Her imagination and her ink had dried up like a well in the Sahara Desert, and she found herself incapable of writing as much as a single word.
She rubbed a hand against her chest to ease the tightness that had assailed her.
It was no use pondering on it. It wouldn’t help at all.
Where were Georgiana and Lily? They had disappeared as well.
Oh well.
But wasn’t that Mr Mainwaring, making his way towards her through the crowd with two glasses of lemonade? He looked ridiculously pleased to have found her again.
“Lady Viola! I appeared to have lost you, but here you are again. What a terrible squeeze, don’t you agree?”
He handed her a glass of lemonade, which she drank gratefully. It tasted horrible, but at this moment she would have gladly drunk vinegar.
“Thank you.” In that moment, truly, Mr Mainwaring appeared as a saviour.
Mr Mainwaring looked about the room, frowning. “The squeeze has intensified. Something’s happened.” He craned his neck toward the entrance. “It appears someone’s arrived.”
“Someone important?” Viola rose onto her toes. Perhaps this was her chance to glimpse Prinny up close.
Indeed, the crowd had shifted toward the doors. The music faltered, then stopped. A murmur rippled through the room, that hum of anticipation that expressed the arrival of true consequence.
“Liverpool’s man,” someone said behind her.
Liverpool. Viola did not follow politics closely; she found it unbearably dull, but even she knew that name. The Prime Minister.
“Well, well.” Mr Mainwaring adjusted his cravat, suddenly looking rather less comfortable. “That’s unexpected. What the devil is he doing at Almack’s?”
“Liverpool?”
“No, no. His protégé. The Slayer.” He lowered his voice as though the man might somehow hear him across the crowded room. “I heard him speak in the Commons last week. He’scalled The Slayer because he’s cold as a scalpel, cutting down the opposition without mercy. He’s brilliant, but lethal. An opposition man rose to accuse him of some mismanagement or other, and he took him apart so thoroughly I almost felt sorry for the fellow.” He paused, grimacing. “I made the mistake of questioning him once. Did not stand a chance. He remembered a bill I’d voted against three years prior and quoted my own words back to me.”
“How alarming,” Viola said, not particularly alarmed.
“As everyone knows, Liverpool is grooming him for the Home Office. After the election in June, a cabinet position is all but certain.” Mr Mainwaring shook his head with the admiration men reserve for other men who frighten them. “If he stays the course, he’ll be running the country in ten years. Mark my words, I do believe we are looking at our future prime minister.”
Viola plucked a fresh glass of lemonade from a passing footman. Politics. Men in waistcoats arguing about corn prices and Catholic relief while she had actual problems: a manuscript due, a publisher waiting, and absolutely no idea how to kill her villain in a suitably gruesome fashion.
She took a sip and turned her attention elsewhere.
The crowd parted.
Her gaze caught on a figure near the entrance. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Evening black tailored with severity. He stood in profile, speaking to someone she couldn’t see, and the candlelight caught the sharp line of his jaw, the high cheekbones, the proud Roman nose.
Her stomach gave a sick lurch.
Dear sweet heaven.
It couldn’t be.
He turned his head, just slightly, and she saw the mouth.
That mouth. That beautiful, cruel mouth that haunted her dreams.
A whimper escaped her.
He was older. Harder. Whatever traces of the young man she remembered who had stood beside her exchanging vows so long, long ago, had been carved away entirely. What remained was marble. Handsome, cold, and utterly unforgiving.
