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“This ol’ boy is foolish enough to think the American Republic will declare war.”
Rafe let the argument carry itself. The three men required little more than the occasional laugh or grunt from him, and though he raised the edge of his glass to his lips twice, he never took another swallow.
By the time Lady Bancroft was arranging her guests for dinner, the conversation had moved on to a fresh disagreement about horse racing, a topic Rafe knew blessedly little about. His back was half turned to the men, scarcely listening. Miss St. Quinton was somewhere toward the front of the room … One of the men behind him was pulled away, and then the other two …
Rafe was the last to join the ludicrous line of matched pairs. The woman he was to escort to dinner was old enough to be his mother twice over, a physician’s widow who fanned her bad breath at him when she echoed his pleasantries and took his arm.
Entering the dining room, like all things in this convoluted-godforsaken-falsely-polite-society, was dictated by rank. That placed a far, far distance between himself and Miss St. Quinton.
Once seated around the candlelit table, Rafe was able to confirm what he already suspected: Miss Penney wasn’t among the crowd. And he had been wedged between the widow, who now slurped her soup, and one of the arguing men, who bellowed across the table to argue about …
Rafe paused to listen for the first time in several minutes. The weather. The dunces were dueling it out over the damned weather.
His presence here felt suddenly useless. There was nothing for him to gain—unless one counted weight. A roast chicken that surely weighed half a stone was set down before them, glazed in honey brown and enshrined in a mound of vegetables.
Just smile and eat. Stay for port like all the other men, and then concoct some excuse to leave.
At the other end of the table, the footman serving the wine was pouring a glass for Miss St. Quinton. When he made to rise, she gestured with her hand and spoke to him. The servant frowned, but bowed again and added more of the opaque plum liquid to her glass.
Rafe’s first instinct had been to think she looked tired. But the longer he watched, he wasn’t so sure. She smiled fully now, talking animatedly to those around her. She tossed her head back laughing, exposing the long, pretty lines of her throat. And she kept reaching for that glass—sip after greedy sip, refill after refill.
By the time dessert was cleared and the ladies retired to the drawing room, he had learned to pick her laugh out of the crowd of voices. And when she stood, her hand shot to back of her chair, clinging to it for an extended moment before she walked away with the rest of them, all beauty, all grace.
Rafe didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. He wished he weren’t here to witness the scene in the first place, but worse, he was worried about it. About her.
When the men at last funneled into the drawing room, card tables had been arranged and the ladies sat by with half empty teacups. He was done fighting it: he scoured the room for Miss St. Quinton the instant his feet crossed the threshold.
She was sitting—no, positively slouching—in a wingback chair with her hand on her chin. The angle at which she pressed into the cushion made a rolled curl on the top of her head spring loose, and so far from giggling, she looked half asleep.
Who here was her mother? Her father? No one seemed to claim responsibility over her despite her clearly intoxicated state.
No one will come looking for me.
Her words echoed in Rafe’s mind. Of course. The Penneys had escorted her to the ball that night, and when she went to the hospital with him, she’d told her parents the Penneys had taken her to the theater. There had been nothing untoward about her extorted visit to Greenwich, and yet, she’d had to coerce a stranger into taking her. The ugly little pieces started to mend into cohesion.
Rafe claimed the vacant edge of the sofa beside her. Leaning his body in her direction without turning his head, he asked, “Who brought you tonight?”
“What’s it matter?” Her voice was a shade too loud, the spaces between her words blurring.
“It matters because someone ought to take you home. And if it’s not them, I expect it’s to be me.”
Silence.
Rafe hadn’t acknowledged that was his purpose until the words left his lips, but now his heart thudded in his chest. “Well?” he pressed.
“My chaperones,” she slurred, the words curling with disgust, “are stuffy and old, but they like whist, so they won’t dream of—”
Rafe couldn’t prevent his grin, even as he leant forward and shushed her.
Her thin, angular black brows crept together. “What?”
“Why don’t you tell me all about it, but do so only once we’re outside.”
“Will that big friendly man be driving us?”
“Chenoweth?” Rafe asked as he rose from his seat. “Always.”
She placed her hand in his and stood on shaky legs. “W-wonderful.”
