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It was a welcome surprise to encounter a friendly face in Town. No matter that Annie was a stranger. There was something so effervescent and open about her. Brigid was immediately predisposed to like her.
“I could picture it so clearly based on your vivid descriptions,” Annie said.
“I wish we could spend more time together so I get to hear the rest of the story. Where does the mysterious silver man take Titania? Who is he? What does he want with her?”
“And, importantly, what does she want with him,” Brigid added.
Behind Annie, a very tall, very handsome blond man loomed. He was so beautiful, supernaturally so, that Brigid couldn’t help but tip her head back and gawk at him.
Noticing the direction of her gaze, Annie jumped in with introductions.
“Allow me to present to you my…cousin…Lord Larkin…the Marquess of Avondale,” Annie supplied with suspicious pauses every other word, as if she was plagued with short-term memory loss.
Or lying through her teeth.
Brigid hated when people lied. She could always tell. But the earnest look on Annie’s face showed that she meant no harm. If she lied, Brigid gave her the benefit of the doubt that she had good reason.
After all, she had learned from an early age that people told little white lies all the time, especially in polite society. Such as:
Why, you look absolutely fetching in yellow, my dear Brigid. Like a daisy in bloom.
When she resembled more an over-tipe lemon when she gazed at herself in the mirror.
But she knew that her family meant well. They loved her despite her unfortunate looks.
“My Lord,” Brigid murmured, bobbing in a slight curtsy and extending her hand for a shake.
The inhumanly gorgeous man briefly clasped her fingers and squeezed before letting go. The warmth of his touch seeped all the way through her gloves.
In any other circumstance, and were she any other woman, she might have sighed with captivation and melted in a metaphorical puddle at the stranger’s feet. He was that astonishingly good looking.
But Brigid had her heart set on someone else entirely. No other man could possibly compare.
Even if he was but a figment of her imagination.
Instead of simpering over the golden god, Brigid wondered whether she should have made her curtsy more dramatic. But this was 1841, after all. Surely Londoners had already adopted more modern social graces?
She’d read that on the Continent and in far flung Colonies, curtsies and bows were reserved for the ballroom or other strictly formal occasions nowadays. Nevertheless, she hoped she hadn’t embarrassed herself with her backwoods Highlander ways.
“This is Lady Brigid, Benjamin dear,” Annie was saying. “She’s newly in Town from the Highlands of Scotland. Imagine that!”
“Pleasure,” Lord Larkin said with a smile, tipping his top hat. It was small and quick but dazzling all the same.
Brigid estimated his age to be younger than her own. But he was clearly aman. More so than every other man of his age group that she’d ever encountered.
There was somethingoldabout him. It was in his eyes. They were bottomless pools of the clearest blue. They saw things.
Knewthings.
He was an old soul, this Lord Larkin. A kindred spirit perhaps. For Brigid could swear her own soul was far more ancient than her temporal twenty-five years.
She turned back to Annie. The young woman was special as well, though her eyes didn’t have the same wealth of memories trapped in them.
“I am glad you liked my fanciful tale,” she said. “I am a connoisseur of fairytales, you might say. I was raised on them in the oral tradition back home. It seems that you share my interests. How happy I am to meet a friend.”
“Oh indeed,” Annie quickly agreed. “I adore fairytales of all sorts. Benjamin too! He kind of studies them, in fact.”
“Truly?” Brigid asked, turning to the beautiful blond adonis.
