Mrs. Pryor gave me a polite bow in greeting. Miss Blackwell’s graceful shoulders lifted as she turned toward me. I caught the briefest flicker of her eyes as she traced the cut of my coat and the fit of my white breeches.
I’d never understood men who used a uniform as a means of garnering the attention of women, but that flick of her eyes had me suddenly feeling a bit more charitable to even the most flamboyant of cavalry officers.
I swallowed. What was Miss Blackwell doing to me? I’d always been true to Harriet. Never once had I been tempted by a smiling face or a fine figure. I forced my eyes away from Miss Blackwell and found Harriet standing next to Brookhouse, watching me. A slow, steady smile rose to her lips, and my heart landed heavily in my chest.
As indifferent as she had been to me throughout this house party, she hadn’t been indifferent at Applewood, and she didn’t seem indifferent now.
I had to speak to her. If Harriet had spent the last six years waiting for me, setting aside other prospects because of the promise she’d made me, I couldn’t abandon her.
I wouldn’t be like my father.
The dinner bell rang and I started. The time would come when I would speak to Harriet, but before that happened, I needed to sit through at least one more dinner with Miss Blackwell by my side.
I strode toward Miss Blackwell, pausing only to give a brief nod to those of the party I passed on my way. She didn’t watch my progress, her graceful neck lowered and her head bent down and away from me. She still wouldn’t look at me. All my righteous thinking of only a moment ago fled. If we were alone, I would have lifted her chin with the knuckle of my white-gloved index finger and brought her gaze to mine.
It would have been highly inappropriate, but as I’d said to her at Applewood, we’d done much more inappropriate things.
“Miss Blackwell?”
Her eyes flicked up, and then away, before she very gently wrapped her hand around my arm, almost as if she were trying to be careful with me. In all the evenings I’d escorted her, she’d never been careful or soft in her touches. She’d grabbed my arm with force and clamped her fingers into my forearm like a vise grip. One evening she’d even pulled me this way and that to make it look as though I couldn’t walk a straight line.
I almost didn’t recognize her. I could have used some of this softness when she’d had me chasing a shuttlecock on our first day of warfare.
General Blackwell and his wife led the party into the dining room with their partners, and I took that moment to tip my head toward her. “I believe introductions are in order. I am Captain John Calder. May I ask who I’m escorting into dinner this evening?”
Her lip turned up in a smile and she glanced up at me through the corner of her eye. “I am the same woman I’ve always been.”
“Impossible. The Evelyn Blackwell I know has never been this compliant.”
“You are done seeing only the worst of me. I shall now be as sweet and helpful to you as an an—” She broke off suddenly, but not suddenly enough.
A jolt of pure pleasure shot up through my legs and chest and straight to my mouth, which erupted into a wolfish grin. “Angel?” I asked.
She cleared her throat softly. “Well, yes, now that you mention it.”
I sneaked a quick glance at her. A soft blush colored her cheek. It seems my comment at the shooting range had hit themark. I’d figured as much when she’d shot so poorly, but I didn’t mind an additional confirmation in the form of a blush.
Perhaps Miss Blackwell wasn’t as indifferent to the fact that I’d kissed her as she pretended to be—not if simply telling her how angelic she had looked brought heat to her face.
I’d done nothing to endear myself to Miss Blackwell. She’d seen me ill and at my very worst. I’d kissed her without her permission—without even knowing who she was. And we had spent most of this house party playing a game of cat and mouse, in which I had always been the mouse, trying desperately to escape her.
If by some miracle I’d been wrong about Harriet, or if by chance Brookhouse had managed to surpass me in her affections, was there a world where Miss Blackwell might be convinced to care for me?
She was a stark contrast to the calm and steady beacon of hope that Harriet had been.
During every battle, through every lonely night, with letters from Arthur and May getting lost on their way more often than not, I’d been certain all I wanted was a family that was steadfast and sure. And Harriet was that. She had seemed to be a battle already won and a future secured. Every time I had enquired about her to find her still unattached, that security grew firmer.
Nothing about Miss Blackwell was secure.
My feelings for her were as foolhardy as rushing, outnumbered and without reserves, toward a superior force.
The woman by my side could decimate me.
Being decimated once in a lifetime should have been enough.
But here I was, wishing I was free enough to throw myself into the fray.
The two of us didn’t talk after we sat. She spoke to Brookhouse in such animated tones it was clear she’d been completely unaffected by our conversation, while I stayed silent.
