“May I join you?” Arabella Forrester indicated the seat beside Nellie.
“Please do,” Nellie said, wishing she wouldn’t.
“It was a splendid dinner. I did enjoy it. One doesn’t always find interesting dinner partners, does one?”
“Not always.”
The red-haired woman unfurled her fan and waved it slowly before her face. She nodded toward newly married Lady Brixton, who was busy arranging her shawl about her arms.
“Amelia Brixton should never wear that particular shade of yellow,” Lady Forrester said with what Nellie suspected was feigned sympathy. “Canary is a difficult color to wear, is it not? It makes her look quite bilious.”
“I imagine she finds it pretty,” Nellie said.
“Brixton’s mother chooses her gowns. Spiteful, jealous woman.”
“I’m sure Amelia would refuse to wear it if she didn’t like the color. After all, she is a married woman now.”
Lady Forrester’s laugh had an edge. “Freedom cannot be found in marriage, Lady Cornelia. Rather the opposite.”
While wondering what kind of marriage Lady Forrester had endured, Nellie said, “Amelia looks content enough.”
“One might hope so. Her handsome husband was obliged to marry her when facing bankruptcy.”
Nellie frowned, not wishing to be drawn into nasty gossip, especially with the lady in question on the other side of the room.
Arabella leaned forward with that look of a conspirator that Nellie so disliked. “I have been told there is a wager in the betting book at Whites that Brixton will take a mistress before the end of the Season. He is shopping for one.”
Across the room, Lady Brixton chatted brightly to Mrs. Bainbridge. She smiled in agreement with something the other lady had said, her light brown curls bobbing. Might she be happy and madly in love? She found herself hoping Arabella was wrong.
Nellie put her coffee cup on a footman’s tray. “Inadvisable to believe all you hear, surely.”
“Men are untrustworthy creatures, Lady Cornelia,” she said with a warning lift of her brow.
“Some women are also, Lady Forrester,” Nellie said, relieved when the door opened, and the men entered.
Charles appeared. Nellie’s heart gave a thump when he moved with easy grace into the room.
Lady Forrester rose from the sofa with a gracious nod. She joined acquaintances gathered at the other end of the room.
Beyond his slight bow to the widow, Nellie was pleased to see Charles’s gaze did not follow her. He cast Nellie a lazy smile and joined her on the sofa. She liked his smell, citrus soap, starched linens, and cigar smoke. When he reached forward to take a glass of wine from a footman, his muscled thigh touched hers before he tactfully edged away.
“There’s to be no dancing tonight?” he asked after the last strains of the concerto faded, and the musicians consulted their music sheets.
“Not until the ball.”
“Pity.” His eyes swept over her face.
Something sensual and heated lay behind that one word. Her imagination took flight, and she was suddenly too warm. She struggled to find an innocuous topic to discuss. “On your final evening with us, Mrs. Bosworth is to performTornami a vagheggiarfrom Handel’sAlicina.”
Amusement lit his eyes. “A lady with a remarkably large voice and a figure of equal stature.”
Nellie smothered a laugh, smiling back at him. She enjoyed his subtle wit.
He glanced up at the portrait of her paternal grandmother over the fireplace.
“My grandmother, Elizabeth,” she explained, eager for a distraction. Dressed in the fashion of the last century, her grandmother’s large creamy bosom was on display in the low-cut purple gown. Known to be a beauty, she wore the family sapphires, her blonde hair dressed high with feathers.
“You take after her,” he said. “Your eyes are a similar color and shape.” He studied her, then looked again at the portrait. “And her chin, perhaps. She looks to be a lady with firm opinions.”
