“Do cease pretending you are ancient,” her sister said. “We both know you are not, just as we both know you promised to tell me what happened at Lady Fortune in great detail. I am waiting.”
“I have already told you more than enough.” She took a sip of her chocolate in an attempt to calm her rapidly beating heart. “I requested a meeting, asked for assistance, and was informed I was incorrect in my assumption.”
Such a bland way to describe what had happened in the private room. As if the scorching, deliciously tempting Mr. Demon Winter had never inhabited the same chamber as she had at all. As if he had not touched her and set her aflame. One day later, and she still knew the brand of his touch. It lingered on her skin, burning with sweet, suppressed pleasure, a call to arms she had to ignore.
“Yes, but that scarcely tells me anything at all.” Octavia scooted to the edge of her chair, eyes wide with anticipation. “What did he look like, this Mr. Winter?”
Diabolically handsome.
“He was uninteresting.” She drained the rest of her chocolate in one unladylike gulp to keep from saying anything else.
“Your countenance does not suggest he was uninteresting.”
Sisters.Specifically,thisone.
She skewered Octavia with a pointed glare. “You have caused me enough trouble for now. Let us leave this story as it is.”
“He is handsome, is he not?”
Her cheeks were on fire. So, too, the tips of her ears. “No.”
“He is!” Octavia chortled. “Oh, Mirabel, you have never been capable of telling a falsehood.”
And what a pity that was. An affinity for lying would have served her well in her marriage. Lord knew it had been a boon for Stanhope.
“Mr. Winter was fine enough looking, I suppose,” she allowed, consternated by the continued heat in her cheeks, and by the steady pulse of desire, deep within. A part of her she had not known existed was blossoming to life. All because of one man. “If one is attracted to the dangerous, rough-hewn, lowborn sort.”
“Oh dear.”
Mirabel frowned at her sister. “What is the matter?”
“Once again, your countenance, dear sister. You give yourself away, I fear.”
She was sure she did not. She was completely, utterly certain there was no means by which Octavia could possibly know how hopelessly attracted she had been to Mr. Demon Winter. How that sinful man had made her heart beat fast. How he had planted the seed of desire deep within her. And how hastily that seed had burst open, curling upward, reaching, growing, searching for the light.
Or, in this case, the darkness that surely was Mr. Winter.
“Nonsense,” she clipped, both to her wildly meandering thoughts and to Octavia.
“Dangerous, rough-hewn, and lowborn, you say?” her sister repeated with a smirk.
Mirabel tried to take another sip of her chocolate, only to belatedly realize she had already emptied her cup. How embarrassing. It would seem she had no pride today.
She settled the cup on its saucer and waved a dismissive hand. “Altogether unacceptable. Not at all the sort of man whom one should know.”
“Hmm,” was all Octavia said, pausing before her brows furrowed. “Where is Grandmother’s ruby ring? I do not believe I have seen your finger without it.”
Mirabel froze, staring at her hand which was, indeed, bereft of all ornamentation. It would not have been strange at this time of the morning, when she was in dishabille in her private apartments except for one fact. She had not removed the ring, which was a treasured reminder of the woman she still missed, more like a mother to them than their own mother had been.
Her heart pounded with a different sort of insistence now.
Grandmother’s ring was gone.
“I do not know where it can be,” she said, her chest growing suddenly tight as she struggled to think of where she may have left or lost it.
“Think,” Octavia urged her softly. “Were you wearing it when you attended Lady Fortune last evening?”
She had been. Mirabel recalled fidgeting with it as she awaited Mr. Winter in the private room, and as a crushing sense of panic had descended upon her. Little different than the anxiety assailing her now, in fact. She was selfish to seek her pleasure when one wrong move could prove so incredibly ruinous for herself, for Octavia, for her children.
