Chapter 7 #2
Richard Sutton, the Duke of Ronvale, who bowed over Alice’s hand and kissed it without taking his eyes off her face, which was a manner Alice had heard about and not previously experienced and which she found she liked less than she had expected.
Matthew Turner, the Viscount Greencliff, who bowed without flourish, looked at her with a single steady eye, and said, “Lady Alice. A pleasure.”
Victor Hamilton, the Earl of Everlong, an old friend of Cassian’s from boyhood, who bowed with great gallantry and declared himself enchanted.
For some reason, she did not like Lord Everlong. It was an instinctive reaction, and she did not trust it. She resolved not to act on it. She smiled at him pleasantly, before she was led to her chair.
The chair was at Cassian’s right hand. The footman pushed her in.
She arranged her skirts, folded her hands in her lap, and did her best to remember every rule her mother had ever taught her about dinner conversation which she had not, on the evidence of the past twenty-four hours, been applying properly.
She caught Cassian staring at her. She caught him a second time, just as the footman served the soup, and a third time when the conversation moved to the weather.
By the time she had begun to entertain the possibility that he had been looking at her for the past five minutes, she was no longer thinking about her mother’s rules at all.
“I had no idea,” the Duke of Ronvale said, midway through it, “that Cassian had any interest in any lady at all. I had begun to worry for him, to be quite honest, Lady Alice.”
Alice cleared her throat. “That is because we did not wish to make Joanna uncomfortable,” she said smoothly. “I would not have wanted her to think I was her friend merely to spend time with her brother.”
She lifted her spoon. Her hand was shaking. She could feel it shake. She willed it not to shake. It continued to shake. She closed both hands around it, and her glove caught in the silver. She steadied it. She had barely lifted the spoon again when she felt something warm press against her thigh.
She froze.
It was a thigh. More specifically, it was Cassian’s thigh, pressing against hers under the table with the steadiness of a thing that intended to remain there.
He was not looking at her. He was looking at the Duke of Ronvale with the polite attention of a man following his guest’s conversation, and his thigh was pressing against hers as though the touch had not occurred to either of them.
Her hand stopped shaking. She lifted the spoon, got the soup to her mouth, and then set the spoon down. The pressure of his thigh did not lessen. It remained steady and warm throughout the soup course. She did not look at him even once. Her whole body flushed.
“My dear Lady Alice,” the Viscount said from across the table. “If I might be so bold…”
“Of course, My Lord.”
“When did you and His Grace first realize you had feelings for one another?”
The whole table looked at her.
“Last week,” she answered.
“Two years ago,” Cassian said at the same time.
She watched in horror as the entire table paused.
“Last week,” she repeated carefully.
“I was speaking of when I first realized I had feelings for her,” Cassian said, smooth as cream. “Lady Alice, naturally, was much slower.”
“I was not slower, I was—”
“Two years, My Lady. I have been suffering for two years.”
“Have you?”
“Patiently.”
“You hid it well, Your Grace.”
“I fell first.” He said it lightly, as if it were a joke.
The table laughed. Joanna laughed the loudest. Alice made a sound that resembled a laugh and did not, she hoped, sound like the inside of her chest which felt very strange.
“That is convenient,” she muttered into her wine.
“I beg your pardon, Lady Alice.” The Viscount cupped a hand to his good ear and leaned over the table. “I did not quite catch that.”
He had heard her. She was certain he had heard her. He was watching her intently.
Alice opened her mouth to repeat what she had said and decided that it would sound just as foolish. “Nothing of consequence, My Lord.”
“Ah.”
He sat back. He did not smile, but his good eye glinted briefly in a manner that Alice was beginning to suspect she would have to learn to read.
“And what, Lady Alice…” He had not quite let her off. “…is your favorite thing about His Grace?”
She picked up her wine. “His…” She paused. “His, erm…”
She looked at Cassian. He looked back. He had set his fork down and folded his hands, and he was now waiting. She suspected he was enjoying it.
“Yes?” the Viscount prompted.
Alice tore her gaze from Cassian. “His scowl?”
The dining room exploded.
Joanna laughed so loudly that she had to press her napkin against her mouth.
The Duke of Ronvale slapped the table. Lord Everlong gave a polite chuckle that did not reach his eyes.
The Viscount did not laugh, but his good eye crinkled with what looked like approval.
As for her mother, she made a distressed sound from the far end of the table that was instantly drowned out.
Alice did not look at Cassian immediately. She could not bring herself to. When she did finally look at him, the corner of his mouth had quirked up. Just one corner. Just a fraction.
She had never, in two years of knowing him, seen a smile on his face. She did not know whether what she was looking at was a smile. It seemed to be the closest he had.
She looked away again, fast. Her face was hot.
The dinner went on.
At the door, when they were leaving, Cassian kissed the back of her hand.
It was a perfectly correct gesture.
He bowed. He took her gloved fingers in his own. He brushed his mouth against the silk for the precise count required by manners, straightened, and then he let her go.
She rode home with her gloved hand pressed flat against her thigh, willing the place where his mouth had been to stop burning.
It did not.