She frowned and turned back to the garden. “I need a reprieve after...” She gestured to the milling party. “Just two seconds. I hate these sorts of things.”
“I’m a servant, not your reprieve,” he said.
“You are not fifty women who think me ungrateful and disobedient and willful.”
“These women have come here bearing enough gifts to provision Scotland in winter,” he said. “If that’s not approval, I don’t know what it is.”
“The gifts are another cog in the wheel that moves me along their aristocratic wedding mill,” she said. “They are not the worst part of today, but their mountain of gifts is wasteful.” She frowned at the heavily laden table.
He was quiet for a moment, and she reminded herself that he didn’t care, not about the gifts or the terrible women. He wouldn’t ask.
“What,” he sighed, “is the worst part?”
She glanced at him, feeling another eruption in her chest. She said, “The worst part is that they pretend. They carry on as if we are all in accord.”
“You couldbein accord,” he said. “With them—with all of it. England is awash in women who live full lives despite being married to... to—”
“Men for whom they have no respect? Men who are ignorant and dullards and drunk by noon?”
“I was going to say, their opposite.”
“Lusk is not my opposite, he is my... my... abbreviation.”
“Very poetic. What do you mean?”
“Imean, if I am forced to be his wife, my existence will be cut down to a sort of foggy, half-lived, shorthand version of what it could be. My drooped shoulders and blank expression will stand in for what my whole self would otherwise do.”
She stepped away from the table. “I’ve but one life, Shaw. I will not waste it being bound to him. I will not.”
The words came out more strident and desperate than she intended, but they were so deeply felt. She found herself propelled by emotion back into the party.
Her next strategy was to glean one name each from various women who had marriageable daughters and fellow debutantes this season. Competition is a great incubator of gossip, and ten minutes later, she returned with another name.
“Miss Jessica Marten,” she told Shaw, bustling up. “Daughter of Sir Reginald Marten, who is apparently an esteemed Egyptologist. Her father has enlisted her as his private secretary and expects her to devote her life to his work, but she loathes academia in general and couldn’t care less about Egypt. She never had a debut, but she has society friends, and she complains about her lot. She can be found most days at the British Museum, pressed into service for her father. Apparently, she is on the hunt for the highest-ranking title she can find, as only marriage to a lord would free her from her father’s work. Very red hair. Curls.”
Shaw resisted less this time, scratching out the name before she could repeat it. Helena took a deep breath and paced around the gift table, her mind spinning. Four names. All of them were beautiful, according to the talk. She was encouraged. She would interview one potential duchess every day. A duchess a day. Until she found a girl perfect enough to make Lusk defy his uncle.
“You might endeavor to smile,” Shaw said. “Feign some sort of frivolity.”
He took up a velvet pouch tied with a red bow and held it out. “It’s not a dead bird,” he said. “It’s a gift. Show surprise and delight.”
She reached out and snatched the pouch. “Thank you for helping me,” she said.
“I’m not helping you. I’m keeping a closer watch. Isn’t this how you convinced me?” He cocked a sardonic brow.
Helena’s stomach lit up with a rain of shimmering sparks. She smiled at him, thinking of the stable. If she was being honest, Declan Shaw’s very presence made the terrible party tolerable. He was funny and confident and solid. He had a strong, anchoring quality that gave her a boost every time she looked at him. She was far more interested in speaking to him than anyone else.
But perhaps that was why she’d asked him to come. Not to test his loyalties or take dictation, but simply to have an ally.
She dropped the pouch with athunkand took up a crystal goblet. Raising her eyes, she stared at him over the rim. He held that stare and her stomach shimmered again.
After a moment he said, “I need to apologize for last night.”
So he did think of the stable.
Helena frowned. “Please do not.”
The stable had exhilarated Helena. It tapped into fresh reserves of her will to fight. It made her think beyond the canceled wedding, to a future where she might meet a man she really did wish to marry and a lifetime of exhilarating dark stables.
