Chapter 6 #2
He looked directly at her, holding her gaze.
How rare it was for a person to do that.
Most people’s eyes slid away after a second or two of contact, usually to see if there were someone else in the vicinity they might wish to talk to.
Small lines fanned about his eyes, and his skin was tanned from the sun, contrary to the pallor that was so fashionable for ladies as well as gentlemen.
“Your eyes are the most astonishing color.” The remark slid out before she could catch it.
He drew back. “I have sometimes been told that, thank you,” he said. “I believe blue eyes are quite common, however.”
“Not in such a pure shade.” She peered into his face. “Most blue eyes have streaks of gold, or green, or something else. Yours are the lapis lazuli of a medieval illumination. It was quite a prized pigment, you know—very valuable and difficult to procure. Found only in Afghanistan.”
The creases around his eyes deepened and grooves appeared at the sides of his mouth, warming his austere expression.
He did not resemble a classical sculpture as much as Forsythia Pennyroyal had claimed.
His features had a touch of ruggedness, the nose a bit large, his jaw broad and square, but altogether it was a pleasing countenance.
Too pleasing, if his reputation were to be believed.
He leaned toward her. The bottom dropped out of her stomach, but he was only subjecting her eyes to the same examination she had given him.
Her lungs gulped for air. His eau de cologne brought to mind summer meadows and spicy earth, damson fruit fresh from the tree, humid dusks thick with shadows, and her mother’s elderberry wine as soft on her tongue as a bolt of patterned silk.
She must not be a goose around London’s most notorious seducer.
He straightened. “Gray,” he pronounced. “Rather unusual.”
“Flat gray,” she managed. “Quite unremarkable.”
“On the contrary, all the great ladies of courtly literature have gray eyes. Arthur’s Guinevere. Petrarch’s Laura. They were thought the epitome of beauty.”
Now that was laughable, that Henrietta might possess any feature that came close to the appellation of beauty. “But only when paired with blonde hair, a dainty manner, and a white—”
She almost said “bosom,” but one did not discuss bosoms with a gentleman, particularly not a dissolute roué who must have seen thousands of them. Suddenly overconscious of her own deficiencies in that area, Henrietta moved on to the next display, a death mask.
He would tire of the exchange soon; he had nothing to gain by ruining her. She was not in possession of great beauty, nor great wit, nor great wealth. Whether or not he was as dreadful as portrayed, she still could not be seen as the target of seduction.
His eyes flared. He knew exactly what she had been about to say.
“I have told you my interest. Now you must tell me yours. Art? History? You knew something of the chapel when we met earlier.”
When he had offered her assistance for which she had not yet properly thanked him. She could not be boorish when he had saved her from disgracing herself and her entire family before the Queen. Her foot still smarted from stepping on a pin in the hem of her train.
“I too am a mere dilettante, sad to say.”
“I suppose you shall try to convince me your accomplishments are no more than the average young lady’s. Music, drawing, a smattering of French?”
“French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek,” she could not resist saying. “Well, a little Greek. I am slow at reading.”
“Italian?”
“So I might read Dante in the original.” Charley had promised that discussing books would send potential suitors running, but here he still stood, Lord Daring in the flesh. Strong, masculine flesh.
“The Commedia? How did that go?”
“Slowly. I bogged down in the Paradiso and never finished. Beatrice is so very…virtuous.”
He laughed. It was a deep, splendid sound, pure and unfettered, and several heads in the room turned in their direction.
Panic unfurled along with the bloom of pleasure in her chest at the sound of that laugh.
She was speaking with him! Alone! She had been warned not to encourage him.
Would the Daughters of Minerva think her ruined already?
“Every woman alive wants to be Beatrice, or at least have her power over a man,” he said, his expression amused and—of course not intrigued. Not by her. “You are a very unusual woman, Miss Wardley-Hines. From, it seems, a rather interesting family.”
His eyes drifted across the room to Marsibel, and Henrietta’s suspicions flared. She had not rescued Marsi from Pinochle to deliver her to a different debaucher.
“Lord Daring—” She caught herself. That was not his name.
She gripped her skirts to pull herself together.
“Lord Darien. You rendered me a service this afternoon for which I am deeply grateful. But I will be in the basket if my brother catches me conversing with a man who is a stranger to us. I’m afraid I must bid you good day. ”
Fool! It was far too late to wish someone good day. Further proof he had addled her wits.
“Of course. I should have realized.” He gave her a stiff, formal bow. “Allow me to hope we will meet again. Perhaps I shall see you and your cousin riding in the park tomorrow.”
It was what all the fashionable young ladies did, and Marsibel had tried once or twice to take them on an airing.
But Marsibel was not a strong rider, and if Henrietta were to be in a carriage, she preferred driving herself to a specific destination.
“No,” she said, “I am visiting the parish workhouse tomorrow.”
Dark brows drew down over those magnificent eyes. “The workhouse is hardly the place for a young lady.”
“It is hardly the place for anyone, and yet far more people find themselves there than should be,” Henrietta replied, stung.
She had forgotten that Lord Daring was an aristocrat.
He might be the most elegant, amusing, intelligent, well-looking man she had ever met, but he was also born to privilege and the aristocrat’s belief that anyone in poverty had brought it upon themselves through laziness or weakness of character.
The reminder was a refreshing dash of cold water.
“Good evening, Lord Darien,” she said politely and compressed her panniers so she did not knock over any displays, nor trip and pitch into his arms again. Once was enough.
“Before you leave, Miss Wardley-Hines…I have something of yours I feel obliged to return to you.”
He slid one of those strong, firm-fingered hands inside his coat, pushing aside his impeccably tied cravat, and held something out to her.
It was an ostrich feather, white, broken at the tip. The soft down waved gently in the air.
“How did you come by this?” she whispered.
“It parted ways with your headdress at the Queen’s levee. I took the liberty of retrieving it.”
She balanced the delicate item in her gloved hand, hefting its weight, which was nothing. “But how can you be sure it was mine? Every girl there was wearing ostrich feathers.”
“I noted this.” He touched the white silk band around her arm.
There were layers of fabric between them: his gloves, the thick silk of her dress, the thin satin of the mourning emblem and, added to that, the cascades of ruffles at her elbows that served as sleeves. Yet the warm pressure of his finger left a print on her arm.
Something bleak and pained in his eyes tugged at her even as the familiar hurt ripped through her chest. She had forgotten, while talking to Lord Daring, the wound that lay beneath everything. She was forgetting Fanny more and more these days.
She felt an odd prickle on the back of her neck and turned her head to find Pinochle staring at them.
More to the point, he was staring at her hand held out in a gesture he had seen her make just that morning as she’d hefted his purse of coins in her palm.
His gaze dragged to her face, and cold horror splashed through Henrietta.
He knew.
“Sorry to interrupt, dearest sister.” Charley, seizing her arm, shook Henrietta out of her trance.
“Time to gather your wrap. Aunt has taken a headache and wants to go, and Uncle Pell won’t budge an inch until he’s argued Fox into the ground, so I must squire you and Marsi home. Servant, Daring,” he snapped, scowling.
“Same,” Daring said coolly. Henrietta watched his face shut down at the interruption.
He had relaxed with her, but now his reserve reasserted, the skin around his mouth tightening, a shadow dimming the intense blue of his eyes.
His shoulders straightened. His height had not seemed intimidating before—he was taller than Charley, even—but it did now.
“Have a care at the workhouse, Miss Wardley-Hines,” Daring said. “It’s not a drawing room, you know. There are desperate men there.”
“And also women, and children, and entire families who have no means to support themselves.” Lord Daring, concerned with her welfare?
Hadn’t he led dozens of women into desperate situations?
“I enjoyed our discussion, sir,” she said politely, surprised to find that was true.
“Do you ever decipher the Etruscan alphabet, I hope you will share your findings.”
Good heavens, that sounded like she was casting out lures, which she must on no account do.
“Hetty, you goose. You oughtn’t have stood so long talking with him,” Charley hissed as he hauled her to safety. “Everyone noticed. They’ll all think you’re his next conquest.”
“I tried to repel him.” Henrietta clutched the ostrich feather to her breast, feeling Pinochle watching her as closely as Lord Daring was. “I told him about my languages. And that I read Herodotus.”
Charley paused, a hand on her arm. “And what did he do?”
“He wanted to know what edition. You know, I’m always told men can’t stand such talk, but Lord Daring actually taught me something.”
Her brother gaped at her. “Good Gad, Hetty! What could you possibly learn from that rakehell?”
“Bucchero,” she said, and Charley set his mouth in a grim line.
“That tears it. I’m calling him out.”
“Charley!” She shook her arm free of his grip. “It’s a pottery finish, you clodpate. We were discussing the artifacts! And standing in plain view. What could he possibly do?”
Besides, she had worse things to worry about now that Pinochle had identified her. He feared Lady Bess, but what might he do to Miss Henrietta Wardley-Hines?
“Oh, any number of things,” Charley muttered.
“If Aunt Althea hears of this, she’ll fly up in the boughs for certain.
You’d best hope your face isn’t on a broadside plastered all over town tomorrow either.
Lud, Hetty, all that schooling is meant to fright the fribbles and fortune hunters away, not lure them in! ”
“Another salient argument for educating females,” Henrietta snapped. “I shall incorporate it into my debate.”
Across the room, Lord Daring joined his dark-haired companion with a remark that made the other man light with interest and glance their way. The full force of what she’d done crashed in on her.
She’d fallen under the spell of a man known to have no discretion and great seductive power. He crooked a finger and impressionable girls followed where he led, be they Miss Forsythia Pennyroyals or duke’s daughters.
It was easy to say she was not such a wet goose as to land herself in the same situation as Lady Celeste, ruined, outcast, a babe in her belly, and a virtual prisoner in her family home. But Lord Daring did not work by bold flirtations or empty flattery. No, he had subtler, more powerful means.
Intelligence and an ease of manner to go with his potent charm. Keeping a lady’s token and carrying it next to his heart. Giving it to her while it still held heat from his body, a gesture as intimate as a kiss.
If this was how he wooed and won susceptible lasses, he was devastating. Fortunate she had been warned.
She let Charley clap her hat on her head and shove her into the Pomeroy carriage.
No need to protest she was unlikely to encounter Lord Daring again.
It was for the best. Whether or not Pinochle made a public accusation over her mischief of that morning, Henrietta could not risk her standing with the Minerva Society, or Aunt Althea, any further.
Still, she understood now why so many girls had traded their reputations and risked their hearts for the chance to stand in the light of Lord Daring’s piercing blue eyes and incandescent smile.