“I am not blushing.”
“You are. Your face has a pinkish hue. It is rather charming. I have not seen it before.”
“Lady Alice.”
“I do begin to suspect your imagination has run somewhere indecent.”
“My imagination,” he said, “is exactly where you put it, Lady Alice.”
Oh, that is unfair.
She looked away and busied herself with her fan. Her cheeks were warm. She was not going to be the one to look ruffled here. Not after the day she had had. Not after the night she was about to have.
“Explain,” he demanded.
“It is none of your business.”
“You just told me, so you made it my business. Out with it.”
“I do not see how it is your business.”
“You are standing in the middle of the Worthington ball, announcing your intention to ruin yourself in the next hour. I am the brother of your closest friend. I would say it has just become my business very much.”
“That is a stretch, Your Grace.”
“It is not a stretch.”
“It is.”
“Lady Alice.” His voice had dropped. There was an edge to it she had not heard before. “I will ask you one more time, and then I shall begin asking other people.Out with it.”
She glared at him.
He did not budge. Of course, he did not budge. He remained at her shoulder like a stone wall in evening dress, and Alice, who had been planning her ruin for the past three days with the careful single-mindedness of a woman who had run out of options, felt the whole architecture of her plan begin to wobble at the edges.
“I did not mean what you think,” she said.
“Then explain.”
“I need to be seen kissing a gentleman tonight.”
“Absolutely not.”
She did not turn around. She did not need to. She had known the voice the moment it touched the back of her neck. It was low, clipped, every consonant set down in its proper place. The voice of a man who had never in his life misplaced a syllable.
She had first heard it two years ago from the other end of a rose garden at midnight, hissed at her across a gravel path while she had been innocently throwing pebbles at what she had taken to be his sister’s window. He had used the same tone then.Stop trying to ruin my sister.As though Alice were a contagion that had got loose in his house.
She turned her head an inch. Just an inch. Enough that he saw the corner of her mouth twitch.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”
“You will not.”
“Be ruined?”
“Be ruined. Be kissed. Be standing within ten feet of any of the men you have been pointing at with your fan. You will tell me what is going on. You will tell me at once, and then you and I will join your sister and stay there until your parents collect you.”
“You are not my parent, Your Grace.”
