“Hyacinth.”
Hyacinth’s gaze darted to his face. She’d never heard that soft inflection in his voice before.
“There’s nothing for you to be afraid of.” He held out his hand to her as the first notes of a waltz drifted across the ballroom. “Come. You’ll feel better when it’s over.”
There was a breathless pause as the quadrille ended, and the company watched him lead her to the center of the floor.
Then the whispers began.
She could see the faces of the company watching them from both sides of the ballroom. She’d known they’d all stare at her, and she’d expected the ladies would whisper and smirk from behind their fans. She’d known there would be tittering and gossip, wide eyes and even wider mouths, greedily repeating every tidbit of information. She’d known they’d be curious—had prepared herself for it—but this wasn’t mere curiosity. There was a darkness to it, an edge of malicious glee she never could have predicted, even in her worst nightmares.
She missed a step, and stumbled against Lachlan. His hand curved more firmly around her waist. “Don’t look at them, Hyacinth. Look at me.”
Yes. That was a good idea. Surely she could manage that much. Hewasfar larger than anyone else in the room.
“Good,” he murmured, when she lifted her face to his. “Is that better?”
“Yes.” And it was better, for a moment or two, until her frantic gaze wandered back to the press of bodies surrounding them. Dear God, they looked as if they’d moved closer, as if they were trapping her in a tight circle from which there’d be no escape. Her head began to spin, and her stomach dropped, just as it had the other night, right before she’d swooned—
“Ciaran did win over his second love,” Lachlan said suddenly. “Her name was Catriona, and she was also a red-headed lass.”
That caught Hyacinth’s attention. The crowd around them blurred into the background again, and she was able to gather her wits enough to ask, “Does Ciaran only fancy redheads?”
“Not anymore. He was more discriminating then. Now he fancies everything in skirts.”
Well. That was a highly improper thing to say, and yet despite the heat in her cheeks, Hyacinth couldn’t help being diverted. “Catriona returned his affections?”
“Yes. I caught him kissing her behind the stables one day. I was so jealous I jumped on his back and held his face to the ground until he was so filthy Catriona refused to kiss him anymore.”
“But that’s awful! Why would you do that? Did you fancy Catriona yourself?”
“No. I was jealous because he was only nine at the time, and I was already eleven, and I’d never kissed a lass. I was older, and my pride wouldn’t allow him to kiss one before I did.”
Any lingering awareness of the sneering faces surrounding them faded from her consciousness at this fascinating detail. Hyacinth tried to picture Lachlan as a dark-haired eleven-year old boy, seething with jealousy over his younger brother’s romance. “So you tried to drown him in the mud? That doesn’t seem fair.”
“No, but neither of us cared about what was fair. Ciaran and I spent most of our childhood beating each other bloody. I didn’t break his nose that time, though. In any case, he got me back.”
“He did? How? What did he do?”
“When I was twelve I was mad for a lass named Mary Mackenzie, and used to show off for her by doing tricks on my horse. One day I tried to impress her with some foolish stunt, and I split the seat of my breeches. Mary saw my bare bottom, was disgusted, and never spoke to me again. I found out later Ciaran had picked apart the seams of every single pair of my breeches. He’d been waiting a week for one of them to split.”
Hyacinth laughed so hard she missed another step in the waltz. “Did you break his nose that time?”
“No. He broke mine, and I blacked his eye, and then we decided lasses were too much trouble to bother with, and we went off fishing together.”
“Oh, my! It sounds as if it must be much more entertaining to have brothers than sisters. My sisters and I never brawled, or broke each other’s noses, or picked each other’s seams loose. Was Mary Mackenzie a red-head?”
She peeked up at him through her eyelashes, her lip caught between her teeth, far more interested than she should be in his reply.
“No.” That rare smile twitched at his lips. “She had fair hair, and blue eyes.”
He stopped moving then, but his smile scattered her wits, and she hardly noticed.
Goodness. What in the world was wrong with Mary Mackenzie that she’d walk away from a man with such a smile as that, over a pair of split breeches?
“Miss Somerset?”
“Yes?”
