Clara gave her an impatient little shake. “You laugh now, but you shall see. He is kind and funny, and not vain at all. And he listens when I speak, which is more than can be said for half the world.”
“All excellent qualities,” Aurelia concurred. “And still insufficient on such short acquaintance to justify matrimony.”
“There is plenty of time for the rest.”
“Ye, precisely. Plenty of time. Which is why you need not decide tonight whether you two are destined for the altar.”
Clara sighed with the forbearance of the truly romantic. “You are hopeless.”
“And you are absurd.”
“I am happy.”
At that, Aurelia softened. “Yes, I can see that.”
Clara’s smile turned teasing at once. “And you looked happy, too.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“With that gentleman.”
Aurelia felt herself grow still. “I did not look anything of the kind.”
“You did. At least, you looked interested. Who was he?”
Aurelia turned before she could answer and looked across the ballroom. The man in question was now standing beside Captain Harrow in conversation, his dark coat setting him apart from the brighter crowd around him. He was not dark in coloring, perhaps, yet there was something darkly compelling in the gravity that seemed always to hover beneath his ease. Even from this distance, he seemed less dazzled by the room than quietly separate from it.
And then, with a sudden and ridiculous shock, she realized the truth.
“To tell you the truth, I do not know,” she admitted.
Clara blinked. “You do not know what?”
“His name.”
Clara stared at her for a beat and then laughed so hard that two ladies nearby turned to look.
“You stood there talking all that time and never learned his name?”
Aurelia, against her will, felt the corners of her mouth betray her. “It would seem not.”
“Then, my dear Aurelia,” said Clara, slipping her arm through hers and beaming up at her, “you are in far greater danger than I am.”
Chapter 5
Owen had been home from the Bannerman’s ball scarcely long enough to regret attending it before he was required to endure a second engagement.
It was a dinner party this time.
Two events in two evenings would have been excessive under any circumstances. Yet when his mother informed him of the invitation at breakfast, and when Harrow, with the easy treachery of old friendship, agreed that it would do him good to go, Owen saw at once that resistance would cost more than submission.
So, he went.
The room itself was perfectly appointed, which made it no more bearable. Candles burned in such abundance that the whole company appeared arranged for inspection. The ladies shone, the gentlemen circulated, and every table seemed to hold something delicate enough to be admired and entirely useless enough to suit the setting. Conversation rose and fell in bright little currents around him. It was all surface, no depth.
The only sound missing was artillery. It would, he thought, have improved the evening.
“Do stand up straighter, Owen,” said his mother under her breath, though he was already standing as straight as any man in the room. “And pray do not look as though you have been sentenced.”
