“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, Keating.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Yes,” he said evenly.
She was quiet.
“The man in question objected to the way I expressed my views on the way he’d been deceiving orphan children into working for his textile mill—they are promised things that never transpire, like adequate food and pay, and are tricked into agreeing to work for him until the age of eighteen. Admittedly, I was, ah, colorfully blunt and rather personal.” He smiled ruefully. “I may have disparaged his parentage. And he called me out. I thought it was best to address this in a way that no one could misunderstand or forget. And this is how Farquar knows I’m just mad enough to perhaps do it, and that I am a very good shot. Shooting someone in order to kill them is one thing. Shooting to wound them in order to make a point is another.” He smiled faintly. “That takes a special kind of skill.”
“Well,” she said uncertainly.
“I’ve only needed to do it once,” he said. “Though funnily enough, there’s something about me that people want to challenge.”
“Funnily enough,” she repeated after a pause of exquisitely perfect duration.
He found himself smiling at her again, and she was smiling at him, for the most peculiar instant he could not feel his feet against the floor.
“Willyoube dancing this evening, Keating? Or should I assume your placement by the greenery is an indication of how your season is going?”
“I do have a few names on my dance card tonight,” she said cheerily. “My friend Miss Lucy Morrow made the introductions. Lucy is dancing with Mr. Hargrove, a young man she’s known for quite some time and I believe would like to marry. I believe it is the same man Miss Seaver would also like to marry. She has known him nearly as long.”
He shook his head gravely. “I foresee pistols at dawn for all of them in the future, Keating.”
She smiled at this, more fully this time.
“What about you?” he asked suddenly. “Will you be throwing your hat into Mr. Hargrove’s ring?”
“I haven’t yet decided. I’ve only danced with him once. I know a good deal about him, however, because he talked and talked about himself. He scarcely took a breath. He shot the most grouse at a house party a fortnight ago. His horse is named Benjamin. And so forth.”
“Well, it helps to be armed with information about a person before you marry them. Thoughtful of him to supply you with it.”
She quirked the corner of her mouth. “Thoughtfulness is a good quality in a man.” She absently touched her necklace then. He noticed she did that now and again, as if to reassure herself it was still there.
A swift glance told him the pearl dangling from it had vanished into her cleavage.
Unbidden he imagined gently sliding a fingerinto that shadow between her creamy breasts, looping a finger beneath the chain, and slowly, gently gliding the pearl out.
Momentarily his head emptied of thought as though blasted away by lightning and his groin tightened.
Shaken, he turned his head away from her abruptly.
Men, he thought, darkly, were simply base, there was no help for it.
He stared down the hall, the direction from which he’d come, for a few silent moments. Someone ought to look after Keating’s welfare, and looking after her welfare meant maintaining propriety, and that meant the two of them ought not be alone.
He returned his gaze to her. Her eyelashes were thick and dark, and he could see the little shadows they lay against her cheek when she turned her head. He stared at them. And suddenly those shadows felt like the subtlest, softest of traps. He could not move away if he tried.
“I know nearly everyone in the ton. I might be able to help narrow your choices, in the name of efficiency,” he offered casually.
He shoved to the back of his mind the little voice that told him this suggestion was not entirely altruistic. Because the truth was worrisome: he wanted an excuse to hear her thoughts. About nearly anything.
“Oh!” She looked up at him gratefully. “That might be helpful. Thank you.”
She handed over her little dance card.
Chapter Eight
Catherine watched him peruse her dance card with every appearance of interest and knew a fresh wave of indignation that anyone should say unkind or prurient things about him. No doubt a man like him—a charismatic public figure—would always simply be a lightning rod for imaginations.
