Chapter Ten
Arden had danced with more women than he could count—debutantes and spinsters, the younger sisters of friends giddy with excitement at their first balls, and widows still dressed in their mourning blacks because a well-meaning hostess thought it would cheer them up.
Most of those dances ran together in his mind, a blur of awkward steps and polite smiles, but dancing with Mavis had never felt awkward, and certainly never polite, and when he settled one hand on the small of her back and raised their clasped hands into the air as the music swelled, Arden suspected he’d made a grave mistake.
Holding her this close, he could smell the scent of lemon clinging to her skin.
He could see the trio of freckles all but hidden in the shadow of her clavicle and remembered the taste of her skin when he’d kissed her there the night he’d proposed, mapping the path between them like he was charting an undiscovered constellation.
The five years that stretched out since the last time he’d held her melted away, until they began to move.
The woman before him now didn’t miss a step, her movements confident and practiced—a world apart from the first time they’d danced, when she’d tripped over his feet a dozen times in the space of a song.
It was a struggle to keep them both upright back then, a struggle to keep from laughing out of fear of offending her.
She’d kept her eyes down, glued to her feet, her shoulders shaking.
He’d worried she was crying—either from embarrassment or because she’d managed to injure herself—but when she’d looked up at him, he’d realized she was laughing.
Just like that, he’d given up trying to quell his own laughter, and the two of them had spent the rest of the dance struggling to get themselves under control and keep from falling flat on their faces.
It was the most fun Arden had ever had at a ball.
But that, too, was a lie.
“Thaddeus isn’t as charmed by your clumsiness as I was?” he asked.
Mavis looked up at him, surprise and confusion flickering over her face. “What do you mean?”
Arden felt foolish for bringing it up, the words sounding ridiculous as they spilled from his lips. “When we met, you were pretending to be a terrible dancer. I assume you thought I would find it charming.”
“I was . . .” She trailed off, her brow furrowing. “Arden, five years ago, I was a terrible dancer. I didn’t know a spinnalé from a devorsto. When you didn’t call me a fraud after the fifth time I stepped on your foot, I just about sobbed in relief.”
Arden glanced away, adding that tidbit to the small pile of truths he’d managed to learn about Mavis, fitting it in with what he’d believed when he thought she was Arabella. If it even was the truth—with Mavis, he couldn’t trust himself to know what was real and what was artifice.
“You didn’t cry, though,” he said. “You laughed.”
She scoffed beneath her breath. “Another wholly unladylike response I kicked myself for afterward.”
It was, but that was what had been so perfect.
In that bout of uncontrolled laughter, she had turned his world upside down, jarring him out of the monotonous rut of his life, full of people he had known his whole life, with the same stories to tell and the same pristine manners he knew by heart.
She had come in like a tornado that evening, and he’d been so enraptured by the novelty of her that he hadn’t realized the destruction she was leaving in her path until his life became part of the wreckage.
Arden shook his head. “I was such a fool.”
Arden was a fool. He wouldn’t have made a very good mark otherwise, but Mavis wanted to correct him all the same.
She shouldn’t—it was so much easier for him to believe that she’d been able to pull the wool over his eyes so thoroughly, that she’d played him from that first night to the morning she’d left.
It was easier for him to think that she had always been as detached and cold as she was now instead of seeing that it had been a lesson he’d unwittingly taught her.
There was something about the familiarity of his hand at her back, of the music guiding their steps, and the warmth of him wrapping around her like a cocoon.
Five years ago, his mere proximity had been enough to make her sloppy, and now Mavis wondered if anything had truly changed in that time after all.
“You were a fool.” Her voice came out softer than she’d intended. His eyes snapped to hers, and as close as they were, she could see the ring of midnight blue around his irises. “But there were more than half a dozen fools who came after you. No one ever saw the truth, Arden.”
Mavis meant the words as a kindness, but Arden looked at her like she’d slipped a dagger between his ribs. His mouth pressed into a firm line, and the hand that had been light on her back tensed.
“You’re right, of course.” Arden grimaced. “How shortsighted of me to think I was special.”
You were.
The words rose in her throat, but Mavis tamped them down.
She glanced around instead, seeing the curious looks from the other guests and remembering that they were far from alone—even Thaddeus was looking over, catching her eye.
Over the years, she’d learned that a crucial part of their research in picking a target had to hinge not just on the man’s bank account and gullibility but on his temper.
Her third fiancé, Roland Barnett, had been a jealous sort, one time dragging her away from a perfectly banal conversation at a dinner party with a man old enough to be her grandfather and accusing her of flirting with him.
She had managed to calm him down, though his grip on her arm had left bruises in the shape of his fingers that had lingered for a week.
By that point, she, Rafe, and the others had sped up their timeline, though they’d had to take a few thousand solas less than they’d expected to.
Thaddeus was not a jealous sort, though, and even now he looked between her and Arden with nothing more than mild curiosity.
“Stop glowering at me like that,” she said to Arden, pasting a broad smile over her face. “People are beginning to stare, and neither of us wants to court gossip.”
Arden’s attempt at a smile was even more unnerving.
“Gods of Old. Now you look like you’ve gone batty. Softer,” she directed. “Good, now unfurl your brow. There, that should quiet any concern that you’re considering strangling me before the end of the song.”
Arden’s smile looked a little bit more real. “And you said I wasn’t a good liar.”
Mavis couldn’t help the startled burst of laughter that slipped past her lips, though she wasn’t entirely certain if he intended the words as a joke or a threat. But no matter how much five years might have changed him, Mavis knew in the marrow of her bones that he would never hurt her.
“You aren’t. But you have gotten better.” She wasn’t sure if she meant the words as a compliment or an insult, and Arden didn’t seem to either.
“Not all of us are as practiced as you are.” Though he maintained his genial expression, the words came out sharp enough that Mavis felt them dig beneath her skin.
“Your judgment might sting more if you hadn’t come groveling for my help doing just that.
” She was careful to keep her voice mild.
“And perhaps, instead of rehashing the past again, you might try thanking me for the fact that you made it through a conversation with Oriana Mayles and came off charming, just as I knew you would.”
Arden was quiet for a moment, and Mavis wondered if he might call off their agreement altogether now that the fire of his hatred of her was freshly banked. Despite the promise of two million solas, that might be for the best.
“Your suggestions were good ones,” he allowed finally, his voice resigned.
Mavis shifted her gaze over his shoulder, finding Oriana Mayles in the crowded ballroom, standing near one of the windows on her own, staring out into the distance with faraway eyes.
“She can seem a bit aloof, but she’s a sensitive soul,” she said. “She and Thaddeus lost their parents in quick succession three years ago now, and it seems to have affected her far more than him.”
Arden avoided her gaze. “Losing parents affects everyone.” He kept the words cool and distant, but after what Oriana shared, Mavis couldn’t miss the grief lurking beneath them.
She should ignore it—that was precisely what she would do if she were as heartless as Arden believed her to be.
There was nothing to be gained by disabusing him of that notion, and a great deal to lose.
But Mavis couldn’t do it.
“Oriana told me about your father.” As soon as the final word left her lips, Arden’s grip on her waist tightened, and he swallowed, still not looking at her, but she forced herself to continue. “I’m sorry, I know how much you loved him. He was a good man.”
Arden’s voice turned scathing. “You know nothing about my father.” He released her as the song wound to a close.
“Any praise from you insults him, and if it hadn’t been for you, he would still be alive.
” Mavis felt the words like a punch in the gut, and when Arden looked at her, the hatred in his eyes took her breath away.
“Don’t speak about him again.” With that, he left her standing alone in the middle of the dance floor, stunned speechless.