Chapter One #4
Phoebe took a peep. Cousin Tobias was just performing an immaculate bow, despite looking youthfully out of place as though a schoolboy had put on his older brother’s clothes and sneaked into the ball.
Half a step back stood the young man she’d been caught watching.
She looked back at the floor again in a hurry, aware of the flaming color in her cheeks which would be far too obvious thanks to her usually pale skin.
“Cousin Phoebe,” Tobias said, executing a bow in her direction as well, which only made her blush more.
Aunt Fanny sounded pleased, though. “Why, Tobias, I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” She had a soft spot for Phoebe’s maternal cousin.
“I’m here with my mama,” Tobias said. “Not Papa, of course.” He laughed.
“He considers socializing beneath him, as you know.” He paused.
“But I came over for a reason. Wycliff here asked me to introduce him to you, and to Phoebe, so that’s what I’m doing.
” Another laugh. “If she will only look up at us.”
Phoebe felt rather than saw her aunt’s stern gaze fall upon her.
Any moment now she was going to be abjured not to spend the evening looking at her feet or it would give her a hunched back.
Forestalling the remark which she knew to be on Aunt Fanny’s lips, she took a deep breath and raised her head to look Tobias in the face. And peek at the gentleman by his side.
“That’s better, Coz,” Tobias said. “May I present Lord Gabriel Wycliffe to you both.”
Lord Gabriel was even more handsome up close, and consequently Phoebe was even more overcome with shyness in his presence.
She wouldn’t have been if they’d met while walking in the park at Coakham, but here, at the ball, she was.
Her feet and hands seemed to double in size until they were like the flippers she’d seen on the sea lions at the Exeter ’Change, and she was sure that if she were called upon to speak, she’d barely be able to get a word out.
Tobias seemed completely unaware of her turmoil though. “And, Gabriel, Lady Phoebe Nicholson is my cousin, don’t you know. A splendid girl. We spent chunks of our childhood together in darkest Warwickshire. Next best thing to a boy.”
Aunt Fanny’s face registered the extreme disapproval she must be feeling at so inappropriate an introduction.
Tobias must have noticed her reaction, for he gave a self-conscious cough. “Sorry, nearly forgot. And her aunt, Lady Brockwood, of course. My cousin’s guardian since she’s had the misfortune to lose both her parents. I think her cousin Mattie is out on the dance floor with Mr. Wade.”
Lord Gabriel swept an elegant bow to Aunt Fanny then turned to Phoebe, a smile of some charm curving his lips. “Enchanté, mademoiselle.” And he bowed to her, even more deeply than to her aunt.
If Phoebe could have blushed more, she would have done so, but she’d reached the pinnacle of embarrassment already.
“Lord Gabriel,” she managed to mutter as he rose from his bow. If only this were the park at Coakham and she was meeting the man of her dreams under more favorable circumstances. But life was never that fair.
He was taller than Tobias by several inches, and, although slim, somewhat broader than her still boyish cousin, so no doubt several years his senior.
“Forgive me for intruding, Lady Phoebe,” he said, those blue eyes dancing with something that might have been amusement, “but I saw you from across the room and had to know your name. How handy it was that I chanced upon Toby here on my way to accost you.”
“Caught me on my way to the card room,” Tobias said. “Told me I had to introduce him to you or he’d spend the evening pining. Dashed keen for me to do so, I’ll say.”
Lord Gabriel smiled more widely, which for a moment made him look almost as young as Tobias.
Only he had about him the air of someone who knew a lot more about life in general than her cousin did.
“And now we are acquainted, might I have the pleasure of the next dance with you, Lady Phoebe? Unless, of course, someone has already claimed it.”
If she’d been thinking of turning him down, the sudden pressure in the middle of her back from her aunt’s hand changed her mind.
She might not want to dance, even with such a paragon, but if she didn’t she would be in Aunt Fanny’s black books for days.
“We’ve only been here a short time,” her aunt said with humiliating honesty.
“Phoebe has no names written on her dance card as yet. Of course she will dance with you.”
Resigning herself to having to accept his offer, as well as even more embarrassed that her aunt had revealed her lack of future dance partners, Phoebe bobbed a not-at-all-elegant curtsy to Lord Gabriel.
A somewhat inauspicious start to the dance.
“Why thank you, Lord Gabriel. I should like that very much.” Which was both true and not true.
But oh well, she might as well take advantage of this and get a dance with him.
After she’d trampled on his feet a good few times, he wouldn’t be back for more.
He smiled down at her and, before she had chance to change her mind, seized her hand and whirled her out onto the dance floor where the next dance was about to begin.