He was good company. He asked after her opinion of a debate recently published in the Edinburgh Review, and when she gave it, he listened and disagreed on two points and said why, and she found she enjoyed the disagreement considerably more than she would have enjoyed agreement.
“You’ve read Wollstonecraft,” he said, when the figure brought them back together.
“Several times.”
“And?”
“And I think she was right about most of it and the rest of the world has simply not caught up.”
He laughed; a real sound not polished with social effort, and said, “I should like to argue that point with you further.”
“You are welcome to try,” she said.
She said yes to the second dance as well.
Afterward, Lord Ashby returned her to Lady Rosenhall’s side and bowed over her hand.
“I hope to see you at the Greyton masquerade, my lady.”
“I expect we shall be there,” she said.
He took his leave with the uncomplicated ease of a man who had had a pleasant evening and required nothing further from it.
Lady Rosenhall watched him go. “There is a steadiness to that young man,” she said, beneath her breath. “I find it reassuring.”
“He dances very well,” Helena offered.
“He has a good mind,” Annabelle said, which was true, and which was the thing she had noticed first, and in fact the only thing she’d truly noticed.
Dominic appeared at her shoulder before she had finished the thought.
“You danced twice,” he said.
She looked at him, at his neutral expression. His friend—the Marquess Keldwick, behind him—had adopted a rather amused expression.
“He asked,” she said. “He’s good company.”
“He is,” Dominic said.
She blinked. It was not the opening she had expected.
“He is decent, and pleasant, and well-disposed toward you,” Dominic continued. “He has also danced twice with Lady Holwell in two consecutive seasons, twice with Miss Lyle in the one before that, and both times for the same reasons.”
“You know him?”
“I know his situation. He is a viscount of modest income with a taste for comfort, and no evident desire to change his circumstances through his own efforts. He requires a match with social weight.” He glanced toward where Ashby had gone. “He’ll be kind to you. He will always be kind to you. And in three years, the conversation will run out.”
She watched him. “You dislike every man who speaks to me.”
“No.” He said it without heat, without the analytical apparatus he usually deployed. One word, flat and direct, delivered without looking away. “Only the fools.”
She stared at him. He held her gaze and said nothing further, and she was suddenly aware of the warmth coming off him at this negligible distance, the blue of his eyes catching the candlelight, the way his mouth was set in that flat, unreadable line that she was beginning to know too well.
Her fingers tightened once around her fan. The heat kindling in her chest as the focus of that stare spread outward until it reached the tips of her gloved fingers, all the way to the small of her back.
“Then Ashby is a fool?” she said.
“No. He is a reasonable man who will provide a comfortable life for whoever he marries, and who will feel, quietly, that something is missing, and will be too decent to say so.” He set his glass down on the ledge behind him. “A decent man without fire is not a fool. He is the wrong man for someone who has fire.”
