That had earned several tweets of laughter from the young ladies. Lucy merely smiled.
Later, when Grif escorted her to the sideboard for a cup of punch, they stood to one side, hardly making conversation. Not that Grif didn’t try—when he brought up the latest news from Parliament, Lucy looked at him blankly. When he expressed his opinion of a popular travel novel that was making the rounds of various parlors, she seemed confused, and asked if he read very often, then declared she did not, for she found it quite tedious.
Grif thought Lucy had no inkling of true tedium. As politics and popular fiction did not interest her, Grif began speaking of the guests, and inadvertently his gaze fell on Anna, who was, he was chagrined to see, deep in conversation with Lockhart, her face alive with her effervescent smile. Lockhart’s smile was likewise bright, but more akin to a burning flame. And he had not, as far as Grif could see, taken his eyes off Anna’s very delectable and very exposed bosom. He would speak to her about that straightaway—he’d meant enticing, not exposed.
“Vulgar,” Lucy muttered next to him.
He glanced at her, saw that she was looking at Anna, too. “Beg yer pardon?”
She sighed, handed him her empty cup. “My sister. She’s vulgar.” She said it so easily, and with such a sneer, that it made Grif’s skin crawl with revulsion. That she would remark on her very own sister in such a way to a gentleman…
He casually stepped away from her. “I’ll just put yer cup away,” he said coldly, and strode away.
He found Fynster, who invited Grif to a glass of wine, and the two of them broke away, making their way to another sideboard, where there were decanters of wine and whiskey.
As they stood chatting, Grif noticed that two young dandies had quickly swooped down on Lucy in his wake, and he thought that splendid, wished them well in their endeavors to speak with the lass.
“Quite lovely, isn’t she?” Fynster remarked, and Grif nodded out of politeness, but he was beginning to think he’d never seen a less attractive woman.
“A remarkable change, really. I’ve always admired her, mind you, but she’s not been readily accepted.”
Grif looked at Fynster and realized he was not looking at Lucy, as he had assumed, but at Anna. He was watching Anna laugh gleefully at something Mr. Bradenton had said to her, tossing her head back, exposing her lovely neck to the bloody bastard.
“She seems rather…uplifted, does she not? Happier somehow,” Fynster said thoughtfully. “Rather a lightness of being I had not remarked before now.”
Aye, a lightness of being he’d taught her. And was it his imagination, or were the men swarming around Anna tonight? “Aye, lovely,” he muttered into his wine.
“I always considered her an Original,” Fynster went on, “but no one else seemed to notice.”
“It would seem the entire population of London has noticed,” Grif said, and sounded, apparently, so grudging that Fynster gave him a look.
“You should wish her good evening,” Fynster prodded him.
“And what of ye, Fynster?” Grif asked, forcing a smile. “Ye esteem the lass, do ye no’? Or do ye prefer Miss Crabtree? Ye’ve spent quite a lot of time in her company these last few weeks, aye?”
He might as well have declared for her then, for instead of answering, Fynster turned quite red and looked at Anna again. “Shall we pay our respects to Miss Addison?” he asked, and put aside his wine.
Anna could not believe what was happening to her. Grif had been so right—a smile, a laugh, a bit of conversation that went beyond the weather, and suddenly she was surrounded by gentlemen. She’d speak to one, turn round, and there would stand another waiting to be introduced. She spoke with Mr. Bradenton about her dogs, those kenneled at Whittington Park, her family’s seat, which she had trained to hunt fowl. He seemed rather taken by it, professed to being quite a hunt enthusiast, and was profoundly interested when she mentioned she took second place at the Sussex dog trials the past year.
She laughed at Sir Farley’s tale of a particularly long night spent in New York before returning to England, and was able to share with him some anecdotes about New York she had gathered through years of faithful correspondence with her mother’s cousin. She longed to go there one day, she told him. Sir Farley said that henceforth he would long to take her there.