Chapter 10 #2
“Three weeks,” he repeated. “An eternity, in the currency of gossip. Imagine what further horrors we might contrive before our tragic farewell.”
“Oh, I intend to orchestrate something most memorable. A duel, perhaps.”
“I do hope I shall be invited.”
“You shall be the duel-ee, naturally. The heartbroken fiancé with your honour so grievously bruised you must demand satisfaction. Only pistols at dawn shall suffice.”
He tilted his head, eyes glinting. “And who, may I ask, is to assume the role of the scandalous interloper in this little drama?
“I should think it best to keep the role uncast,” she said airily.
He hummed, guiding her through a final turn as the music began its gentle diminuendo. “Take care, Hetty. You sound almost as though you enjoy my company.”
“Hardly. I delight only in the idea of you, as I always have. Thoroughly theatrical, wholly decorative, and entirely disposable.”
“Your friendship moves me to the very marrow,” he said solemnly. Then, his voice softened, nearly devoid of jest. “It is a pity, truly. We are rather good at this.”
“At what?” she asked, against her better judgment as the final note sounded.
He bowed with a flourish, then straightened. “Pretending.”
—
?—
Theo had made precisely three full circuits of the ballroom, endured two separate and painfully tedious conversations about imported marmalade, and even received an unsolicited compliment on his calves from a dowager duchess before Hetty vanished without so much as a by-your-leave.
She had been beside him mere moments before, feigning rapt attention at a dull anecdote from Lord Wetherby with a brittle smile beneath her Minerva mask.
Then, as the orchestra struck up a lively Scottish reel and Lord Wetherby turned away to adjust his wig, she was gone – slipping through the throng of dancers like a wisp of silvery mist, her gown flashing once in the candlelight before vanishing entirely.
Theo waited – just long enough to avoid the very obvious appearance of being deserted by one’s betrothed – before murmuring a polite excuse about seeking refreshment and making a gentlemanly retreat from the ballroom.
It was, of course, entirely improper. He knew too well the script he and Hetty were to follow tonight: to be seen together, to receive compliments with gracious smiles, and to stand very properly within reach of a chaperone’s disapproving glance.
Hetty’s sudden and unexplained disappearance was therefore, by any measure of the ton , a small scandal in and of itself.
He smiled as he searched for her, wondering if this was another of her most shocking plans for ruin, because if so, she certainly had a knack for mischief.
Still, beneath his amusement, there stirred a far more trouble sensation, for of late he found his thoughts returning with unsettling frequency to the girl he had known all his life and had never once – until now – seemed like a proper subject for romantic contemplation.
It was, quite frankly, unthinkable that he might harbour feelings of a tender persuasion for Hetty.
Worse still, she was a lady of impeccable virtue and station, and to desire her was to accept the inescapable obligation of marriage, a prospect he was very far from ready to entertain beyond this charade.
He might have been a seasoned player in the dance of rakish dalliances, but in this particular waltz, he was beginning to suspect he was the one most dangerously out of step.
He found her in the gardens, just beyond the terraced stairs, standing beneath a flowering arch of wisteria, where moonlight filtered through the blossoms and onto the gravel path.
She had removed her mask and was staring up at the sky with a look of mild exasperation, as though the stars had personally offended her .
“Are you communing with Venus,” he asked, “or simply perfecting the art of sulking?”
She cast him a sidelong glance. “I am, in fact, plotting my escape. I fancied scaling the trellis and fleeing to France. It seems suitably dramatic.”
He descended the steps with hands tucked nonchalantly into his pockets. “Must it be France? I had rather set my hopes upon Italy. Less grey skies, and far superior olives.”
She gave a little huff of amusement, though she did not turn to face him. “I had not realised you planned to accompany me. Now pray, do not tell me you have come to offer further counsel on my waltzing. I am moments away from twisting an ankle or fainting outright, merely to earn a respite.”
“As tempting as that sounds,” he replied, stepping onto the gravel, “I confess I feared you had absconded with the violinist. It would have been daring, at least, and an improvement upon fainting theatrically.”
She folded her arms beneath her breast. “I had no intention of courting scandal through disappearance, truly… but when one is cornered by Lord Wetherby and subjected to a prolonged discourse on the virtues of Ceylon tea, one begins to yearn either for death or flight, whichever arrives first.”
Theo could not help but notice that Hetty was glowing – not merely in the poetic sense, though that too.
The moonlight caught the shimmer of her gown and set it alight like spun silver, while her dark curls had begun to slip from their pins, brushing the nape of her neck in lazy spirals.
It was a bare patch of skin he had no business staring at, and yet he did, with the fascination of a man who very much wished to trace it with his mouth.
She turned towards him fully, one eyebrow raised in that haughty way she had, all arch defiance and concealed mischief, and for a moment – just one wild, maddening moment – he found himself entertaining the notion of hauling her close and kissing her until neither of them remembered why they were pretending in the first place.
Theo cleared his throat, willing that particular thought away. “You are, of course, quite aware that the entire assembly will assume we have absented ourselves to partake in something wildly improper.”
She arched one finely shaped brow. “Is that so?”
“Indeed. Your disappearance was executed with such suspicious precision that it could only be attributed to design. And, seeing as I have also taken my leave of the ballroom, it follows with all the logic of the ton that we are now both…” He gestured vaguely towards the shadowed gardens, lowering his voice to a whisper, “…engaged in the pursuit of utter and irredeemable ruination.”
She tilted her head, the moon catching at the laurel circlet in her hair. “In that case, I daresay we ought to provide Society with a scandal truly worthy of its endless appetite.”
He laughed softly, though the sound was strangled. “God help me, Hetty, but you do relish playing with fire.”
“Only when I am in no danger of being burnt,” she said airily, turning once more to gaze up at the stars. “It is the great secret of mischief, Theo. One must never play unless one knows precisely how to avoid the consequences. ”
The curve of her cheek, the proud line of her chin, the exposed skin at her décolletage where the bodice dipped – it was altogether too much and not nearly enough.
His mouth had gone inexplicably dry and his hands itched.
There was no logic to it – no honour, no sense – and yet the desire burnt low and hot within him, tightening like a bow drawn far past restraint.
It was Hetty. Hetty, for God’s sake – his childhood companion, the same girl who had stolen plums from the vicarage and recited Ovid through a mouthful of blackberries.
The same Hetty with whom he had wrestled in the grass, raced ponies and once, behind the old gardener’s shed, conducted a brief and mutually unimpressive experiment in anatomical discovery that neither had spoken of since.
She had never been a woman in his mind, not until now.
Not until this infernal Season began to peel back every comforting illusion of familiarity to reveal the formidable woman beneath: a glittering, maddening, silk-draped creature standing beneath the wisteria like a goddess.
She was Hetty Tolliver, his dearest and most infuriating friend. And he was merely a man – flesh and blood and perilously full of want, with no defences left to speak of and no justification that could excuse the thought rising in his mind: What harm could there be in a single kiss?
“Miss Tolliver,” he said, with far more formality than was necessary.
She turned to him slowly. “Lord Langley?”
That was the end of it. The last feeble thread of self-control snapped and he closed the distance between them in one long stride.
His hand slid to her cheek, tilting her face to his, and before she could summon some witty rejoinder or shelter behind the armour of her well-practised hauteur, he kissed her.