He lowered a brow, concern not as pleasant a look on him as joy. “Do you refuse me if she does not come?”
“Mon Dieu. I should.”
He grinned. “Until tomorrow. Then the following night, I shall call for you early.”
“Why?”
“I will need minutes to kiss you into this same state. This look of…agreement.”
Courage raged through her, a warm ally to her desire. “You mean enchantment.”
He stepped so near that she felt his strong chest against her arm. “I do. I will work to see more of it. I must go, lest I cannot contain myself here on Ashleys’ doorstep.”
“Oh, Evan.” She must not mourn this, but rejoice that this man whom she adored could be so gallant. “I have never before seen a man who cannot contain himself over me.”
“I hope you like what you see now.”
“I do,” she whispered, his lips too appealingly risquéfor midday in brilliant sunlight. “You must go. Now.”
Chapter Eleven
20 Grosvenor Square
London, England
Inès pushed aside the drapes to glance out the salon window. Today was Gus’s reception, and she saw only two neighbors strolling on the street. No strangers lingered outside the house today. Again, she was free. No one had come to check on her.
Did an agent watch from somewhere she could not detect? She prayed not. She prided herself that if someone did follow her, she would know the signs. Her skin would prickle. Her hair would rise. But she was free of all that. Had been since she arrived in England. No one was ever there, tracking her, watching her.
She rejoiced. She despaired. Could she believe that Vaillancourt did not care about her actions here?Je ne sais quoi.I don’t know what to think.Luc was still in prison. She had no reason to think otherwise. Vaillancourt would not let him go out of any kindness of his heart. That man had no kindness. Nor a heart.
“My lady?” The Ashleys’ butler, Friendly, stood at the door, tall, formidable, with his silver hair and flashing eyes that matched. Well turned out, too, always. Today he reveled in hisrole. A man of seventy or more, he had been in service to the family since he had celebrated his twentieth birthday. He mumbled to himself often, but not today. “I see the carriages arriving.”
“Show them in at once.” Gus nodded at her man. “We are ready.”
He gave her a small bow and disappeared.
Inès strode to Gus’s fortepiano, a gorgeous, magnificent piece, German, much like the one she had purchased for herself for her new house in St. James’s Place. Just this morning, Gus had had the tuner in to attack any problems. Inès ran her hands over the gaily painted pink roses and wild white lilies. She was to play this afternoon and had come down earlier to make certain the instrument struck all the right notes to her satisfaction.
For the past weeks here as the Ashleys’ guest, she had refreshed her abilities with the piano, able to bring her performance on the instrument up to her previous standard. Since she had arrived in England, she had amused herself practicing on this piano. It had not taken her long to improve her abilities, given her extensive performances at the keyboard in the past two years. The instrument she had enjoyed playing in Boulogne was older, not German, but French and constantly out of tune. Regularly, she had ordered in an expert to tune it and used it to entertain herself and her guests. Music soothed her. Eliciting drama and romance, pity and triumph from the keys had, on many occasions, consumed her worries. She would not inhabit a house without benefit of a good piano, and she had shopped for weeks before she found the perfect one in Piccadilly.
A frisson swept through her of that day she’d purchased it. Halsey stood before her in her mind as he had that day. A man no woman ignored, one she met with too much admiration for his striking good looks and too much despair that she could not take him to her, as he so dearly told her with the caress of hiseyes and his lips and his innate charms. A danger, that man. She could not afford him.
“Madam?” Friendly stood on the threshold once more. “Lady Ramsey and Lady Carlisle.”
Inès rushed behind Gus and embraced their two friends after her. “I am so delighted to see each of you.”
“We’ve come to enjoy your good taste, my dear.” Amber pecked Inès on both cheeks and stood back to admire, with a brush of her fingertips, the froth of translucent ivory muslin around her throat. “I adore the effervescent muslin. Educating all of us in Parisian fashion for those of us who have not been there in years, oui?”
Inès demurred. “I have not been in Paris for more than a year.”
The three other women paused, silent at her confession.
She had assumed none of them knew precisely where she had been or what she had done. This statement raised those questions. Each suspected, Inès could conclude, that she had worked for Scarlett in the ensuing years, else, why had she come during the blockade? Still, it was not protocol to ask either of those questions.
“Well, I say for myself,” said Giselle, who rose to the challenge of the silence, “I have come for your cook’s pastry.”
“Ah,” said Gus, jumping in to help save the moment, “she might rival your own skills at that.”
