Unlike Fitz, who rarely danced when he didn’t need to, Hastings enjoyed a ball and took part in every set. And Helena had to credit him: He always remembered the wallflowers, girls who waited, hope mixed with embarrassment, for a partner.
A dance request from him gave the wallflowers much pleasure. Even with an illegitimate child under his roof, he remained highly eligible—he had inherited from his uncle not only a title, but a substantial industrial fortune. Helena wondered what the wallflowers would think if they knew he wrote erotica—with a female character who would send their mothers into fainting spells. Who made love with her eyes open.
Strangely enough, for all the kisses Hastings had attempted to steal from Helena over the years, he had never claimed a waltz. This ball was no exception. Instead of a waltz, he was her partner in a lancers set, which involved three other couples.
Still, the dance offered enough privacy for him to bend his head to her ear. “Mrs. Monteth is on the warpath, I hear. I would be careful if I were you.”
“Mrs. Monteth is always on the warpath.”
It was not an exaggeration. Mrs. Monteth, Andrew’s wife’s sister, was not so much a gossip as a self-appointed guardian of virtue and righteousness. She spied on the servants, opened random doors at country house parties—for which reason she was seldom invited to any these days—and did just about everything in her power to expose and punish the private moral failings of those around her.
“Should Mrs. Martin discover a stray love letter from you to her husband, who would she go to first?”
They joined hands with the two dancers to either side and advanced toward an opposing line of dancers. The gentlemen bowed; the ladies curtsied. The lines drew apart and formed again into four couples.
“Mrs. Monteth will be wasting her time. I am constantly watched.”
“I don’t trust you, Miss Fitzhugh. You will somehow create a path to trouble.”
“And drop myself into Mrs. Monteth’s lap at the same time? I think not.”
“You look at the situation and consider only your part in it, Miss Fitzhugh. But there are other players involved. You cannot predict what they will do.”
“As long as I am all but a prisoner, they can do whatever they like.”
Hastings made an exasperated sound. It was rare that he allowed a show of frustration, this man who was always smooth and slippery. The demands of the dance interrupted their conversation. When they’d put some distance between themselves and the rest of the couples again, he said, “I am beginning to think you are hoping to be caught.”
She snorted. “And why would I do that?”
“So I’d have no choice but to be your knight in shining armor.”
“You are not a knight in any kind of armor if you prefer your women always tied up, Hastings.”
He tsked. “Fiction, my dear. Know the difference between the author and a first-person narrator.
She glanced up. It still felt odd to have to tilt her head back to look him in the eye—she’d towered above him during their adolescence. “Is there a difference in this case?”
“I’d say there is. I haven’t fettered my wife yet—in fact, I don’t even have a wife yet. But if you get caught, I’d have to marry you out of obligation to Fitz, and then maybe truth will come closer to fiction.”
Heat pooled in her. “It won’t happen.”
“Not if you watch yourself.” His voice was velvety. “But if you continue to be reckless, who knows what will happen?”
Fitz opened the ball dancing with Venetia, the guest of honor, and he closed the ball dancing with her. Now, arm in arm, he walked her to her waiting carriage.
“Am I not to have my wife back, Fitzhugh?” said Lexington, smiling.
“Seniority, sir. When you’ve been her husband as long as I’ve been her brother, you may claim her more readily.”
Venetia laughed heartily. Fitz loved seeing her delighted. She deserved every good thing in life.
“Come to Algernon House in August,” Lexington proposed. “I have been abroad a great deal and my grouse population has exploded. I’ll need all the help I can get.”
“Excellent idea,” enthused Venetia. “Fitz is a marvelous shot. As is Helena, by the way. And we really ought to teach Millie to shoot.”
Fitz’s throat tightened. There was hardly time.
A footman held the carriage door open. Fitz shook hands with Lexington. Venetia kissed Fitz on the cheek.
He didn’t let her go immediately. “I’m happy for you,” he whispered.
“And I hope to be just as happy for you, my love,” she whispered back. “Choose carefully.”
Millie gazed at Fitz. He was so beautiful, a protective hand around his sister’s waist, then handing her into the carriage himself.
The Lexington brougham pulled away, but De Courcy and Kingsland, a pair of his school friends, wanted a word. De Courcy, who’d played cricket with Fitz at Eton, had become engaged not too long ago. He probably wished Fitz to take part in his wedding. Fitz was wildly popular for such endeavors; every man who’d gone to Eton during remotely the same era considered him a chum.