He was, as always, irritatingly well-put-together. Dark coat, white cravat, the kind of careless perfection that suggested either an excellent valet or an infuriating natural aptitude.
Both, probably.
The candlelight was doing him no disservice whatsoever, which was also unfair.
Several years,and one would think I would have grown accustomed to it.
“Lady Isadora.” His tone was warm, unhurried. His eyes moved over her face with swift assessment. “I must confess I’m surprised.”
“Are you.” It was not quite a question.
“I expected to find you in whichever library this house has managed to assemble.” He glanced briefly at the room around them, the dancers, the noise, the brightness of it all. “Not willingly attending a ballroom.”
“I attend ballrooms,” she said.
“Youendureballrooms,” he corrected pleasantly. “You have made the distinction, and your expression has been making it quite clear all evening.”
All evening?
She filed that away.
“You have been watching my expression all evening?”
“I have been watching the room. Your expression was simply the most legible thing in it.”
She looked at him. He was smiling. A smile that suggested he was genuinely amused.
Years and years of this, and he is still the most aggravating person I have ever met.
“Not everyone takes pleasure in ruining their reputation. Though I imagine,” she raised a brow, “you would know a great deal about ruining one’s own reputation… at gaming hells.”
He pressed a hand to his chest with an expression of profound injury. “I am wounded.”
“You’ve survived worse.”
“Not from you. You are particularly accurate.” He dropped his hand. His eyes were still amused, which was deeply unfair. “What have I done to deserve your poor opinion tonight specifically?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I think of you exactly as society does. Only more accurately.”
“That is either a tremendous insult or a tremendous compliment, and I find I cannot tell which.”
“I know,” she said sweetly.
He laughed, and she felt the peculiar small satisfaction of having elicited it, which she resented immediately because she was not trying to amuse him. She was simply being honest, which happened to have the same effect.
Before he could answer, she saw it.
Across the ballroom, moving with the smooth purposefulness of a woman who had spent three hours waiting for precisely this opening, was Lady Pembley, resplendent in dark blue silk, with her daughter Caroline at her side.
Caroline was very beautiful. Isadora registered this with clear-eyed assessment, and she had no interest in pretending otherwise. Fair hair, a graceful neck, the luminous quality of a young woman in full possession of her own attractiveness and aware of every room she entered. She was looking at James with a warm expression that had clearly been practiced.
Lady Pembley’s gaze had already found its target with the precision of a navigator sighting a fixed point.
Isadora looked back at James quizzically. “Wait a moment. Did you approach me,” she asked, keeping her voice low and pleasant, “because Lady Pembley has been trying to set you up with Miss Caroline all evening?”
Something moved across his face. It was very fast, barely a flicker, but she had been watching his expressions in her brother’s house since she was old enough to know what to look for.
“I approached you,” he said carefully, “because I nearly knocked you down.”
