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“All secrets are important. One’s secrets reveal what one values, or what one fears.” She faced him again, chin raised in challenge. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Why do you never tell me your secrets, Leo?”
Her eyes pierced him, but he could never confess. Waste of breath, confessions.
Instead, he offered a lazy smile. “Because I have no secrets. Everyone in Britain knows everything about me already. In fact, people have to invent new secrets for me. I pick up the papers each morning astonished to learn what mischief I have been up to.”
She was not fooled. “Then we are both keeping our secrets tonight,” she said softly.
Sorrow shadowed her features, as if she grieved for something lost. For an unwanted moment, that loss echoed through him too.
Yes, something had been lost, many years ago. And some things that were lost could never be regained.
Their pensive mood was shattered by the amiable bickering and footsteps of her cousins returning. Juno wandered across the room, saying brightly, “’Tis ages since I attended a grand ball. Are you very thrilled to go?”
Another secret: his list of criteria, his need for money for his Foundation, the lady he meant to approach this very night, at the ball.
He spread his hands. “Ribbons, reels, ratafia, perhaps a scintillating scandal over supper? How could one not be thrilled to bits?”
CHAPTER4
“Thrilled to bits,” Leo murmured, as he entered the ballroom, with its heated, eddying swirl of frothy gowns and feathered heads. Orchestral music floated over the tinkles of glass and gossip, while flower arrangements burst from uninspiring vases and leafy palms stood guard in woefully bland pots.
And there was his target: Miss Susannah Macey. She caught his eye over her fan, smiled demurely, and turned away. He headed for her, yet was almost immediately accosted by—oh, so help him, it was her brother Thomas, who had apparently elected to liven up his evening by insulting Leo’s clothes.
“What was that you said, Macey?” Leo asked amiably. “Something about my waistcoat, I believe?”
Tonight’s waistcoat was indeed worthy of comment. The base was peach-colored silk, upon which was embroidered a cluster of primroses, whose upper edges transformed into a cloud of colorful butterflies bursting up over his chest.
But young Thomas Macey was not looking at the exquisite art that Leo wore. His attention darted to his trio of friends, who were watching their exchange with the eagerness of boys at their first peep show.
Ah, yes, Leo knew that set: They had been discussing him at their club that morning, speculating on ways to stir him out of his habitual unruffled calm. He had been seated within earshot, but they apparently believed that if they did not look at him while discussing him, he would not be able to overhear.
Unfortunately for everyone, sound did not work that way, so he had been forced to overhear, as they dared each other to provoke him into losing his temper in public, with a pot of cash for whoever succeeded in baiting him.
Duke-baiting. Really.
No reasonable person would expect a duke to tolerate such insolence. No reasonable person would object if Leo were to squish Thomas Macey like the annoying gnat he was. Leo was not, however, in the business of ruining young men simply for being immature numbskulls.
But Thomas Macey did not need to know that.
“I said, Your Grace,” Macey explained smugly, flicking another glance at his friends, “I learned at a lecture that the purpose of a peacock’s plumage is to attract a mate. It put me in mind of your fondness for ornate embroidery, yet two years divorced and you’ve not yet attracted another wife. Methinks your strategy does not work. For whom do you make yourself so beautiful?”
Leo raised his quizzing glass and examined Macey from brown top to black toe. When he lowered the glass, it was with a disappointed sigh.
“And for whom do you make yourself so … drab?” he countered. “Tell me, doesyourstrategy work? Is your lady even now sighing, ‘Oh, Mr. Macey, he’s so delightfully dowdy. Dear Mr. Macey, he’s so deliciously bland.’”
The younger man smirked. Leo could not abide a smirker. They were almost as bad as the color beige.
“I don’t require bright colors to be noticed,” Macey said. “I have my wit.”
“Wit? Hmm. Perhaps if you dressed your wit in bright colors, I might have noticed it.”
Leo tucked his quizzing glass into the pocket of his waistcoat, took the time to arrange the chain just so, then presented his most ducal stare until Macey looked away. He stepped closer and brushed a speck off his shoulder.
“My dear boy, you’ll have to do better than that if you wish to rile me up enough to win your group’s little game,” he said softly. “And you do need to win, don’t you? A few hundred pounds would help nicely with supporting that secret wife of yours. Daughter of a warehouse clerk, I believe? What will your father say when he learns about her?”
This speech had the interesting effect of turning Thomas Macey into a hooked fish: bulging eyes, gaping mouth, pale clammy skin. “How… How do you know about her?”
“Oh, my dear boy, I know everything.” Leo smoothed down the lad’s lapels, then stepped back, his fingers recoiling from the inferior fabric. Grandson to an earl and the boy could not choose a decent superfine. “Enough of this impertinence. Run along now, and tell your friends not to bother me again.”
