His eyes were dark beneath a thick lock of hair, nearly black in the candlelight, and fixed on her with an intensity that drove every thought from her head.
She stared. She knew she was staring and she couldn't stop. Not at the scar, though that was arresting enough. At his expression. For one instant, before his features locked into something rigid and remote, she saw?—
What? She couldn't name it. A flash of something dark and simmering. Almost as if the sight of her brought him pain. Or fury.
Or…both.
It was disconcerting, to say the least. Few people in London had even noticed her existence, let alone responded with such strong feeling.
But then it was gone. So quickly, she wondered if she’d imagined it. His eyes went flat, and his hands, which had been holding her firmly yet gently, with such extraordinary care, as though she were made of something that might shatter?—
They released her.
So suddenly she nearly fell backward all over again.
She didn’t, but it was close. And it was then that she recognized him.
He was older. Obviously. And so much about him had changed. Not just the scars, but…everything. She almost hadn’t recognized him at all.
"Miss Hale." His voice was low and clipped, and the sound of her name in that cold tone, so devoid of warmth…
It sent a chill down her spine.
But he clearly recognized her too. And he sounded far from pleased to see her.
She opened her mouth. Nothing useful emerged. "I—I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking."
"Yes. I noticed." He stepped back, inclined his head in the barest gesture toward civility, then turned and walked away, cutting through the crowd with the ease of a man for whom people moved aside.
And people did move. She watched them do it. Unlike with her, the crowd didn’t ignore him so much as pretend to ignore him. But she caught the quick nervous glances, the whispered words behind fans that followed in his wake.
Mr. Fairchild reappeared at her side. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, I just…" She trailed off. I just tripped over my own gown seemed rather too clumsy to admit aloud.
"You must have been startled." Mr. Fairchild’s expression was so kind and concerned, she found herself smiling, eager to reassure him.
But before she could reply, he shot a look after the man who’d walked away. "That was the Marquess of Blackwood. Not a man one wishes to stumble into, I'm afraid."
Blackwood. Oddly enough, hearing the title brought back more memories than the man himself had. Maybe because the man himself was terrifying when he was right in front of a lady like that.
But the title…
She could almost hear Andrew’s voice calling it with a laugh. “Blackwood, get inside before the rain starts!”
And she could see the name written in Andrew’s messy scrawl in one of his letters home with his cheerful stories about his schoolmates. Blackwood. Sebastian…
Seb. Seb was what her brother called him most often, at least in his letters, where all propriety and titles were discarded in favor of a good tale.
She stared after him now, though he’d long since disappeared into the crowd.
She could vividly recall the boy he’d been when he’d visited Andrew at their country estate. How he’d pretend to be annoyed when she followed them and then slow his pace so she could keep up.
He’d been kind like that. Awkwardly sweet and accommodating to the little pest who trailed after them. She hadn’t needed Andrew to tell her that his dear friend Seb didn’t have siblings of his own. It’d been apparent from the start.
But he’d been nice, all the same. And…
She frowned as she stared after him.
