Chapter 5 #2
“And was always to have gone to my brother.” Brookmire’s voice cut in, and Julian rounded on him with a scowl as Miss Trent’s eyes flared. “We have asked ourselves a hundred times what could have moved our cousin to alter her intentions. You would not happen to know, Miss Trent?”
“Miss Trent, is it not?”
A gentleman shouldered into the circle, beaming at her and ignoring the rest of them entirely.
Julian’s scowl found a new object, and then Miss Trent’s sudden pallor, the quickening of her breath, caught and held all his attention.
Guilt flared hot beneath his ribs. He had forbidden his brother the very questions he himself had just pressed, and there was the cost of it, written white across her face.
“Lord Flanders, if you please.” The man bowed as if that served for an introduction. “Now, you must stand up with me, Miss Trent. I will not be denied the pleasure of your company this evening.” His eyes lit with a warmth, and something beneath it that Julian did not care for in the least.
Something kicked hard against his ribs. He put out a hand, half a barrier between the fellow and the lady.
“Now, Lord Flanders, a gentleman must wait his turn. And I fear you cannot trouble Miss Trent for her card just now — for she has this moment agreed to stand up with me.” He held her gaze and willed her to understand, to take the rope he was throwing, however roughly. “Shall we, Miss Trent?”
A glance to her sister. A press of her lips. And then, to his quiet relief, she laid her hand upon his sleeve, though she did not trouble to smile as she did it.
“You are aware, Lord Carrington,” she said, low, as he led her out, “that our dancing together will be remarked upon, and spoken of for days hereafter?”
“I care very little for gossip, Miss Trent.” He settled her before him as the sets formed. “Come. Let us take the floor.”
She said nothing more, not even as they bowed and curtsied and waited for the music to find them.
Then the first notes rose, and he stepped in and took her — one gloved hand coming to rest in his, his other hand settling lightly at the curve of her waist. His breath caught, and he was slow to let it go.
It was the smallest contact. A hand, a waist, two layers of glove between them.
It ought to have meant nothing at all. Yet he was aware of her in a way he had not bargained for — of the warmth of her through the silk, the quick unsteady draw of her breathing, the way she held herself a careful half-inch farther from him than the dance required.
He turned her, and drew her back, and made himself attend to the steps.
“You will have a great deal of attention upon you now, I am afraid,” he said, to fill the silence and to draw her eyes back from their darting about the room. “It is the unhappy price of a fortune and a grand house from Lady Warrington.”
She glanced up, then away. “Indeed. And evidently you have a great many questions about both.”
He turned her once more and grimaced as he brought her in.
“I should not have asked you anything tonight, Miss Trent. It was ill done of me, and I hope you will forgive it.” When she did not answer, he pressed on, as if more words might earn a quicker pardon.
“I shall give you a warning instead, if you will take it. There will be many gentlemen eager for your company now — Lord Flanders chief among them. That is why I did as I did.”
A small sigh. The pallor had not quite left her cheeks. “You mean that there will be impoverished gentlemen, and gentlemen of doubtful character, who want me only for Stoneleigh House.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “I do. And you must know it.”
The dance parted them, then drew them together again, and this time her brow was faintly lined, her lips pressed in thought rather than in fear.
“I do not say it to alarm you.” He softened his voice. “Only to ask that you stay watchful.”
Her eyes rose to his, and for the first time since they had begun, something in her face eased. The corner of her mouth lifted. Her shoulders came down a fraction, the rigidity going out of them.
“I value your concern, Lord Carrington.” She held his gaze. “Your kindness, this evening, and yesterday both, is more than I expected, and the more so given your own loss in the matter of the house.”
The music played on, but their words ran dry.
There was a strange pull in him to say more, to offer her some further comfort — yet everything that came to his tongue sounded like either an apology or another question, and he had given her enough of both.
She seemed no more certain than he, glancing up now and again and then away, until the dance at last released them.
He stepped back from her. And was caught off his guard entirely by the reluctance that ran through him as he did — as if his arms were slow to learn that the dance was done.
He bowed. “Might I call upon you this week, Miss Trent?” The question steadied him; it returned him to his purpose.
He was to learn what she knew of Lady Warrington, to understand why the house had passed to her and not to him, and to discover whether, through some arrangement, it might yet be set right. “If that would be agreeable.”
She hesitated, her eyes searching his face. Julian shifted on his feet, a prickling running down his spine. If she refused, he would lose his chance to press her as he meant to. If there was the smallest hope of regaining Stoneleigh, she would have to be willing to receive him.
“If you wish it,” she said at last, slowly, as if she did not altogether want him to come. “Thank you, Lord Carrington.”
Something that was nearly triumph stirred in him, and he drew himself up. “Capital, Miss Trent. I shall look forward to it.”
He bowed again, turned on his heel, and walked away — trying, and failing, to put from his mind the way her brown eyes had softened, the way they had lit when she thanked him for a kindness he had scarcely meant to show. Stoneleigh House was his purpose. Stoneleigh House had to be his only thought.
Brookmire was at his elbow before he had gone ten steps, a fresh glass in each hand and a look on his face that Julian remembered from every scrape of their boyhood.
“You danced.”
“I am aware of it.”
“With the young lady we were to forget for one evening.” Brookmire handed him a glass with elaborate courtesy. “I only observe it. Yarmouth observed it too. Indeed I believe the whole room observed it — you made rather certain they would.”
“Flanders was about to impose himself on her. It was common courtesy, nothing more.” Julian drank, and found his brother still looking at him. “What?”
“Nothing in the world.” Brookmire’s face was a study in innocence. “Only that I have seen you do a great many things from courtesy, brother, and not one of them ever made you scowl at Lord Flanders as though you meant to call him out.”
Julian opened his mouth, found nothing serviceable in it, and closed it again.
“Quite so,” said Brookmire comfortably, and drank his brandy.
Nothing else mattered to him but Stoneleigh. Nothing else could. Julian repeated it to himself twice more before the evening ended — and did not ask himself why a true thing should need repeating.