"What is it?" his aunt asked.
"I was just thinking." He forced a smile as he met his aunt's searching gaze. "It's regrettable, that's all. If I'd asked her name back then, if I'd made the connection sooner…"
He thought of how he'd seen her in passing at the ball the other night. She'd looked away quickly, and at the time he'd thought it was because she was shy. Perhaps even a little embarrassed at how she'd run out of the coaching inn.
But really, she just hadn't recognized him.
"If you'd made the connection sooner?" the duchess prompted.
He smiled. "Perhaps I could have spared her from this current situation."
The duchess studied him for a moment before nodding. "Yes. I imagine she might have been better protected from such nasty gossip if you'd been by her side."
His smile disappeared. He hadn't really expected her to agree so quickly. His guilt only worsened.
"But that's all the more reason you ought to help her now," the duchess continued. "If she is agreeable, of course."
His lips curved up on one side. "And if the fee is agreeable to me…of course."
His aunt sighed, but when she met his gaze, he could see she'd decided. "Very well," she said. "If Lady Clarissa is amenable—you have a deal."
7
The dinner at Estella's was a disaster. At least so far as Clarissa was concerned. No one else seemed to notice.
Indeed, everyone else seemed to be having a marvelous time.
Estella was a gracious hostess. Her new acquaintance, Thea, had held a brief conversation with Clarissa before turning her attention to a pamphlet she'd apparently smuggled in.
The Duchess of Ashworth ensured that the conversation ran smoothly, and that everyone but the preoccupied Thea was included. John, of course, was being his usual steady, pleasant self. Even Lord Blackwood was making a heroic effort to be sociable.
And Lord Stratton. "Kit," as he'd instructed her to call him…
Kit was being charming. So desperately, relentlessly, magnificently charming that Clarissa had a bizarre urge to throw a bread roll at his head.
He complimented Estella's table arrangements. He asked Lord Blackwood about his estate improvements with what appeared to be genuine interest. He engaged Thea in a conversation about probability theory that Clarissa suspected he understood not one word of.
He was witty without being unkind, attentive without being cloying, and when he laughed, every person at the table warmed to him by several degrees.
It was revolting.
Mostly because if Clarissa hadn't overheard him and his aunt discussing her, she would have been charmed too. Absurdly so.
Some distant part of her brain understood that were she not in on the act, she'd have been taken in like the veriest fool.
Again.
Because, as she was beginning to understand—she was a fool. At least when it came to men.
Even now, as she sat there sipping her soup, listening to Kit entertain the table at large with a ridiculous tale about his attempt to hunt foxes with visiting royalty, all she could think was…
Is this true? Is any of it true? Oh, not the hunting part. She couldn't bring herself to care if he was exaggerating all that. But the rest of it. His warmth, his laughter. That sparkle in his eyes that seemed to exude kindness and empathy. Was any of it real?
She had no idea. All she knew for certain was that underneath all that handsome polish was a man who had negotiated a fee to pretend to find her interesting. And the fact that he was so good at the pretending made it worse. Because how was she supposed to tell the difference between Kit performing and Kit being real?
She couldn't. That was the answer. She couldn't tell. And that terrified her, because she'd spent a year believing Edmund was real, and look how that had turned out.
So she sat with her hands in her lap and her mouth firmly shut and she was, by any objective measure, the dullest dinner guest in London.
