Chapter 1 #3
Before Louisa could inflict further accuracy upon the situation, Lady Armitage called the company to dinner.
There are few moments in life more dangerous than those in which a hostess takes it into her head that she has glimpsed the beginnings of an attachment.
Hattie knew it the instant the seating was announced.
Mr. Price was sent in with a widow of strong moral constitution and stronger opinions on Madeira. Lady Louisa found herself beside Redford. And Hattie, without so much as the mercy of surprise, discovered that her dinner partner was Viscount Hartwell.
Of course it was.
She placed her hand lightly upon his sleeve as they joined the slow progress toward the dining room and felt, absurdly, that half the company had leaned inward without moving.
No doubt that was vanity.
No doubt they had all been doing exactly that.
Benedict bent his head just enough that only she could hear him. “I give you my word I had nothing to do with this.”
His voice, low and touched with that dry reserve of his, slid along her nerves in a most disloyal fashion.
“I am delighted to hear it,” Hattie replied. “It would be intolerable to think Providence had begun taking your suggestions.”
He made a sound very nearly like a laugh.
The dining room at Rowanmere had been laid with all the graceful excess proper to a successful country house in spring.
Candles shimmered in mirrored sconces, silver gleamed against white damask, and low bowls of narcissus ran the length of the table, filling the air with a sweetness just sharp enough to keep sentiment in check.
Through the open windows came the last gold of evening and, farther off, the cry of rooks settling in the trees.
Hattie took her seat beside Benedict and discovered, to her dissatisfaction, that he was one of those rare men who understood how to conduct dinner conversation without either preening or collapsing into pompous silence.
He spoke well, listened better than most, and, worst of all, seemed capable of answering her wit without either flinching from it or attempting to dominate it by volume.
This should not have been attractive.
Yet here she was, noting the steadiness of his hands when he reached for the wine, the intelligence that sharpened his face whenever he was amused, and the fact that his attention, when turned upon her, never wandered.
“You are frowning at the soup,” he observed.
Hattie glanced down. “I am thinking.”
“That is generally the expression people make when Lord Penworth begins discussing parliamentary reform.”
She looked back at him. “You mistake me. I am merely deciding whether your conduct this afternoon was insufferable by instinct or by cultivation.”
“Have you not yet arrived at a conclusion?”
“Not a final one. There are nuances.”
His mouth moved again.
There it was—that almost-smile, as though the man had signed some private treaty with amusement and would never permit it full diplomatic recognition.
“I am relieved,” he said, “that my faults sustain such careful study.”
“Your faults announce themselves very well without assistance.”
“Then I must hope my virtues occasionally keep pace.”
The line was lightly delivered, but it disarmed her all the same.
Hattie sipped her wine and looked away toward the candles, because one ought not meet that sort of answer directly when one had not yet determined whether it was strategic or sincere.
Around them the dinner swelled and flowed.
Glasses were refilled. Courses appeared and vanished.
Lady Armitage laughed too brightly at Mr. Price’s observations on hounds.
Redford said something outrageous to Louisa and was rewarded with a look of pure feminine condemnation that evidently pleased him beyond measure.
At the far end of the table, Lady Esme Jones was engaged in a sparkling dispute with a gentleman from Norfolk over the merits of Italian opera, and Hattie, even at this distance, could tell she was winning.
All of it was ordinary.
All of it was dangerous.
Because by the time the fish course had been removed, Hattie had become aware of something she would very much have preferred not to know.
She enjoyed Benedict Ellsworth.
Not entirely, not sensibly, and not in any fashion she meant to encourage, but enough to be troublesome.
And enough, she feared, that when Mrs. Denslow two seats down gave them one of those soft, interested smiles older married ladies reserved for people they had already decided might be arranged to mutual advantage, Hattie felt not only irritation, but alarm.
This was how it began.
Not with a declaration, not with a dance, not even with a walk under moonlight, but with one gentleman being useful at exactly the wrong moment and then proving, over soup and candles and far too much attention, that he possessed layers a prudent woman might wish very much to avoid investigating.
Hattie set down her spoon with exquisite care.
If Viscount Hartwell imagined he had solved anything by intervening that afternoon, he was very much mistaken. He had not spared her trouble. He had become it.