Chapter 1 #3
Woodmere’s expression did not alter. “Until the current confusion is sorted, it may be wise if no further improvements are attempted.”
The room stilled around them.
Genny smiled, and it was the sort of smile she had perfected over years of never permitting anyone the pleasure of seeing where the blows landed.
“How reassuring,” she said. “I had been in terror that my efforts might continue to be appreciated.”
“Miss Moreland—”
“No, no, you are quite right. Clearly the safest course is for me to retreat at once, lest I accidentally reorganize the monarchy.”
Alexandra rose. “Genny.”
Genny ignored her.
Woodmere said, with infuriating composure, “I did not mean to offend you.”
“Then I congratulate you on the efficiency with which you have done it accidentally.”
His gaze sharpened.
For a moment neither of them moved. Beneath the irritation, something taut flickered between them, a humming awareness that made the room seem smaller and the space between them far too charged for a quarrel over flowers and lemon cakes.
Then Mrs. Wexley cried out from the writing table.
“The subscription book,” she said. “Where is the subscription book?”
Every head turned.
The large red-bound book that had lain beneath the place cards not ten minutes ago was gone. Without it, Lord Penworth could not verify the largest pledges, the public acknowledgments, or the auction lots promised by half the room’s most touchy benefactors.
Lord Penworth blanched. “Good Lord.”
Woodmere crossed the room at once and cleared the table with swift, economical movements, revealing only lists, cards, and a box of sealing wax.
No ledger.
“Who handled it last?” he asked.
Mrs. Wexley opened her mouth. Louisa looked at Genny. Alexandra also looked at Genny, though with more sympathy. Niall, traitor that he was, did not even attempt innocence.
Genny stared back at them all. “Oh, I beg your pardon. Why is everyone suddenly looking at me as if I have taken up theft for variety? I should at least have chosen something more portable.”
No one answered.
Woodmere’s gaze lifted to hers. He did not accuse her. That would almost have been better.
He simply asked, “Did you move it?”
The hurt struck at once.
For a heartbeat she could not draw a full breath.
Her fingers tightened around her reticule until the frame bit through her glove.
She knew what they all saw when they looked at her: chatter, ribbons, impulse, a well-meant hand forever in the wrong place.
But surely he knew the difference between muddling a packet and stealing a ledger. Surely he knew that much.
“No,” she said.
And because she hated how small that sounded, she added with brightness edged in steel, “I may rearrange, redirect, revise, and occasionally rescue, my lord, but I do not steal account books.”
Something in his expression shifted then. Not quite regret. Not yet. But attention. Real attention.
“Very well,” he said.
As though her word ought to suffice and yet, somehow, still had to be weighed. It stung all the more because a small and deeply humiliating part of her had hoped he might take her side at once.
Genny folded her hands more tightly. “If it cannot be found, perhaps I ought to go before my presence causes the silver to disappear as well.”
Louisa half rose. “Genny—”
But Genny had already stepped back. She would not cry over a ledger.
She would not weep because an infuriatingly handsome viscount with judgment in his gray eyes had looked at her as though she were one more complication to be managed.
And she most certainly would not tremble because, for one reckless and idiotic instant earlier, she had wondered what it might be to make a man like that lose his composure.
She turned for the door, more because she needed movement than because she meant to leave. Then she stopped.
On the carpet near the window lay a torn slip of paper, half hidden beneath the hem of the curtains.
Genny bent, picked it up, and glanced down.
It was not from the subscription book. It was a corner torn from one of the altered instructions, and across it, in a hand that was not hers, not Mrs. Wexley’s, and not any script she recognized from the current lists, were two hastily written words.
blame her
The room seemed to narrow around her.
Genny lifted her head.
Woodmere was watching her.
“What is it?” he asked.
Her fingers tightened on the slip. Laughter carried faintly from another room, and footsteps hurried in the corridor.
Genny barely heard any of it. The scrap in her hand felt cold, the chill traveling through her glove and into the hollow beneath her breastbone.
She turned the note once, as if the other side might offer a kinder explanation. It did not.
Louisa came closer. “Genny?”
Genny shook her head, not trusting her voice yet. Her heart had begun beating too hard, each thud a warning beneath her ribs.
Genny met the viscount’s gray gaze and felt, for the first time since the morning began, not merely flustered or wounded or combative, but sharply, unmistakably alert.
“I believe,” she said, voice low, “that someone has decided I should make a most convenient villain.”