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“None taken.” Felicity took a turn in touching her friend’s arm. “I myself do not believe we can have both. And since we are both considered the Antidotes of the century”—at least this made Jemima smile—“we must not devote even one iota of our passion and vision to something that cannot occur. While we may not know what will happen in regard to our dreams, at least we will have the capacity to adjust and change them. People are not so easy to change. May I present as exhibits Odious Rollo and Querulous Cecil? My cousins and keepers, navigating the shoals of society with little grace and much dissipation.”
It did not surprise her that Rollo had gone down the road to ruin, but that Cecil, who had once been her friend, was so lost to sober behavior…it was deeply disappointing. In their youth, their families had briefly reconciled, and they had become fast friends but had not met again until her debut. She had hoped they would renew that friendship, but Cecil’s loyalty was entirely with his father and brother, despite the ill-treatment he often received at their hands. “Neither honor me as a relation, much less a woman. I know how to school a horse,” she concluded, “but I have no idea how to deal with the likes of them.”
“I am imagining them with bits in their mouths,” Jemima joked.
Felicity let out a hearty peal of laughter—yet another fault in the eyes of the young bucks. “Indeed! And I am holding the reins in one hand and a long whip in the other.” She laughed again, and she and Jemima toasted with their last cups of lemonade. “I often marvel that we are related,” Felicity said.
“You may be of their bloodline,” Jemima said, “but you are of different stuff altogether. A weave runs true in the hands of the weaver, not in the thread or the wool.”
“We will make of ourselves what we choose,” Felicity concurred, “and the dev—the doodle take the hindmost.”
Suddenly, the usual murmur and shriek of the ballroom reached an almighty roar, like the sound of the sea at high tide in a hurricane, and was remarkable enough in volume to reach the ladies in their secluded corner.
“Must be rather a big fish swimming about,” Felicity said, bestirring herself enough to part the fronds. “Thank heavens the supper dance is next; then I shall spirit myself away for another night. Eleven days to go…” she whispered.
Jemima peeked around a palm. “Oh, dear, is that Querulous heading this way?”
“Blast! No, that is Odious, about to introduce another one of his prospects.” Felicity stashed her cup in the pot of one of the palms and considered fleeing through the French doors.
“I admit I yearn to waltz,” said Jemima.
“If I thought you were lurking here on the fringes in order to keep me company, I should be very cross indeed,” said Felicity, yanking her gown into an even more unflattering aspect.
“Perhaps it is you who are keeping me company.” Jemima waved her fan about like a tiny wing. “I have no chance of acquiring a partner. This is why it is known as yearning.”
Odious and his companion went in and out of sight as they wove through the crowd, which was feverishly pairing up for the final dance before the meal.
“It makes no sense that my cousins insist on matchmaking. They have no right to my money, so why should they be so intent upon my marriage?” Felicity groaned. “And look whom Odious is bringing me. Waltham! His nose will be level with my bosom, and he has pustules on his scalp. Rollo is a beast, if that is not an insult to beasts.”
Jemima’s throaty laugh rang out, full and with an undercurrent of roughness, like the grit in an oyster crafting a pearl. Felicity found it infectious; she turned her back to laugh into the wall so she would not be perceived to be amused by her cousin’s attempt to fob her off on Waltham. As she composed herself, giggling and sighing, she turned to her fate and ended up face-first in a Cravat of Perfection.
Three
It happened in a heartbeat: one moment she was nose-deep in a neckcloth that smelled of starch and sunshine, the next she was being led into the ballroom, a strong hand at her elbow, a warm, deep voice sounding well above her ear. Along with the scent of clean linen, she caught a whisper of vetiver, of soap, and of male—male? What wasmale? It wasn’t a fragrance she could recall identifying before, but if masculinity could be bottled and sold on Bond Street, it would be redolent of this man.
As she fought against the slight slide of the marble floor under her slippers, she managed to sort through further sensory information: the sound of Odious’s protestations, of Jemima’s gasp, of Waltham’s blathering, contrasted with the current silence in the room, a silence pregnant with astonishment; she shuddered, and the hand gripped her arm with authority. Chills cascaded through her veins; the hold did curious things to her person. As did the heat coming off the body that was turning her to face it; as did the feel of the muscular shoulder under her hand as she took the proper position, with her other hand engulfed in a firm grasp; as did the knowledge that this man, whoever he was, was tall enough to be looking down at her. All this hurtled through her mind and body before she had so much as taken a glance at him, all this before she had managed to look up into his eyes.
Icy-blue warmth. A paradox, to be sure, but his eyes were the hue of winter light and yet burned as they gazed upon her. Who would have fancied that eyes such as these would look upon the Honorable Felicity Templeton and burn? It was almost too much to bear, and she sundered the contact to focus upon the Cravat of Perfection. His hand flexed around hers as though…crestfallen. This made no sense. Why should she be able intuit a complete stranger’s emotion through as mundane an action as the squeeze of a hand? She felt the urge to assuage the disappointment and so lifted her chin and looked him in the eye.
The hand flexed again, the thumb stroking her knuckles with relief. It was a ridiculous conclusion to draw, but she was as certain of it as she was of that burning gaze. The entire situation was absurd, that she should be standing up with the likes of him, so far above her touch—whoever he was. Felicity was about to say as much when the violin drew its first note. His right hand nestled itself on her upper back, and she was swept, with elegance and authority, into the waltz.
God—galoshes, he was glorious. His clothing was in the first stare of fashion, yet he didn’t give the impression of having been wrestled into his coat. The broadness of his shoulders was unheard of in a nobleman—did he toss cabers as a pastime? His dark, unruly hair would torment even the least haughty of valets, but it suited the hewn quality of his face. She, who never took vapors, felt exceedingly vaporous. It was time she asserted herself.
“We do not have an acquaintance, sir.” She congratulated herself on her observation of the proprieties, however delayed they might be.
An effortless turn took them around a corner. “Had you been longing to gaze upon Waltham’s pustules?”
She refrained from smiling, much less laughing, as she yearned to do. “I do not know to what you refer.”
“He is famous for his scabrous scalp. Has been since Eton.”
“I find it difficult to believe you and he are contemporaries.”Much less of the same species, she thought. “I would hazard he is greater in age than you are.”
“Not at all. Perhaps the disparity in our apparent youth or lack thereof can be accorded to the possibility that my family’s exquisite breeding has nullified the occurrence of erupting carbuncles.”
Felicity fought to turn her giggle into a cough, but then thought coughing was unrefined and ended up making a noise that sounded as though a fox was being drawn through a wringer.
He didn’t smile, not in the conventional sense, but his eyes shone as if she had given him a marvelous gift. He drew in a deep breath through his nose—had she examined his nose in detail? It was the pattern card for an aristocratic appendage, straight but very large and yet appealing. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he wassmellingher. Her horses exhibited the same flare of nostril when they were making olfactory investigations of their surroundings. But he was clearly a lord of some stripe and likely didn’t go around sniffing strange women.
