“Oh.” A flicker of displeasure drew a tiny pleat between her brows. She stepped back. “So the rumor about the Russian countess is false?”
Bloody hell, Ever. Did you really start this?
With an oath, he tossed the flute into the laurel hedge, his arousal withering. “I don’t think this is a topic we should discuss.”
“The Lord Chancellor’s daughter?”
Exhaling sharply, Ever rubbed the back of his neck. Heat climbed his skin, a tell he feared was staining his cheeks as well. “It was his sister, ten years my senior, I might add. And,” his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, “she approachedme.”
“Your surgeon?”
Finally, he could say no. “She’s a colleague, nothing more.”
Isabella gave her dance card a vicious spin on her wrist. “You think to warn me like I’ll tumble from the highest ledge, smitten with you. When we have a contract, of sorts. I suppose you can only do business with my brothers. As if a female doesn’t have the intellect to pretend, when that’s all we do.”
“Maybe I warnmyself, Isa.”
Did he have to list the reasons anything more was a bad idea?
Fortunately, raised voices halted the interchange before he could.
The scene likely appeared precisely as Isabella intended to the jovial, slightly fountain-damp group drifting back into the ballroom: two lovers at odds, attraction tugging them togetherwhile circumstance pulled them apart. Ever wasn’t sure how they’d arrived here so quickly, from a supposed arrangement scarcely a week old.
Though the ache in his chest at the sight of Isabella’s wounded expression—how hadthathappened?—didn’t feel like business.
“Join us, Lady Isabella,” someone in the crowd called. “We’re playing loo, before the evening overtakes those of a certain age.”
“Like your current companion,” another laughingly added.
Ever’s gaze lifted in time to catch the Marquess of Ireton lingering just beyond the knot of guests, studying Isabella too closely for comfort. He was certainly young enough to participate in the games.
“Don’t,” Ever whispered when she made to leave, circling her slim wrist with his fingers, his pulse ringing in his ears at the contact.
What the hell he was doing?
Desperation wasn’t his norm.
Removing her arm from his hold, Isabella waved to the foxed group as they passed. With a murmured “Happy Birthday,” she pressed a handkerchief into his hand before he could say another thoughtless word.
And then she was gone.
She’d suspected the rumor about the countess was true.
But she hadn’t believed the one involving the Lord Chancellor’ssister.
Two days after the Earl of Merevale’s guarded revelations, Isabella stood fidgeting in a milliner’s shuttered shop while the owner, Marie Lefèvre, examined her gartersone by one. The visit had been arranged for an early hour, the doors opened ahead of business for this delivery alone. Lace was lifted, stretch discreetly tested, a low hum of approval offered now and again, while Isabella’s thoughts refused similar order.
She hoped her bland smile concealed the ire beneath.
No note. No apology. Merevale had missed Lady Harcourt’s tea entirely the day before, and the slight sat like grit beneath her skin. The rumor that they’d quarreled at Baron Landry’s engagement ball was already being polished into truth, shaped by eager mouths and sharper imaginations. It seemed his absence had been accepted as confirmation that whatever had passed between them had been brief, ill-tempered, and was already done. A gossip column this morning even remarked upon a certain firebrand’s inability to tame a celebrated April wastrel, the account settling neatly into London’s expectations.
In the end, of course, society sided withhim.
The garters disappeared beneath the counter, wicked only if one knew what to look for, and Isabella found herself thinking instead of the handkerchief she’d stitched for Ever—nothing scandalous, only his initials, but worked in her finest hand, a concentration of care she hadn’t meant to give. An act that now made her feel extremely vulnerable. Still, she’d been unable to resist after Brick, for whatever mad reason, mentioned the earl’s approaching birthday.
The realization nettled her anew: she could deliver contraband underthings with a steady pulse and assist in a rookery medical adventure, yet one impulsive gift—and what the scoundrel might presume because of it—unsettled her more than any risk of discovery.
Oh, Isa.She sighed, knowing exactly what troubled her.
