Chapter Sixteen
“With whom is your niece dancing?” Philip asked her aunt.
The older lady frowned. “Did not the two of you go off together?”
“That was ages ago,” he pointed out.
“Yet you did not bring her back to me as was your responsibility,” she said. “Thus, I assumed she was still with you.”
“Don’t concern yourself, madam. Your niece was taken from me by the very respectable Lord Lowry. Still, I cannot believe he didn’t bring her back to you when their dance ended. Were you here the entire time?”
She rose to her feet and drew herself up to her full height, which put her forehead directly under his nose.
“I assure you I have not left my post, but my brother shall hear how you let his daughter wander away from you.”
“There is no need to get peevish,” Philip said. “In all likelihood, Miss Bright is on the dance floor with someone else whom Lord Lowry thought suitable.”
However, scanning the dancers and watching everyone go around twice, he could not see her.
“Or she’s in the ladies’ retiring room,” he suggested, “where I shall find her fixing her hair.”
Mrs. Cumbersome’s eyes widened.
“Not thatIwill go in there,” he amended, “but I will ask if she’s inside.”
“I should go,” she said.
“No, madam, you should remain here for when Miss Bright comes strolling back. Then give her a good talking to. I shall search high and low.”
“You do that, my lord.”
He hurried away, and he did in fact begin with the retiring room, but she was not there. He hunted low by going over every room on the ground level of the large Piccadilly home, whose ballroom was on the same floor. Then, despite no public rooms, nor any part of the assembly being held upstairs, he breached the second floor.
“Nuisance woman,” he muttered to himself. Miranda had probably taken off with Lady Harriet again and her dull-witted friend, Lady Emily. As he climbed the stairs, he considered how he had become a perpetual protector and didn’t like it one bit.
After boldly wandering through his host’s private apartment, knowing he shouldn’t be there, Philip lost his patience. Surely the minx had returned to her aunt. Halfway back to the ballroom, he recalled seeing a couple silhouetted in the second-story window when he was outside.
Heart thumping, he dashed upstairs again and raced to the back of the house, throwing open a door to a room that would overlook the garden.
There she was!
His stomach clenched. By her expression, something had happened. When she saw it was he, she dashed tears from her cheeks and raced toward him. If he hadn’t caught her in his arms, she would have knocked him over.
“I want to go home,” she whispered, her voice choked from crying.
Dread raced through him while he stroked her back.How bad was the damage?
“Tell me,” he said.
“I was kissed against my will.”
Philip let out his breath. Not the worst thing, thank God, but dangerous nonetheless.
“By whom?”
“Lord Lowry.”
Lowry?He’d always seemed the most arrow-straight and laced-up man Philip knew.
