Their grandfather didn’t seem to notice—or perhaps it was that he didn’t care. He slapped a friendly hand to Slade’s shoulder and grinned. “Boys, this is my and Mari’s friend, Slade Osborne. Oz, Julie’s boys. Isaac Arnaud, who now runs my shipping ventures, and Hezekiah Arnaud, academic and chemist.”
He still wasn’t sure when he had become the friend of Thaddeus Lane. And he seriously doubted Marietta would term him such. But he refreshed his tight smile and held out a hand.
The Arnaud brothers seemed bent on breaking rather than shaking it, but he did his best not to grimace. Especially when the Lanes moved off to greet someone else and Marietta swept up halfway through Hez’s death grip of a squeeze.
Her cat eyes flashed green sparks. But that didn’t quite cover the shadows of pain lurking underneath them.
“Hezekiah!” She all but hissed the name, and moved her hands in some quick series of motions that left Slade scowling every bit as much as the crushing grip.
His confusion only increased when Hez released his hand and made a few motions back to her. Then Isaac jumped into the fray. Slade backed away, glancing down when he felt someone at his side. Barbara, her gaze on the siblings too. Though she smiled.
He glanced from them to her. “Are they…arguing?”
A soothing chuckle came from her throat. “I don’t understand much of it, but I caught Mari’s initial command to stop.”
His scowl deepened still more. “Is it a language?”
“Indeed. Sign language. Was that ‘doll’?” Barbara tilted her head to the side. She too wore a more formal gown, though still in unrelieved black. “How very odd. But I’m sure it was. That was one of the first signs she taught Elsie.”
“Elsie?”
“Walker and Cora’s little girl. She is deaf. Mari has been teaching them signs so they can communicate.”
“She…” Marietta Hughes taking the time to teach a new language to her servants? Was that the meeting he’d overheard her and Walker Payne making when he first arrived? Slade’s gaze fell on her again. Maybe a little differently than it ever had before. Maybe. “Interesting.”
“Oh, it is. You ought to sit in on a lesson sometime, Mr. Osborne. Mari is a wonder. Never faltering or forgetting a single sign, and always so patient.” A tinkle of laughter. “I’m afraid Elsie is picking it up much faster than the rest of us.”
A few other gazes swung their way, a fact which apparently didn’t escape Marietta. Socially conscious, that was more in keeping with his picture of her. Her face neutral, she made a few more signs, small and discreet. Though whatever they meant, they didn’t seem to please her brothers, who looked about to make the argument vocal.
She spun, her gaze locking on Slade, and strode across the steps between them. Fury blazed in her eyes, not unlike the way it had in the cellar the other day as she claimed she wasn’t Hughes’s. Right before she stretched up and kissed him.
This time she halted at his side and lifted one flame of a brow. “We had better head to our seats, Slade.”
She’d used his given name—in public, in front of the brothers who looked as though they would as soon tear him limb from limb as take in the play. Slade did the only thing he could think to do.
He offered her his arm.
Nineteen
Marietta had all she could do to keep her pleasant smile pinned to her face and her hand relaxed against Slade’s arm. Anger wanted to push through her fingers, and the pain from a headache contorted her face into a wince as they started up the stairs.
Slade’s fingers brushed over hers. She glanced up into his face and saw concern knitting his brows.
“Are you feeling all right?”
The question made her breath catch in her throat. Mama had seen the pain—Mama always did—but no one else had. “Just a little headache.”
His frown didn’t ease. “Do you want to leave?”
The hopefulness in his tone teased out a smile, but she shook her head—a mistake, that—and then nodded to a passing congressman. “What I want is to enjoy the play my grandparents have been eager to watch, let all of society see that I am through with mourning Lucien and not on the arm of Dev, and give my overbearing brothers a few swift kicks to the posterior.”
That last part she barely even muttered, but Slade’s chuckle said he heard her. “My fault. I think I looked at you wrong.”
Why should that make heat sweep over her? She already knew he thought her attractive. And she had commissioned this dress months ago to elicit reactions when she reentered society, having it modeled on a green gown that had left the Hugheses breathless. Though at the time she certainly hadn’t imagined wearing this one first to a play in Washington on the arm of a detective rather than Dev.