Page 25 of A Wallflower for the Disguised Earl

“It is a cowardly strategy,” he stated, completely ignoring her observation.

“Is it cowardly to protect oneself?” Corinna refused to look away from the intense fire burning in his blue eyes.

“Protection is one thing,” he argued.

“Or is it merely a sensible defense against a world that judges absolutely everything by its outer polish?” Corinna pressed, feeling the magnetic, undeniable pull between them growing stronger by the second.

“It becomes cowardly the moment it deceives those who act in good faith.” His expression turned agonizingly severe.

“Then you believe honesty is the only path?” Corinna’s breath hitched in her throat as he stared down at her.

“I believe the most dangerous thing a person can do in a room full of performers is let someone see them clearly,” he said, stripping away every single trace of his usual servant’s deference.

The words hung between them in the warm, perfumed air, entirely stripped of the polite social nonsense that governed the rest of the crowded opera house.

“Or,” he added, his voice barely audible over the distant tuning of a violin, “to let themselves be seen as something they are not.”

Corinna knew the difference. She knew this was the exact moment where she ought to retreat, to make a clever, hollow joke about the soprano’s gown and restore the safe wall of polite fiction between them.

Yet she did not want to retreat. She opened her mouth to speak, knowing with absolute certainty that something needed to be said to shatter the dangerous, exquisite spell holding them bound together in the quiet alcove.

Ask him, she told herself frantically, her fingers tightening around the ivory ribs of her fan. Ask him why his eyes look like a storm when he speaks of honesty. Ask him what he is hiding.

She was about to speak. She did not know exactly what she was going to say, only that something monumental needed to be said right then and there.

Just then, the crowd near the grand staircase shifted violently.

An urgent murmur rippled through the corridor, traveling faster than spilled wine on a tablecloth. Heads turned rapidly, conversations died mid-sentence, and painted fans fluttered to a halt.

“Who on earth is that?” a woman nearby whispered loudly, gripping her companion’s arm.

“Look at the cut of that bodice, it must be French,” another matron muttered in a scandalized tone.

“I have never seen her before in my life,” a gentleman added, his voice thick with undisguised intrigue.

The ambient hum of the corridor dipped into a curious hush as the wealthy walking parties pulled back toward the silk-covered walls, creating a wide, clear path.

Through the newly opened space walked a woman who seemed to move without the slightest hurry, entirely indifferent to the hundreds of gaping stares trailing in her wake.

She was stunning. Her hair was an extraordinary, vibrant shade of deep copper, styled into an intricate, tumbling heap of glossy curls that caught the gaslight like spun bronze. She perfectly matched the scandalous description Lady Sophronia had whispered in the park just days before.

She was swathed in an exquisite gown of dark emerald silk that clung to her tall, commanding figure with a daring French cut, completely devoid of the modest English lace that wrapped every other matron in the room. She was elegant, unhurried, and possessed the absolute, quiet confidence of a person who had never once in her life needed to announce her arrival to a room.

That must be Lady Sophronia’s mystery woman from Grillion’s Hotel, Corinna thought, her eyes widening slightly as she took in the dramatic, sweeping line of the stranger’s emerald train. She looks less like a society scandal and vastly more like an impending disaster.

The copper-haired woman moved through the corridor with absolute grace, her dark eyes casually sweeping the faces of the English gentry as though she were inspecting a collection of moderately interesting porcelain figures.

Across the wide expanse of the corridor, standing near the entrance to the main boxes, the earl was currently holding court with Vivienne. He had a glass of champagne in his hand, his handsome face fixed in that dazzling, effortless smile.

The copper-haired woman stopped near the top of the stairs, and her gaze landed directly on the earl across the crowded space.

Corinna watched the stranger’s face closely, noting the exact second her dark eyes locked onto the earl’s fine burgundy coat and his polished, aristocratic stance.

Something sharp and immediate crossed the woman’s striking features. It looked entirely like sudden recognition, a bright flash of surprise that was followed instantly by a cold narrowing of her eyes.

Then, moving her head with a deliberate rhythm, the woman continued her leisurely sweep across the room. She dismissed the earl entirely and scanned the periphery of the corridor.

Her eyes found the quiet alcove. Her eyes found the tall secretary in the plain brown coat.