Chapter 12
One of the virtues of being associated with the powerful Lightholder clan, no matter how tangentially, was that Clio had always enjoyed a certain cache in Society.
She’d never been a wallflower; even though her Seasons had been considered failures by virtue of her continued unmarried state, she’d been reasonably popular, if only by people who wanted to ingratiate themselves with her brother or cousins.
Not tonight, though.
Tonight, she might as well have been invisible, for all the attention she was getting.
She pretended she didn’t notice—like hell was she going to give these vultures the satisfaction of seeing that, despite everything, this did wound her somewhat—but it was much, much harder to pretend she didn’t notice that Hector had the opposite problem.
He wasn’t a good dancer, not by Society standards. He made errors now and again. He glowered.
And yet the women of the room seemed drawn to him like moths to a flame, and, frankly, Clio couldn’t blame them.
“You’re making a fool of yourself, you know.”
The words, not to mention their snide tone, made Clio turn. A tall woman whose red hair added more than a few inches, given how towering she’d made her coiffure, sniffed down at Clio.
“I beg your pardon,” Clio said in that flat tone that turned the polite phrase into a covert go to hell.
The woman—Clio didn’t even recognize her, which somehow felt all the more insulting—did not go anywhere, let alone a cursed dimension.
“You aren’t his wife,” she snipped. “You aren’t his betrothed. He ruins you and then still doesn’t want you? Pathetic.”
Clio reared back. “And you feel that accosting a woman you don’t even know isn’t pathetic?”
“I don’t need to know you,” the woman retorted. “I know your ilk. You are here as what? A mistress? When I marry the duke, he won’t continue to consort with the likes of you. Honestly. How low can you get?”
Clio was prepared to retort when a hand landed on her shoulder.
“Even if I knew who ye were,” Hector said, his voice a low, warning grumble, “I would never marry a viper with a tongue like that. Apologize at once.”
The woman’s complexion went so frighteningly pale that Clio wondered if she was going to faint dead away.
“Your Grace,” she said, all traces of her previous snobbish tone evaporated. “I just meant … You deserve only the best …”
“Funny,” Hector said, sounding as though he found it anything but. “That’s not what an apology sounds like where I come from.”
And then he flat-out turned his back on the other woman, until he was facing only Clio. It was so rude that she almost couldn’t believe he was doing it … except, of course, she could. This was Hector.
For the first time, his blatant disregard for propriety made her want to laugh aloud.
“Dance with me, Clio,” he said, completely ignoring the other woman’s gasp of alarm at the use of her given name.
It was an order, not a request. Which was rude, yes, but this time it did make Clio laugh aloud.
“Oh, fine then,” she said, and the woman gasped again, but Hector smiled, which Clio found was the only part she cared about.
He led her onto the floor, and a hush fell across the ballroom; nobody bothered to hide their speculative glances as the recently-ruined miss partnered with the blacksmith duke.
“Ignore them,” Hector commanded, his voice as hard as the iron he’d bent at his forge. “They don’t matter.”
Clio began to protest this, out of habit if nothing else, but the music began, and they spun into the first steps of a dance.
“You’re really rather good at this, considering,” she said after a moment, before cringing at how rude this sounded. But, as ever, Hector seemed best pleased when she was ignoring every rule she’d ever learned.
“Ah, I’m passable,” he said. “I’ve had my butler bothering me all week to learn. Said it was important for a gentleman.”
He sounded almost fond beneath the grumbling, and Clio found herself irrepressibly charmed that this curmudgeon of a duke could be bullied by his butler.
“He isn’t wrong,” she reminded him.
“Well,” Hector allowed, “he reminded me that I only have to lead—to stop us from crashing into walls and whatnot. You’re the one who has to make us look graceful and beautiful.” He paused, and the way he looked at Clio made her fight a blush. “With you, that’s easy.”
She found the words far less pleasing than the glance.
“Is that all I am to you, then?” she demanded. “A pretty face?”
He shrugged one shoulder, and Clio couldn’t deny that it hurt.
“Your beauty is hard to overlook. I cannot be the first to note it.”
She wished she could look away from him, but the sea of hostile faces provided little reassurance.
“That is what I am to you, then,” she said. “Simple. Predictable.”
His bark of laughter was harsh. She was still half turned away from him, so when he leaned into her to breathe in her ear, she saw the way the observers' eyes widened.
“Anything but, princess,” he purred. “You are a tiny devil who has plagued my mind since you broke that little toy, and then the carriage. You were a menace then, and now you have become a menace to me.”
Strangely enough, she liked these words better than any flattery about her beauty. She shivered at the feel of his cheek hovering a hairsbreadth from hers.
Then she saw a flash of red hair—the woman from before—and she gathered herself.
“We’ve provoked the public enough, Your Grace,” she said stiffly, holding her arms to put more space between them. “People are already calling me your mistress.”
He was incorrigible, so of course, this did not deter him.
“Ah, but if you were mine, we could have more of those kisses that you seemed to like so much,” he told her, and she had to physically restrain herself from shuddering. “Of course, if you don’t like the title ‘mistress,’ you could always be my wife.”
“I should slap you,” she hissed at him. Her thoughts were in tumult, because he was being provoking, irritating, and awful … and some stupid part of her wanted to just agree to everything she proposed. “You’re lucky there are too many witnesses.”
“Oh, princess.” He tsked. “If you were truly offended, you’d slap me anyway.”
Oh, forget this. She was already a scandal; walking away from the floor in the middle of a dance could hardly make it worse. She tried to tear free from his arms, but he held her tight.
“What do you really want, Clio?” Suddenly, his voice was all seriousness, none of the previous teasing anywhere to be found. “And why do you look so lost any time I ask you that question?”
Clio was so sick of people accusing her of not knowing her own mind. She was tired of everyone thinking that she was hiding—or lost, as Hector had put it. It was offensive. It was infantilizing.
And worst of all, she feared they were right.
She yanked free again, and this time he released her.
She raised her chin and gave him her haughtiest look, making herself every inch the princess he’d named her.
“Thank you for the dance, Your Grace,” she said, making politeness into a weapon. “I bid you goodnight.”
And then, before she could see how anyone reacted to this—Hector, least of all—she spun on her heel and left the room, determined not to dwell on how much this looked like running away.
“So, is your plan to just lurk at her until she gives in?” Ramsay’s voice didn’t startle Hector—he wasn’t a child playing hiding games—but it did make him jolt slightly.
Which was entirely different.
“I’m not lurking,” Hector protested, moving back to conceal himself more fully around the corner, from which vantage he had been watching Clio’s left ear as she talked to her brother’s wife in the parlor. It was the most he’d seen of his would-be betrothed all day.
Her gaze darted to his, then held. He likely should have looked away. A true gentleman would have. But he didn’t.
And she didn’t, either.
He let his mouth quirk up at the corner.
A flush crossed her cheeks. Oh, that was pretty. He let himself think about other ways that he could make her blush. He let her see the thoughts in his eyes.
Ramsay cleared his throat. Hector was probably going to strike him before this whole stupid misadventure was over.
“Certainly not,” Ramsay agreed, with a broad grin that made Hector really want to punch him. Some days, he lamented that they weren’t boys any longer. Ten years ago, he would have already had his friend on his arse in the dirt.
“She’s being obtuse,” Hector protested. “I told her: either she could find another man at this party, or she could marry me. It’s obvious she hasn’t got another suitor. So, it’s ridiculous for her to drag her feet.”
From behind Ramsay, Jonathan let out an exasperated groan that he failed to hide behind a cough.
Those two had been thick as thieves these past few days, and they had combined their efforts into something greater than the sum of its parts to drive Hector mad.
Introducing them would no doubt go down as one of his life’s great regrets.
Ramsay, who was not employed by Hector and therefore felt no pressure to hide his disdain, rolled his eyes expansively.
“Oh, yes, you told her to marry you. It’s really no wonder she isn’t tripping all over herself to do your bidding.”
Hector scowled. When he said it like that, it sounded bad.
“It’s more complex than that,” he protested.
“Is it?” Ramsay did not sound convinced.
Hector stood by his initial point, however.
Clio was being obtuse. She clearly didn’t actually want to hie off to the Continent.
If she did, she would have done so already, rather than pretending to ignore all the snide remarks from the Society toffs that he’d been forced to invite to make it seem that he wanted more than one guest at this so-called party.
And the two of them clearly held an attraction for one another. He didn’t doubt that. Every interaction, from the very beginning, had held sparks. And true, many of those sparks had been antagonistic, but nobody had ever said that such a thing didn’t make for good rapport in the bedchamber.
So why was she avoiding him instead of coming to her senses?
He could only assume it was some kind of ton nonsense that he would never understand.
“We just need to speak frankly with one another,” he said. “Get this whole thing … out in the open.”
Ramsay arched a brow at the hesitation, correctly guessing that it obscured the notion that Hector didn’t want to do anything out in the open with Clio. No, he wanted to take her to his bed and not let her leave until she saw sense.
“Well,” he said, his mouth kicking up at the corner. “You’ll have to try again later.” He nodded over Hector’s shoulder at the parlor, which was now—damn it all—empty. “She’s given you the slip again.”