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“Your aunt has told me that I really should drop by more often,” Lord Remington said. “I think she has a bit of a crush on me.”
“Oh?” Marta returned. “That’s a grand thing. Have you asked my uncle if he might consider giving her up?”
Lord Remington’s laugh was pompous, strange, coming from high up in his throat. “I don’t suppose I’ve met anyone like you, Marta. I…”
But Penelope interjected, forcing Ewan’s attention back towards her. It was where he belonged, anyway. Her voice stuttered for a moment, proof that perhaps she was a bit more nervous than Ewan might have considered her to be.
“Baldwin seems terribly lonely, don’t you think?” she said. But immediately, she pressed her lips together and cast her eyes towards the ground. The movement was so comical that Ewan laughed aloud, his belly quaking. “What is it?” she demanded, her eyes growing fiery.
“Nothing. You just brought up the only thing you didn’t wish to bring up, didn’t you? You didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that, well, you and Baldwin were once…”
“All right. Of course,” she said with a sigh. “You know me altogether too well, although I feel you’ve only come to know me through a very particular lens.”
Ewan’s heart jumped. “Are you suggested that you’d like to allow me to get to know you through a separate lens?”
She gave a light shrug with a gorgeous, glowing shoulder. “Perhaps I could see something worthwhile in that sort of thing. Although please remember. I’ve been burned before, and I won’t take kindly to that kind of thing again.”
Ewan felt as though his eyes might bulge from his head. Slowly, a smile spread between his cheeks as they swept across the floor, both seemingly enthralled with this sudden potential. Attraction billowed off of Ewan in waves, seeming to toss itself across Penelope, whose eyes glittered with mad excitement.
“You don’t suppose Baldwin will mind, do you?” she asked. Her voice was timid, mouse-like.
“I think Baldwin is entirely too practical for this sort of jealousy,” Ewan returned.
The music petered to a halt. Ewan’s eyes flashed to the side to find Baldwin, his arms crossed over his broad chest, and his black eyes directed towards the Duke and Marta. Marta’s smile was vibrant—difficult to decipher. Had the Duke’s plot to win her affection triumphed? Ewan studied her face and noted her eyes: almost grey, despite the bright candlelight surrounding her. Perhaps this was an indication that all wasn’t entirely well.
“Would you excuse me?” Ewan asked Penelope. “I’ll find you later. Perhaps another dance won’t hurt. We must avoid any sort of scandal.” He said the final words with an air of sarcasm, as though anyone paid any close attention to Ewan Thompson enough to declare that he’d stepped over any line.
Ewan strode towards Marta. The Duke remained almost pinned to her, his chin directed towards her face and his pompous language seeing to steamroll over her. Marta’s eyes brightened when she spotted Ewan.
“Hello, dear cousin!” she said, interrupting the Duke. His face turned sour upon Ewan’s arrival.
“Marta, you speak as though we’ve spent many months apart, instead of only one song,” Ewan said with a cackle.
“The Duke was only just informing me of his rather remarkable interest in paintings from the 1600s. Largely of, what was it, My Lord? Ships?”
“Battle weapons and armoured ships, yes,” the Duke said, seemingy unable to comprehend that Marta belittled him with fine-tuned insults.
“That sounds terribly fascinating, My Lord,” Ewan said. His voice remained flat and void of emotion. “I dare say that there are plenty of those very such paintings in this mansion itself. Why don’t you go and investigate?”
Lord Remington’s ears perked up. He arched his brow towards Marta and said, “I don’t suppose you’d like to take some sort of tour of the mansion with me? I’m sure it can be arranged.”
Fear permeated across Marta’s face. Ewan recognised that he’d pushed her into a wretched situation. It was clear Lord Remington was the sort of man to tug Marta into the darkest corner and attempt to have his way with her, regardless of whether she wanted the same.
Ewan cleared his throat and said, “I believe my mother wants a word with both of us, unfortunately. She only just passed me by and demanded I bring you for a bit of a chat. I dare say the old girl doesn’t have much longevity this evening, what with her puffy feet. You understand, don’t you, Lord Remington?”
Lord Remington did not, in fact, give the air of the sort of man who understood things as a rule. In fact, empathy was surely the sort of word he’d only heard once or twice, and nothing he’d managed to incorporate into his day-to-day. Of course, as the music swarmed the air once again, it seemed there was nothing for him to do but nod, give a sneer-like grin and say, “I suppose I’ll catch you for another dance later, My Lady.” He nodded gravely, as though this was a cross he had to bear in the pursuit of some higher purpose.
When they abandoned him, Marta gripped Ewan’s hand and allowed her smile to fall, as though she dropped a bouquet of flowers upon the ground. Ewan recognised that her body quaked, something he could only tell from the tiny shaking of her fingers over his shirt.
Ewan’s mother lurked in the garden, holding court over a tiny crowd of middle-aged party-goers. Ewan was impressed. Her voice bellowed out through the air over the high-cut hedges and shot up towards the bright, round moon.
“And that’s when I told my beautiful sister, just send her to England! Austria is no place for a stunning English girl like Marta. Oh, you must have seen her. The Duke has really taken with her. Already, I have plans for a late-summer wedding, although it’s difficult to say, isn’t it? It’s already late June. Time just slips away during the season. My heart aches for my own memories of it all. Yes, these are days that Marta will truly always uphold as some of the best of her life.”
Hearing this, Marta squeezed Ewan’s elbow harder. Ewan muttered, “The old bird was the reason you were sent here, hmm?”
“I suppose so.”
“I wouldn’t uphold it too much,” Ewan said. “She very well could be lying to benefit herself. She’s never been one to avoid sprucing up the truth when it behoves her.”
