Chapter Two #2
He studied her, his attention drifting from her eyes to her mouth and lingering there just long enough to turn the silence into a physical pressure. The small white scar beside his lip caught the candlelight. She noted it, and then was immediately, profoundly irritated with herself for noting it.
“The country dance, then,” he agreed softly. “For now.”
He stood, the chair giving a faint creak in his wake, and the ballroom collectively rearranged its posture.
Every head that had turned to track his path now pivoted smoothly toward the potted palms, marking the exact coordinates where Imogen Goodall sat with a scandalous French novel and a warm patch on her skin that refused to cool.
***
The promised set arrived three dances later.
He appeared at the edge of the floor, extending his hand without a word.
She took it, primarily because refusing a duke who had already crossed the room for you required a level of theatricality she did not possess.
His gloved fingers closed around hers, steady and dry, and the memory of his thumb brushing her hand earlier migrated instantly to the center of her palm.
The figures of the dance pulled them apart and brought them sharply back together.
“You are staring, Your Grace,” she pointed out as the music forced them shoulder-to-shoulder.
“I am observing,” he corrected smoothly, his thumb resting a fraction too heavily against her waist as he turned her. “There is a distinction.”
“Observation implies an intent to learn. You are merely trying to unnerve me.”
“Am I succeeding?”
“Not in the slightest.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it. He did not bother to hide his amusement, his gaze dropping to the rapid pulse at her throat.
He saw past the gown that was two seasons out of fashion and the hair dressed with Aunt Margery’s maid’s limited ambitions, stripping away the careful armor she had built over four years of invisibility.
The woman dancing beside them missed her step, staring openly, and Imogen’s cheeks began to burn in a manner that owed nothing to the exertion of the movements.
She completed the final figure with her hands trembling slightly inside her cotton gloves.
She arranged her features into the expression she had been perfecting since she was nineteen, a mask of total, impenetrable indifference, and allowed him to escort her back to her chair.
She sat but ignored the book inside her reticule, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her seek refuge.
The trembling behind her ribs took four full minutes to subside, and even then, she suspected it had merely retreated to a darker corner, waiting for a quiet moment to remind her that she had not pulled away from his touch.
Aunt Margery miraculously woke in time for dinner, consumed three bites of cold chicken, and pronounced the evening a triumph on the grounds that Cassie had danced four sets.
She fell asleep again in the carriage before they cleared the Marchmont gates.
Cassie spent the journey chattering happily about Miss Drayton and a young man with exceptionally fine calves.
Imogen watched the dark London streets slide past the glass, her thoughts snagged on the unpracticed sound of Ravenhurst’s laugh and the dangerous, foolish hope that it could not be fake.
The silence of the house offered no relief.
Bethany Mercer, who had possessed a key to the Goodall’s adjoining garden door since they were twelve, was already waiting in the drawing room when Imogen came downstairs the next morning.
Two cups of tea steamed on the small table by the window.
Bethany’s dark hair was pinned severely back, her expression set in the precise arrangement that meant she intended to extract information and would employ force if necessary.
“You danced with him,” Bethany announced before Imogen could properly sit. “The entire street knows. Mrs. Dalrymple’s footman informed our cook before your carriage wheels had cooled.”
“It was a single country dance.” Imogen took the chair opposite, wrapping her hands around the warm porcelain of her cup to disguise the fact that her fingers had not entirely forgotten the duke’s grip.
“A country dance with the Duke of Ravenhurst is never simply a dance.” Bethany leaned forward, her tea forgotten. “It is a broadsheet headline. It is two solid weeks of speculation and your aunt suffering palpitations over the breakfast chocolate.”
“He cornered me behind the palms.” Imogen took a slow sip of her tea, the liquid doing nothing to settle her stomach. “He asked for two dances, and I conceded one to avoid a scene. He laughed at something I said, and I have spent the entire night trying to decide if the amusement was genuine.”
Bethany watched her over the rim of her cup. The evaluation was visible behind her dark eyes, a careful weighing of the words spoken against years of shared secrets. She read Imogen’s face as fluently as Imogen read her novels, entirely attuned to the spaces between the lines.
“You are unusually quiet on the subject,” Imogen prompted, setting her cup down with a small clatter.
“I am waiting for you to tell me the rest of it,” Bethany replied, her smile devoid of its usual warmth.
She stood, smoothing her skirts, and let herself out through the garden door. The quiet click of the latch echoed in the empty room, and it seemed like a devastatingly articulate response.
Imogen remained in the chair long after her tea had gone cold. Upstairs, the house settled into its morning routine, the floorboards creaking under the maids’ footsteps. She pulled the volume of Crébillon from her reticule, flipping to the page where the duke’s shadow had fallen.
The words blurred together. Beneath the French prose lay the indelible memory of a gloved knuckle dragging slowly across her skin, a laugh that had escaped its cage, and pale, silver eyes that had seen entirely too much.
Why her, and why now? After four seasons of perfect irrelevance, the most pursued man in London had decided she was worth unearthing from the shrubbery.
She closed the book, running her thumb over the leather binding.
She did not possess an answer, and the persistent tension against her ribs suggested she was terrified of finding one.