Presently she found herself in a marble-floored passage lined with gilt-framed portraits of what were likely relatives of the host and hostess—women and men in Elizabethan ruffs posing with narrow-faced dogs and solemn-eyed children.
A surprising hint of a breeze beckoned like a crooked finger.
She followed it to a pair of French doors opened partly onto a little verandah. Upon it were arranged a pair of benches surrounded by fluffy green trees and shrubbery in urns. Once again, she made for the green things with relief.
She sat down hard on the little bench, released a breath so gusty it fluttered the curls at her temples, then closed her eyes and agitated her fan beneath her chin. The marble was pleasantly cool on her bum through the silk. But behind her eyelids the ballroom colors still spun, as though she’d stared too long at the sun.
The palette of her life in the country was on the whole muted, softer, more limited, she realized now. The pace of life, though full, was leisurely as a sigh. She was unaccustomed to light bouncing from everyone and everything at once—from the silks and jewels and chandeliers and marble and tiaras—and to voices and music ricocheting and echoing off shiny, hard surfaces. She already felt a little queasy, like a child who’d glutted on a buffet of sweets. Her head was muzzy from her one delicious cup of ratafia. She thought of the soft, rosy warmth of the sitting room at The Grand Palace on the Thames andshe momentarily wished herself there instead. But that seemed like a failure of nerve.
She felt undeniably a little melancholy, but it was also a bit dreamlike and delicious to be completely alone in a strange place. As if she was floating unmoored through space. As if anything could happen at any time.
She froze in her fan flapping when she heard the sound of brisk footsteps on marble. They paused.
She leaned forward to peer through the windows.
Then jerked back behind the plant, her heart jolting.
Lord Kirke was standing alone in the passage.
She leaned forward again and, through the greenery, surreptitiously studied him as though she’d stumbled across a centaur pacing in a clearing.
For someone who had just been hit in the face, he seemed remarkably composed. One would have thought it happened to him every day. She had no trouble at all imagining that it did.
He seemed such a frightening man. Brilliant, certainly, but in the way the edge of a knife is brilliant. And yet she was grateful that someone so formidable was on the side of the vulnerable people of England. Her father had more than once patched up a child or a woman who had been at the mercy of the tempers of the men who controlled their lives: fathers, husbands, employers. Afterward, his mood was always grim and low.
She wondered if Kirke had sought a refuge from the crowd, too, to think about his choices.
He touched his fingers to his lip, then examined them. Scowled faintly. Patted his person a bit with his other hand. She knew the signs: he was looking for a handkerchief, and not finding one.
Indecision racked her. She really didn’t want to risk speaking to him.
But the man might be bleeding. And she was a doctor’s daughter, after all.
Finally, she quietly retrieved her own handkerchief from her reticule, drew in a fortifying breath, and stood.
Gingerly but resolutely, she took a step forward.
Then another.
He glanced up and went rigid. His eyes were wide. Understandably he was a trifle wary of the woman inching toward him from the dark as though he were a beast caught in a trap, a handkerchief trembling in her outstretched hand.
He glanced from her face to the handkerchief, bemused.
Finally, as slowly and gingerly as she’d extended it, he took it.
“Thank you,” he said cautiously. “Mine seems to have gone missing.”
“Perhaps it’s still being laundered from the last time you were hi...”
She sucked in a breath and her hand flew to cover her mouth.
It was too late. The amazement dawning over his features told her he knew full well that the last part of her sentence was going to be “hit in the face.”
Her own expression had doubtless confirmed this.
If she hadn’t been held fast in the clutches of her own horror, she might have seized her skirts in her hands and bolted back down the stairs.
His face seemed peculiarly taut.
