“Oh, dear,” she said. “Would I?”
The butler was announcing dinner.
“May I?” he said, extending an arm to her. “I want to hear all about this gothic marriage of yours. Is it true you married the esteemed Sir Leonard on his eightieth birthday?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “How absurd. You made that up on the spot. Josh. You never heard any such thing.”
“I was trying to be tactful,” he said. “It was his ninetieth, wasn’t it? Come on, I will seat you next to Justin, and we will see if we can worm the truth out of you between us.”
Rosamund had thrown herself wholeheartedly into the light, bantering conversation with Lord Beresford. She had focused her whole mind on him, determinedly ignoring Justin’s presence in the room. She had been hoping that she could secure a place at quite the opposite end of the dining table from him. But she had no choice in the matter. Annabelle was seated to the marquess’s left at the head of the table, the earl next to her. The countess, his mother, sat at the marquess’s right. And her companion had steered her in their direction.
“Justin,” Lord Beresford said, “your assistance, please. Rosamund is being very secretive about the age of her husband on their wedding day. It is somewhere between eighty and ninety. See if you can get the truth out of her.” She sat down and turned her head unwillingly to meet those blue eyes, so familiar, so close.
“Well, Lady Hunter,” he said, “you had better tell the truth, you know. We earls have dungeons in our castles with all sorts of atrocious instruments of torture. I daresay marquesses do, too, and will lend them out for a fee.”
What was the question? She stared at him. His tone was light. He was smiling. Someone was settling into the seat at her other side—she could not even remember who for one stupid moment. She was supposed to say something so that both of them could turn away and escape this embarrassment.
“What was the question?” she asked.
Lord Beresford chuckled at her other side. Josh, of course. He had always got her into more trouble than she ever needed. “The dumb-female act,” he said. “I didn’t expect ever to hear you use that tactic, Rosamund.”
“He was forty-nine,” she said. She smiled brightly and turned back to her dinner companion. “He had not even reached his fiftieth birthday, you see, Josh.”
“Thank you, Justin,” he said solemnly, looking past her. “I shall send her to you again and next time she proves troublesome. Obviously she stands in great awe of you.”
Rosamund never afterward knew how she succeeded in eating anything during that meal or how she managed to converse and laugh with Lord Beresford beside her and with Lord and Lady Sitwell opposite. But somehow she did all of those things and managed completely to ignore the man at her other side.
No, not completely. Her right arm felt warmer, more sensitized than the left. And she kept it rigidly disciplined lest it brush accidentally against his sleeve. And her right eye kept seeing his hands as they held his knife and fork, the long fingers that had touched her.
She turned away to laugh at something Lord Beresford had said.
And then Eva Newton, at his other side, asked for the sugar bowl to be passed and Rosamund reached out a hand to it at the same moment as the earl, and their hands touched— and sprang away as if the sugar bowl had been standing on a hot stove.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, his eyes on her hand as it reached for the bowl again.
Lord Beresford took her by the wrist and passed the sugar bowl on to Eva. “Ah, long fingernails,” he said. “Did you scratch my friend with them, Rosamund? For shame.” Then he grinned suddenly and looked up into her face. “Didn’t you chase after me with these fingernails once upon a time?”
“Yes,” she said, “when you stole the boat and would not let me row out onto the lake with you because I was merely a puny girl, as you put it.”
“Was I ever so ungallant?” he said. “Did you catch me? I can’t remember, though I don’t believe I have any facial scars.”
“No,” she said.
“Did I take you in the boat?”
“No.”
“Ah,” he said, “a discourtesy to be rectified without further delay. I shall row you on the lake tomorrow or the day after if the weather is kind and if my great-aunt does not have other plans for the whole gathering. Annabelle and Justin must come with us to chaperon. You don’t like the sound of that? Neither do I, actually, but the proprieties must be observed. Is that not right, Lady Sitwell?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “In fact, David and I will come too, won’t we, David? I love early spring.”
“Very early,” her husband said. “March is barely here.”
It was inevitable, Rosamund supposed. When one was at a house party, it was almost impossible to avoid one other guest entirely. But it did seem a little unfair that on the very first day she should find herself seated next to him at dinner with plans being made for a boating party of six the next day, of which number they were to make two. But it was inevitable. If she had hoped to avoid him for two whole weeks, she was clearly doomed to disappointment.
Two weeks! She would remain acquainted with him for a lifetime if he was to be married to her niece. He was to be her nephew-in-law, if there were such a relationship. How absurd! How laughable! He would be able to call her Aunt Rosamund. She felt very close to the edge of hysteria. But she was saved for the time at least by Lady Gilmore’s getting to her feet and signaling that it was time for the ladies to leave the gentlemen to their port.
He did not wish to stay to drink port, he had told her once. He had preferred to leave the dining room with her to play cards.
