Page 36 of This Marquess of Mine

“Griffin?”

His eyes met hers. “Yes?”

She parted her lips, intending to thank him, but the words slipped away as an older woman and her partner passed by, their gawking eyes pricking her skin like needles.

“...it is no less than she deserves…”

“...she brought this upon herself…”

Olivia stiffened, shame scorching the tips of her ears. She sucked in a soundless breath of air and fought to keep her smile.

“Ignore them,” Griffin murmured, giving her hand a staying squeeze. “They are nothing to you.”

She huffed out a humorless laugh. “They are right, though. I do deserve this.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Her gaze fell to his cravat and snagged on the simple diamond pin tucked in the folds of ebony silk. Candlelight caught in the diamond and flashed, as if winking at her. Mocking her.

“The duke proposed to me last Season,” she said, the words acrid on her tongue. “I turned him down. His mother has never forgiven me for it, but I thought Paxton had and that maybe, with a little time, he might ask me again.” She swallowed. “Obviously I was wrong.”

And now it was too late. She’d bungled everything, and the damage had been too great to repair.

Disappointment speared her but she fixed another smile to her lips and kept her gaze on Griffin’s cravat. She would not look for Paxton again. She would not give him the satisfaction.

“Why did you turn him down?” Griffin asked, his tone oddly flat. “I should have thought you’d snap up the first duke to offer for you.”

Silly. Spoiled. Title-chaser.

The words he’d slung at her all those months ago struck her like arrows, poison-tipped, straight through the heart, and her breath caught in her throat. Reality returned, abrupt, unmerciful, an unflinching reminder of his true feelings. His poor opinion.

He is not your friend.

Cloaking herself in pride, she threw him a teasing half-grin. “Isn’t it obvious?” she said airily. “I was holding out for a prince.”

His lips quirked as if torn between a smirk and a smile.

The final strains of the waltz faded to an end, bringing cold reality with it. Olivia fixed her smile and notched her chin up with queenly composure as she laid her hand on Griffin’s proffered forearm.

“Thank you for the waltz, my lord.” She kept her voice light and breezy as they exited the dance floor. “I realize how difficult it must have been for you, dancing with someone you hate. But I am grateful to you.”

She looked at him, and his eyes shuttered. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I don’t hate you, Olivia.”

She arched a brow. “But you don’t like me, either.”

He was silent, no words, not a single gesture to refute her words. Her heart gave a painful thud, and she widened her smile, her armor, before turning and walking away, the echo of his words nipping at her slippered heels.

I don’t hate you, Olivia.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. With shame.

Because despite his ambivalence toward her, despite all her attempts at pushing him away, she still cared what he thought of her.

She suspected she always would.

Several hours and oneinterminably long costume ball later, Olivia flopped onto her back on Emmy’s bed and released a slow, exhausted sigh.

“Well,” she said to the ceiling, “I think this evening qualifies as a complete and utter disaster, don’t you?”