The song changed to a funny little ditty about the many ways a maid might try to catch a husband.Gemma laughed and clapped along, sharing a grin with Hal.
A lock of dark auburn hair fell over his brow and candlelight gleamed on the sweat-damp skin at the hollow of his throat where his striped neckcloth had come loose.
His teeth flashed white against his dark beard and one brow hiked high when he caught her staring, but Gemma couldn’t help it.She’d told Hal something that had made her a pariah at her debut, and he’d barely batted an eye.And now he was standing there, looking like a rogue, a pirate, some devil sent to torment and tempt her from her path.
He really had no business looking like that.
She opened her mouth to tell him so, but froze as the music and laughter and noise of the inn fell silent.Flora’s last note held for half a heartbeat more, then withered and died out on a strangled breath as a waft of cool evening air rushed through the taproom.
Hal’s gaze lifted over her shoulder, hardening until his eyes were like two shards of cut jade, opaque and cold.
Wondering who on earth it could be whose arrival upset everyone this much, Gemma’s heart pounded as she turned to face the door.
There on the threshold, impeccably dressed and arrayed as though posing for a portrait, stood two of London’s most notoriously stylish ladies, accompanied by a gentleman whose sumptuous attire came close to putting both of them in the shade.
They surveyed the room slowly, feathered bonnets barely shifting, faces expressionless beneath the masks of their expertly applied maquillage.There was no hint of what any of them was thinking—until the gleaming, golden-haired gentleman drew a languid breath that curled his elegant upper lip into a sneer.
Murmuring something to his companions, he turned as if to lead the party back out into the stable yard, and behind her, Hal muttered, “Good riddance.”
The sheer contempt in his low voice sent a jolt through Gemma that seemed to knock her forward.Her sudden movement had the trio at the door turning back as one, expressions ranging from polite astonishment to gleeful malice shining clearly across the room.
“Will wonders never cease,” the younger lady said, her bored tone at odds with the teasing glint in her eyes.“Is that you, Gem?What on earth are you doing here?”
“You know these people?”Hal asked, his husky mutter making her shiver.
“They are some of my dearest friends,” Gemma said faintly, the tips of her fingers gone cold as ice as the air in her lungs seemed to grow thin.“Gabriel de Vere, the Duke of Thornecliff, his sister, Lady Rosalie, and her friend, Lavinia, the Countess of Winterbury.”
Not yet, she wanted to cry,I’m not ready, I’m not dressed properly, please, not yet, but there was no one to hear her.
She hovered by the bar for an agonizing moment, unsure what to do, how to mitigate the damage from the collision between her past and her present, until Hal made the decision for her.
“Your dearest friends,” he said softly, disdain in every syllable.“You’d better go and welcome them, then.Tell them drinks are on the house.”
Gemma took a hesitating step toward her old friends, who swept forward to greet her in a smothering mass of fine wool pelisses and kid leather gloves.They smelled of road dust, stale sweat and cloyingly floral cologne.
“My dear Gemma, it’s been far too long!”shrilled one of the ladies, Gemma couldn’t tell which in the hubbub.“Are you lost, too?”
“Lost?”she repeated dazedly.
“We’re not lost.Damned horse threw a shoe,” the Duke of Thornecliff drawled.“Couldn’t carry on all the way to Bath, so we thought we’d take shelter at the closest inn.”
“However, now that we’re here, I’m not so very sure we wouldn’t be better off taking our chances by the side of the road!”Had Lady Rosalie’s laughter always had that screech-owl edge to it?
“Oh certainly not, Rosie,” her bosom friend, the countess, objected.“The roads aren’t safe after dark.There might be brigands and cutthroats about!Or a highwayman!”
Thorne sniffed, one perfectly shaped brow arching impossibly high.“I’d ratherlosemy purse to a highwayman thangainwhatever parasites are undoubtedly to be found in the bedding of this…establishment.”
The families and farmers seated at the nearby tables frowned.Gemma’s cheeks flamed with a combination of affront and embarrassment.But what could she say?She guaranteed the linens were clean, as she’d washed them herself that very morning?Everything in her shrank from admitting how far she’d fallen since her father’s death.
Both of Thorne’s companions gave muted shrieks of laughter and thwacked him on the arm with their beaded reticules in teasing punishment before turning back to Gemma.
“I say, Gem, it has been an age!”declared Lady Rosalie.“How did you come to be stranded in this backwater hovel?”
Words crammed into Gemma’s throat, choking her.It felt as if every eye in the place was fixed upon her, waiting and watching and ready to judge.
Funny, but she had not missed the sensation.
It was, however, a sensation she knew how to weather.Thorne and his ladies might have arrived a bit earlier than she was prepared for, but it was still a great stroke of luck that she must take advantage of.
