Chapter Eight #3
“Honestly, I did not think it would be quite so bad as this,” Rebecca admitted. “But then, Elliot had fled town like the very hounds of hell were upon his heels—”
“I suppose, in some manner of speaking, they were,” Richard interjected dryly.
“—And he did not bother to give his response until yesterday, besides.” Rebecca gave a wry little shake of her head.
“Perhaps, if he had bothered to tell me in advance, then I would have adjusted my guest list accordingly.” She set one hand upon Kate’s shoulder.
“It has been more of a trial by fire than I expected,” she said.
“But the good news is that the worst is done.”
“I don’t think it is,” Kate mused as she watched Elliot’s bland smile turn forced and the merry light in his eyes dim as he slowly began to realize that her assistance would not be quite as forthcoming as he might have hoped. “Is it always like this for him?”
“Well—” Richard hedged. “Yes—and no. He has always been a darling of the Ton. I imagine there are a fair few ladies who have set their caps for him in the past, but he has always managed to let them down gently. This Season has been something of an aberration from the usual. His admirers have gone a bit more—er—” He gave a vague roll of his wrist, as if attempting to scrape a polite word from the ether.
“Feral,” Rebecca supplied, with a disdainful sniff, as she fisted her hands on her hips. “And in my damned drawing room, no less!”
“Now, now,” Richard said, his voice turned placating as he sought to calm his wife’s brief flare of temper. “You must understand. They’re convinced now that he can be caught.”
Because Devon had decreed it so. Kate heaved a sigh as Elliot turned to her once again, eyes as pitiful and beseeching as a puppy’s. “All right,” she said. “I suppose he’s suffered long enough.”
“Merciful of you,” Richard observed mildly. “Good luck, then. I don’t know that I’d risk it, myself. Liable to have a hand snapped clean off your wrist if you venture too close.”
Kate took a bracing sip of wine and threw back her shoulders, preparing herself to march into the fray. The very moment she took that first step toward the cluster of women who had pinned Elliot in place near the doorway, open relief slid across his face.
He had extended a hand toward her even before she had made it halfway across the room, reaching past the shoulders of the ladies who peppered him with questions still. “Ah, Katie,” he said, his hand grappling desperately for hers. “There you are at last.”
To his credit and her amusement, he sounded genuine and sincere.
His fingers were warm and strong as they wrapped around hers, drawing her nearer and forcing the gaggle of women who had him surrounded to admit her within their circle.
The crowd parted with some reticence and more than a little resentment, Kate thought, and could not believe the jostling of shoulders she had received on her way past to be anything but intentional.
“I was just telling these lovely ladies about you,” he said as he drew her closer still, pitting them like outnumbered allies against an impenetrable wall of enemies.
The words settled strangely in her ears, issued in a kind of low, warm tone she’d never heard from him before.
Affection was nothing new; they had been friends for far too long to be absent it, but this—this was something different entirely, something which made her cheeks heat and the fine hairs at the nape of her neck prickle.
“Good things, I hope,” she managed to say, hearing the odd, flustered tone of her voice, rife with an abrupt tension she couldn’t quite explain even to herself.
Elliot chuckled, favoring her with that dimpled smile she knew so well.
“Naturally,” he said. “It is of utmost importance to me that it is known that I trust your opinion above all others, and could not possibly make such an important decision without your counsel. Your approval is paramount; I would entrust my future happiness to no one else.”
His future happiness. Why did those words cause a strange, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach?
Of course he had been bound to marry eventually.
Of course he would choose a lady with the proper breeding, the proper social standing.
Bizarrely, she had the sense that he was slipping straight through her fingers even as his hand held tight to hers.
How was it possible to know that something would inevitably happen, and still somehow to find it unexpected? She had known it, and yet it had always seemed a distant thing, far away and long off. So fuzzy and indistinct that it had never threatened the peace of their countryside home.
Now suddenly it loomed. Worse than unexpected, even—unwelcome.
And Elliot was depending upon her to help him choose the woman who would become his wife. To ensure his happiness, because he trusted her opinion above all others.
Much to Kate’s bewilderment, the mere thought of it sent a strange jolt straight to her heart and left her with the disconcerting sensation that something of monumental importance had just swept by straight over her head.