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“Can you pretend that?”
“No,” she admitted, and felt him smile against her hair, briefly, before his face sobered again.
“Your Grace, the ballroom is spoken of already as the finest thing London has seen all season,” said Lady Carrow, intercepting them briefly at the edge of the floor between figures.
“And such a cause behind it. Tell me, is it true the children themselves are to perform?”
“They are, my lady. I hope you will find them worth the wait.”
“I am sure we shall. Though I confess I had wondered, when I heard an orphanage charity was behind so grand an affair, whether it would not feel rather a somber sort of evening. It does not, in the least.”
“Grief and joy are not always strangers to each other,” Phillipa said, with a warmth that cost her more than Lady Carrow could possibly have guessed, given what was unfolding, unseen, at the very edges of the room. “I find they are frequently in the same room together.”
Lady Carrow drifted off toward the refreshment table, and Gregory’s hand found the small of Phillipa’s back again, steering her gently back toward the center of the floor.
“You are remarkable,” he murmured, “to stand there discussing philosophy with Lady Carrow while watching for Dornet over her shoulder.”
“I have had a great deal of practice this past fortnight, managing two entirely different expressions on my face at once.”
“I noticed that about you rather early, I think. The first night that we met.”
“You noticed nothing of the sort. You could barely look at me.”
“I could barely look at anything else,” he said, low, and she had no answer for that at all, and the orchestra swept them both back into the dance before she needed to find one.
They turned, and turned again, and Phillipa, scanning the crowd over his shoulder out of old habit, felt her whole body go cold at once.
He was there.
Michael Dornet stood near the edge of the ballroom in a coat too fine for the life she suspected he actually led, a glass of champagne untouched in his hand, watching the dancers with that same pleasant, half-second smile she remembered from the orphanage. But he was not watching the dancers at all, she realized.
He was watching the stairs.
Her hand tightened on Gregory’s shoulder. “I have found him,” she breathed.
Gregory turned her, and she felt the exact moment his whole body changed beneath her hands, every line of him going taut and still, like a man who has just heard a shot fired somewhere nearby and is waiting, now, for the second.
“I see him,” he said quietly. “Smile, Phillipa. We are not finished dancing yet.”
“He is watching the stairs.”
Phillipa said it against Gregory’s shoulder as the dance drew to its close, careful to keep her face arranged into the same pleasant, unbothered smile she had worn all evening, though her heart was slamming against her ribs hard.
“I had noticed.” Gregory’s voice was perfectly level and only the white line of his jaw gave away that anything beneath it was not entirely calm. “He is waiting for the children to be brought down to sing. Mrs. Fairley has them in the small sitting room.”
“Gregory…” she felt her stomach drop. “Do you think… what do you think his intentions are for the night?”
“Nothing good,” Gregory replied through gritted teeth.
Phillipa felt a knot in her stomach. She had been so hopeful that Dornet might have good intentions, but seeing him here made a strange feeling rise inside of her.
There was something unsettling about him, and she worried that she had vouched for him incorrectly.
“You’re sure of this?” she asked him again, glancing nervously to where he was.
“I know it.” The music ended, and he bowed over her hand with perfect correctness, as though they had done nothing more than enjoy a waltz. “Walk with me slowly. We can pretend we are admiring the flowers.”
“I… alright.”
