He spoke her name without thinking, and the sound of it—more intimate than he had intended—seemed to alter the air between them in a way that was both immediate and impossible to ignore.
She looked at him then.
And for one brief, unguarded moment, he thought?—
Lady Ensley’s voice cut across the room.
“Mr. Harcourt?—!”
Julien closed his eyes, just briefly.
When he opened them again, the moment had passed.
He inclined his head, the practiced composure settling back into place as though it had never been absent. “My duty as host of this blast—blessed celebration is never done it seems. Pardon me, Miss Ashworth. ”
Her reply was light. Polite. Entirely as it ought to be.
He did not believe it reflected what had just occurred between them.
“I hope I may claim a less interrupted conversation at some later date,” he said.
It was, perhaps, not the declaration he had intended.
But it was not nothing.
When he left her, drawn once more into the orbit of expectations he had no desire to fulfill, Julien carried with him a renewed and entirely unwelcome awareness of just how narrow the margin for delay had become.
He had waited once.
He would not do so again.
Not if he could help it.
Chapter
Two
Saturday Evening
By the time Julien withdrew to his study, the evening had long since ceased to resemble anything he had intended it to be. The ball, held several evenings after Eleanor’s wedding breakfast, had been in full swing for hours, the rooms of Harcourt House were filled with guests who had come, as they always did, for music, spectacle. The quiet sport of observation that accompanied any well-attended gathering was also a not insignificant lure. Thus far, by every outward measure, it was proving a rousing success. The musicians were excellent, the supper well received, and the company precisely as fashionable as one might expect. There was nothing in the arrangement of the evening that could be faulted, and yet, from the moment it had begun, Julien had found himself increasingly at odds with it.
He had initially begun the evening with a plan, and that was now the source of his current irritation. As plans went, it had not been a complicated one, nor even particularly bold, but it had been, in his estimation, entirely sufficient. After years of delay that he could no longer justify, and with his sister’s future well settled, he had determined that he would speak to Caroline thatevening—not in any way that would invite remark, nor with any declaration that might place her in an awkward or untenable position. Still, he wished to convey with enough sincerity and meaning the nature of his regard for her. Enough to alter everything between them and possibly prompt them along a new and infinitely more satisfying path.
It had been a reasonable plan, a carefully considered one, and one that should have worked had he been permitted more than a handful of uninterrupted seconds with her at a time. He had accounted for the practicalities, approaching her only when she stood with Eleanor, where his presence would draw no comment and his attention could be easily explained without prompting speculation. Eleanor, as anticipated, had not lingered. She never did. She would remain only so long as courtesy required and then drift away, leaving them precisely as he required—unremarkably alone in a crowded room, with no one inclined to question them about it. It should have worked. It would have worked. Certainly, should have worked. And yet, each time he had been within a hair’s breadth of acting upon it, he had been thwarted.
Julien shut the door to his study with more force than was truly necessary, though the gesture offered little satisfaction. For a moment, he remained where he was, his hand resting upon the latch, his jaw set in a way that had very little to do with the ordinary duties of hosting such an event and everything to do with how thoroughly his true objective for the evening had been undone. It was not his habit to abandon his guests, nor to remove himself from a gathering in which his presence was expected, but there had been little point in remaining when his every effort to accomplish a single, specific purpose had been systematically frustrated. Indeed, his efforts had been thwarted with what appeared to be such deliberate consistencythat it would have been almost admirable had it not been so confoundingly irritating.
He crossed the room with restless purpose, irritation lending a rare edge to his movements. It had happened once, then again, and then with such frequency that coincidence could no longer be credited. By the fourth interruption, he had begun to suspect a pattern. By the sixth, he had been entirely certain of it. Lady Ensley—or rather, Lady Ensley and the small, determined coalition of well-meaning matrons who had apparently taken it upon themselves to correct what they viewed as a long-standing deficiency in his personal circumstances, namely his bachelorhood. As campaigns went, it had been executed flawlessly and with a precision that might have been admirable under different circumstances. Each time Eleanor had obligingly wandered away, each time Julien had opened his mouth with the clear intention of finally speaking to Caroline as he had planned, he had found himself intercepted with unfailing accuracy.
“Mr. Harcourt, you simply must meet Miss?—”
And there she would be. Another agreeable young lady, another eager introduction accompanied by a list of accomplishments and virtues that left no room for objection. Each encounter required just enough attention to render abrupt dismissal impossible without rudeness, and rudeness, in such a setting, would reflect not only upon him but upon his sister. They had all been perfectly lovely. Perfectly accomplished. Any one of them would have satisfied the expectations of society with admirable ease. And yet every single one of them had been possessed of one singular, insurmountable flaw. They were not Caroline.
He paused at his desk, one hand braced against its edge, and drew in a slow breath that did little to ease the tension that had settled in him. He had wanted to speak to her—properly, directly, with intention. Not in the distant, polite manner towhich he had been confined for years, not as the brother of her friend, but as a man who had grown tired of pretending indifference where none existed. It had not even been a decision, not in the usual sense. It had been a certainty, a quiet recognition that the time for restraint had passed. And yet, at every critical moment, he had been prevented from acting upon it.
The knock came sharp and immediate, cutting cleanly through his thoughts.
He straightened at once. “Come in.”
