“I saw it,” he said shortly.
“I thought it was unkind of them to refer to you as a devil.”
He smiled slightly. “Don’t call anyone out on my account, Keating. I’ve been called worse.”
She smiled uncertainly at that. “And it was inaccurate to call me an angel.”
If this was an innuendo, he wasn’t going to take it up.
“Yes. Well. The gossip columns aren’t known for their specificity. With luck, that one item will be the end of the matter.”
The “end of the matter” rang with a certain implication. They both knew it.
She glanced away briefly, then returned her gaze to his. He had not moved his from her for one second.
“I have not yet had an opportunity to thank you. My season seems to be going very well at last. Lady Wisterberg will even be holding a party at her town house. Everyone invited is coming,” she marveled.
“I’m glad,” he said gently.
Neither one of them remarked on the fact that he was not invited.
She cleared her throat. “I wondered if you would be attending the soiree at Lord and Lady Hackworth’s house this evening? I’m told it’s after a fashion a salon.” She gave the word “salon” a flourish.
He went still. It was a damned shame she’d somehow been introduced to the Hackworths, but he supposed not terribly surprising. The Hackworths were all about pursuing social power, and cultivating Keating, who now had a certain cachet, was naturally part of that. The Hackworths were also profligate spenders, in debt up to their sparkly eyes and lived decadently on credit—in other words, by taking advantage of unpaid working men and women. They never ceased inviting him to their events, however.
“I was indeed, but I’m afraid I won’t be attending. And I don’t think you should go, either, Keating. I can’t imagine it would be any more stimulatingthan what goes on here in the sitting room at The Grand Palace on the Thames.”
“But I thought you attended all of these events for the opportunity to ‘make friends.’” She’d given the last two words an ironic emphasis, too, quoting him.
He smiled slightly. Not entirely amused. “I can tell you definitively that the Hackworths are awful people. Boring and bored and empty. They are all glitter on the surface and spiteful beneath. Indolent, but the cruel sort of indolence, not the content sort. They are like spiders. Always needing a new novelty to drain. And guess what you are, Keating.”
It had been an almost cruelly undiluted assessment, even for him. It was his true self at his most unadulterated. Even he was shocked at himself. He had from the beginning been gentler with her than he was with most.
But she ought to fully understand this, too: he was not, on the whole, a man prone to delicacy.
He’d meant every word sincerely. He was alarmed that she might be pulled into their orbit.
“Lady Hackworth seems charming to me.”
Her voice had gone somewhat faint. And a trifle defensive. It sounded like a dare for him to convince her otherwise. He’d unnerved her.
Keating was more astute than that about people, he’d thought.
He studied her for evidence of facetiousness.
“Yes. ‘Seems’ is the proper word for it. Have I been wrong about any of the people you’ve met so far? Perhaps we have different tastes in friends.”
He suspected she was testing him, which irritated him. He usually quickly recognized and smacked down attempts to manipulate him. But it was clear she’d sensed he’d created a deliberate wallbetween them since the waltz. This was her way of trying to discover why.
He was unaccustomed to being readable. Or in any way vulnerable.
“No. You haven’t been wrong,” she admitted. More subdued.
“Was your friend Miss Morrow invited to the Hackworth soiree as well?” he guessed shrewdly.
She hesitated. “Lady Hackworth said it was rather an exclusive event and she could not invite everyone,” she admitted, carefully.
This didn’t surprise him a bit. These were the sort of games the Hackworths enjoyed. Dividing friendships. Playing people off of each other, fomenting rivalries, perpetrating, then feigning ignorance of, tiny slights.
