“Not that you do not look handsome as Lord Edmund—”
“Handsome.”Good heavens, I’m picking up Robbie’s habit.
“You do make a very fine man.”
Eloise stared at Delie. “I am trying to decide if this is an insult.”
Delie’s face turned scarlet. “No! I mean”—her words became more sputters than enunciations—“you wear the disguise quite well—”
Eloise held up her hand. “I think you should stop now.” As Delie hung her head a bit, Eloise stepped closer. “Bargain. We will not discuss Lord Edmund again, and I will let you turn me into a queen for the ball Friday night.”
Delie looked up at her, a slight gleam in her eyes. “With the new emerald and cream gown? And no lace cap?”
Eloise pursed her lips. “That gown is almost scandalous. I should not have let Adrienne fit me out so.”
“It is not scandalous. It is stylish and you look beautiful.”
“I was never meant to show that much cleavage.”
“That décolletage is perfection. It will make the gentlemen scamper to your side.”
“Gentlemen have never scampered anywhere near me in my life.”
“Yet.”
“Now you sound like Adrienne.”
“We both keep hoping.”
“You should not waste your hope on something so fruitless.” She patted her maid’s arm. “Now go. I need to at least try to sleep a little. It will be a long night.”
Delie gathered the puce day gown, as well as the “Lord Edmund” garb and left the room. Adrienne had sent over two other kits for her to wear as her disguise, and tonight she would leave the dandy behind in favor of a tradesman look, with a cotton coat and flat cap.
Eloise crawled beneath the covers and curled on her side. Fatigue weighed on her, although her mind still raced with all that had happened over the past three days.Three days!
On Saturday, Lord Robert Ashton had been a handsome dandy on the periphery of her life, a suitor for Lydia to whom Eloise had paid little attention. He had never made any untoward gesture toward Lydia—the perfect gentleman—which Eloise now understood was more lack of interest than proper etiquette. Eloise seldom looked up from her book when he was around. Her sole interest was to see that he was settled with Lydia so that Lord Wexley could pursue her sister Judith.
But Saturday night, Robert Ashton had appeared in Adrienne’s shop, upending her emotions and her entire world. Then Timothy had gone missing, she had seen a man murdered, been to her first funeral, donned a disguise to investigate—and made love to a man she could not get out of her thoughts.
And it had all started with the most innocuous of sentences.
If you will use a quill from the right wing of a crow, you will get finer lines, fewer smears.
Eloise could not admit it to Adrienne—not Saturday night and not since—how that line had unsettled her. She had barely admitted it to herself. Eloise had spent a lifetime being unnoticed—by her family, her friends, or her Society. Certainly by any of Lydia’s suitors. For most of them she was part of the scenery. Eloise had accepted long ago that her role in life was that of observer—not one of the observed.
But in only a few moments, Lord Robert Ashton hadseenher. Noticed that her hands were stained, that she was left handed. Most men would have seen that stray lock of hair as her being untidy, if they had been aware of it at all. It had startled and unnerved him, and his reaction had done the same to her. Eloise knew that she was not plain in face or body, but neither did her appearance turn heads as Lydia’s did. And since she purposely did nothing to enhance her limited attributes, those heads remained pointed in any direction but hers.
Until Robbie had dropped his façade—and noticed her.
Eloise slid her hands between her thighs, pressing them together as she closed her eyes, remembering his desire to hold her—just hold her—for long moments, as if he craved the closeness as much as their intercourse. His molten kisses melted her and opened her senses more than she thought possible, without a doubt. But the way he had fallen against her in his grief—with very little encouragement—told her that he, too, had been hungry for more than sex.
A hunger she had not even realized she had.
And what will happen to that need when he goes back to Lydia, and I retire to the country with my family?
Tears slipped from her eyes as Eloise realized that while the events of the last three days had brought turmoil as well as joy, they had also set the stage for immeasurable loss. With Robert’s name on her lips, Eloise finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
