Every gaze was transfixed on Miss York…except for one. One woman’s dark brown eyes arrested him.
She did not seem curious about the gift. Her disconcertingly intense expression was shrewd, as if she could see through the brown paper package, see through his meticulously tailored layers of fashionable apparel, see throughhimto the nervousness and desperation beneath. But she did not look away. Her gaze only sharpened, as if she had stripped him bare and still wanted more.
His throat grew dry. He tried to swallow. An odd prickling sensation traveled up his spine as though the tips of her fingers had brushed against his skin.
He quickly turned back to Miss York. The delivery of the gift had stretched on long enough. If she didn’t cut through the paper soon, Lawrence would rip it apart with his bare hands, make his bow, and escape to his waiting carriage before he was forced to follow this performance with tea and small talk.
“If you’d be so kind?” he murmured.
Miss York sliced through the brown paper as though she had little interest in safekeeping the art beneath.
The paper fell away. The painting was exposed. A gasp rippled through the crowd. Whether at the romance of the gesture or because the subject featured a family of mischievous sprites, Lawrence could not say.
“Thank you,” Miss York said. “You are most kind.”
Was she smitten? Bored? She did not appear to be upset or in any danger of swooning. He gave a gift. She received the gift.Fin.
The back of his neck heated anew. He appreciated her extreme lack of drama, Lawrence told himself. After her dowry, her predictability was his favorite trait. A woman like Miss York would never muddy the Faircliffe title with scandal. She was exactly what he needed: no scrapes, no surprises.
Mrs. York burst into loud applause. “Huzzah!”
Everyone in the room followed suit. Everyone, that was, except Miss York and the oddly intense young woman with the mocking half smile.
Her gaze continued to track him, as though she could hear each overloud heartbeat and sense each shallow breath from across the room. He did not like the sensation at all. Despite the roomful of strangers, her regard felt strangely intimate and far too perceptive.
“As soon as the painting is hung,” Mrs. York chirped, “we shall all remove to the dining room for a nice, leisurely tea.”
Good God, anything but that. Besides his distaste for tea, Lawrence could not court anyone properly while dodging the unsettling gaze of the woman with the pretty brown eyes. Even now, he was thinking of her instead of concentrating on Miss York. It would not do. Once the painting was hung, Lawrence would bolt out the door and into the sanctity of his carriage.
His driver had better be ready to fly.
3
Chloe folded her hands in her lap and did her best not to glare a hole right through the handsome, haughty Duke of Faircliffe.
All of this would have been much easier if Faircliffe would simplyreturnthe painting. But addressing His Arrogance directly did not work. Chloe and her siblings had pleaded for months, in countless letters sent to his home and dozens of humiliating attempts in person.
His Infuriating Loftiness was far too superior to see reason…or commoners like the Wynchester siblings.
His frigid blue gaze looked right at Chloe—and slid away just as quickly, having glimpsed nothing to attract his interest.
How many times had she and Faircliffe crossed paths? Hyde Park, Berkeley Square, Westminster. Every disdainful glance in her direction was as indifferent as the last. She lifted her chin. Bean had taught her that, to the right person, she would be visible and memorable. Faircliffe was clearly the wrong person.
Not that shewantedhim to notice her, Chloe reminded herself. The continued success of “Jane Brown” hinged on her uncanny ability to be wholly unremarkable under any circumstances. She gripped the soft muslin of her skirt. Tommy might be an unparalleled genius with disguises, but Chloe needn’t do anything at all to blend in and be forgettable.
She possessed one of those faces that was at once familiar yet too ordinary to pick out from a crowd. She was neither tall nor short, ugly nor pretty. Nothing about her stood out.
Her skin wasn’t palest alabaster like Philippa York’s or golden bronze like her brother Graham’s. She was not thin and willowy like Tommy or pleasingly plump like Elizabeth. Her limp brown hair wasn’t spun flax like Marjorie’s, or blessed with glossy black curls like Jacob’s. Chloe was neutral and dull, with nary even a freckle to add a spot of interest.
She was just…there, like a dust mote in a shaft of light.
Her perpetual insignificance had helped her through scrape after scrape. Chloe would never admit how much she wished, just once, to see a flicker of recognition reflected back at her.
Not that her expectations of Faircliffe were high. What type of conceited, coldhearted knave blithely gave awayapainting he did not ownas a courtship gift?
A villain like that could not be trusted or reasoned with. He’d had his chance to deal honorably. Chloe wouldn’t beg him for the painting even if she could. At this point, the duplicitous, arrogant blackguarddeservedto have it whisked out of his hands.
She forced her tense fingers to unclench and folded them in her lap.Soon.
