculation sliding into place.
Graham drifted to Eleanor’s side and touched her waist lightly, guiding her position as if in a dance.
The contact sent heat straight through her ribs.
