“Stoker,” Sabine called, trying to keep up, “we cannot simply walk to the front of the receiving line.” He pulled her along the perimeter of the dance floor, skirting a throng of guests queuing to shake hands with the Courtlands.
“Oh, let us simply try,” muttered Stoker, stepping up to Bryson and whispering in his ear. Bryson glanced at him, said farewell to the gentleman shaking his hand, and then reared back to pull them in beside Elisabeth beneath the festooned trellis.
“Look who’s turned up,” Bryson whispered, catching Elisabeth before she drew in the next guest.
Elisabeth turned. “Oh, thank God you’ve come,” she breathed. “I’m saved.”
“Not quite yet, darling,” Bryson said with a smirk. The queue was rapidly growing.
“Oh right,” she said, sagging a little, pulling a defeated face. But then she rallied, winking at them. “Shouldering on,” she said brightly. “You look radiant, both of you.”
“Have you eaten?” Bryson asked. “I can have drinks brought ’round, or a footman fetch plates from the buffet. Your Mr. Legg can be found very near the drinks table, I believe. Although I recommend you fortify yourselves.”
“He’s here?” asked Sabine breathlessly, craning to see.
“He was among the very first guests to arrive,” imparted Bryson.
“He turned up at four o’clock in the afternoon,” said Elisabeth conspiratorially. “I’ve never done this before, but I turned him away until a more appropriate hour. The staff was absolutely not ready. None of us were. His first London ball, I daresay.”
“He’s entirely ridiculous, isn’t he? I’m so sorry. I hope he does not spoil your beautiful affair. I never meant—” She looked pleadingly at Stoker.
“I assume this means he’ll be easy to spot,” Stoker said, unmoved.
“Do notgive him a moment’s worry,” assured Elisabeth. “We are glad to help, and there is always a contingent of boorish guests at these affairs. They provide valuable gossip, and no self-respecting ball would occur in this town without some number of early arrivals or tardy hangers-on. Oh, and the other honored guest—who was it?” She looked at Bryson.
“The Duke of Wrest.”
“That’s right, the old duke. He also sent his thanks and should be here somewhere...” She squinted across the ballroom. “But why did you say you’re looking for him—?”
“Just another suspect,” cut in Sabine vaguely, taking Stoker’s arm. “But we are keeping you from your guests. Please carry on. We’re not so single-minded that we cannot enjoy a lovely night out for the sake of diversion.”
She laughed a little and beamed up at Stoker, and his throat went tight. He couldn’t breathe when she turned her smile on him alone.
Enjoy a lovely night out for the sake of diversion.
And here he’d been congratulating himself for not pouncing on her. He was a bore and a social cripple and he had no idea how to relate to her as a woman and certainly not as a wife. She’d spent nearly six weeks beside his bloodysickbed, for God’s sake. Of course she wished for diversion. Instead, he’d brought her to a ball to hover about a suspected smuggler and a suspectedmurderer.
Had he ever failed more spectacularly in his life? This was why he’d stayed away for four years. He would never be remotely enough for Sabine Noble.
You don’t need to be enough,he reminded himself.You only need to protect her and leave her in peace.
On his arm, Sabine was thanking the Courtlands again. “We will seek you out when you’re not so inundated with guests,” she called, tugging him away.
“When we find Mr. Legg,” she informed Stoker, diving immediately into her investigation, “one of us will prove better suited to coax information out of him than the other, but it’s impossible to guess who. He may dismiss women on sight and have nothing to say to me. Or he may know who you are, considering the success of the guano venture.”
As always, Stoker experienced an unjustified rush of gratification when Sabine mentioned the guano venture. He and his partners had been the first importers to bring nitrogen-rich guano fertilizer to the British Isles, revolutionizing agriculture in the country and making them three of the richest men in England. Stoker had given Sabine her due profits—hers was one of three dowries that financed the first expedition—but they’d never discussed the great windfall in detail. The fortune bored him, honestly, and she didn’t seem to care. But she knew. Each time she mentioned it, the money was a little less boring and a little more worth the months he’d spent chipping bird shite off an island in the baking Barbadoes heat.
“I am your apprentice in this investigation,” Stoker said, scoping out the long buffet table, heavy laden with colorful food and gleaming china and silver.
“Good God,” Sabine whispered, gaping through a dispersing crowd of young ladies to a high table crowded with bottles of liquor and tiers of empty crystal. Beside the table, standing exactly in the path of busy footmen conveying trays of drink, leaned an over-pomaded, snugly trousered young man—twenty-two if he was a day—strangled by a cravat so voluminous, it looked like a lion’s mane. He wore tall boots polished to a blinding gleam, a puce waistcoat, and a moss-green jacket so festooned with quivering gold buttons, he resembled an apothecary cabinet with fifty drawers and copper pulls.
Two older women waited before the table while a footman ladled punch into crystal goblets, and the young man lunged forward to intercede. The women chuckled at his overblown gallantry, thanking him as he dispersed the goblets with a bow and a wink.
“Surely not,” said Sabine, her face scrunched.
“Shall I have a go or will you?” sighed Stoker.
“Let me begin,” said Sabine, squaring her shoulders, “and if he cannot be taken in, you may take over.”
