Page 44 of A Lady’s Guide to Subterfuge and Science

You are the most interesting person at this ball by far.

She wasn’t interesting. She was a fool.

“Are you all right?”

Kalila placed both of her palms on the smooth wood of her desk. Taking a deep breath, she said, “You’re right.”

“I am?” Dameer echoed. He cleared his throat. “That is to say—I am.”

How had she allowed herself to become so distracted that she’d lost sight of her goals? Granted, the freedom had been intoxicating. She’d been diverted by her fellow scientists.

She’d been diverted by Oliver. Because he was handsome and charming and sincere and—

She felt so very human when she was around him. The last man had made her feel quite the opposite. Edward Morris had made her feel like an oddity, like something that needed fixing if she were to continue to receive his affections. Oliver had given his attention to her freely, even when she was out of her trousers and no longer on equal footing with him.

It was no wonder she’d grown inattentive toward her work, but it did not make it acceptable.

“I need to focus,” she said.

“Yes,” Dameer agreed. He paused. “Kalila?”

She turned to him, her heart hammering in her chest.

“Do you like him?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she snapped, going to the wardrobe. “That is not what I came here to do.”

“But—”

She produced the day’s suit and stepped behind a screen to begin pulling the various pieces on. “I’ve wasted far too much time already.”

“I don’t want to pry,” Dameer said, “but did you spend the entire ball in his company?”

Kalila poked her head out from around the screen. “Too busy to notice, were we?”

“I wasn’t going to watch you all night,” Dameer muttered, turning pink. “I had other things to attend to, you know.”

“Other people, perhaps?” Kalila asked, retreating behind the screen as Dameer threw a pillow in her direction.

“Answer the question.”

“It was just the terrace,” she said. “There was no need to risk any more than I already had.”

That, and she’d just been—overwhelmed. He wanted to see her.

Why?

She still didn’t understand. Someone like Oliver Booth—arguably her opposite in every way—shouldn’t want to be around someone like her. He should want to be around someone charming, who laughed easily and was free of cynicism. It wasn’t about insecurity—not entirely—but rather about logic. Things were meant to make sense, were they not?

It had been critical for her to extract herself from the situation. Not only had she been at risk of discovery, but there was another, more terrifying risk that had begun to creep up on her.

One that had followed her off the terrace, even.

Still, she had to focus on her primary purpose, which was to convince Comerford to allow women into the Society. She had never in her life failed to complete a task she’d assigned herself, and a man wasn’t going to change that. Even if that man was Oliver Booth.

“Well,” she said, coming out from behind the screen, “I’m off.”

Dameer, who had apparently decided to go back to sleep, sat up with a groggy, “Shall I walk with you?”