He set down his glass.
Joanna spotted a friend across the room and walked off, leaving Lady Alice alone at the wall with her fan still half raised. She had not seen him. Her eyes were busy as she made her way through the crowd with a slow, careful sweep, looking, evaluating, dismissing. He had no idea what game she was playing, and he was tired of not knowing.
He crossed the room.
He did not announce himself. He walked along the wall behind her, slow and unhurried, until he was at her shoulder, close enough to speak into her ear, close enough to smell her hair.
Lemon.
Two years, and her hair still had the same scent.
Of course.
“May I ask why you are drooling over gentlemen in my sister’s presence? I thought I forbade you from being friends?”
She went very still.
She did not turn. He saw her throat bob and her shoulders tense, and he watched, with what he refused to think of as enjoyment, the shiver that ran down the line of her neck.
“That is not how human relationships work, Your Grace.” She kept her voice low, conversational, gaze still ahead. “But it is all right that you do not understand, given that you do not have any.”
“I have relationships.”
“Of course. The butcher delivers your beef, and you nod at him. I am sure he treasures the connection.”
He stepped around her so that they were facing the same direction, side by side, like any two acquaintances making polite conversation while watching the dance. He could see her profile now. She was trying very hard not to look at him which he found he wished to make difficult for her.
“You are using your fan to rate men,” he remarked.
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“I am identifying which of them I am acquainted with. There is a difference.”
“There is not.”
“There is a great difference, Your Grace, and I shall not have it impugned.”
She had not denied it a second time. She had moved past denial and on to defense which was a tactic that he had used on his solicitors more than once. He was not entirely pleased to see it deployed on him.
“Lady Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
She did glance at him then. Just once, just the smallest flicker of green. She caught his expression and looked away again, and he saw the corner of her mouth move and crush itself flat.
“I see your scowl is well, Your Grace. Pray, give it my compliments.”
“My scowl is your fault.”
“Your scowl is your face’s fault, Your Grace. I have nothing to do with it.”
He had spent a long time training himself not to laugh in ballrooms. The training held. What did not hold was the awareness that she had managed, in the space of three sentences, to put two insults to his face and one to his face’s character in a tone no chaperone in the room could have flagged as inappropriate.
Until tonight, he had not considered that he might have been opposite her at a bargaining table.
“You are remarkably free with your opinions for a young woman on her third Season, Lady Alice.”
