The Trouble With Honor (The Cabot Sisters #1)

He smiled wolfishly. “I like it here.”


So did she, very much so. She liked standing next to him—he was so much larger, so much stronger—but she could well imagine Lady Chatham and Lady Prescott’s fit of apoplexy if they were to see it. Unfortunately, the song’s introduction was over, the dancing had begun and Honor had no time to argue the placement of Easton’s hand. “All right, follow me—one, two, three, one, two, three,” she muttered, moving him first one way, then the other.

After a few stumbling tries, he found the rhythm of the dance.

“There!” she said as they moved forward, “I think you have it! You’re a natural.”

“Then perhaps you will allow me to lead,” he said, and suddenly twirled her, very nearly colliding with another couple.

Honor laughed. “You can’t do that—you must turn in the direction of the other dancers.”

“I beg your pardon? I may do as I please, just as you seem to do. Longmeadow, Honor? You’ve made too much of this scheme now.”

He was cross with her. The truth was that Honor had blurted it without thinking, which, upon reflection, she’d been doing quite a lot of lately.

Easton’s foot collided with hers, and they faltered for a step or two before he quickly righted them. “Pardon,” he said apologetically, and twirled her in the wrong direction again, heedless of the other dancers.

“The wrong way, Mr. Easton!”

“Say you,” he said irritably. “And by the by, did it occur to you that perhaps I am not at liberty to leave London just now? That perhaps I might have more pressing issues than you?”

She wanted to know what those pressing issues were, if they involved women. “Impossible,” she teased him.

“Oh? Well, here’s a novel thought for you, madam—I don’t want to go to Longmeadow. And if I did, I wouldn’t need you to so bloody blatantly wrangle an invitation for me!”

So there it was—he was embarrassed. Honor was slightly chagrined by that—she never meant that. “I didn’t wrangle an invitation for you, Easton. The thought occurred to me, and I said it. And why ever would you not want to go to Longmeadow? It’s beautiful! The house is truly magnificent. And frankly, sir, I had to do it, for I never once considered that you’d not do as you’ve promised. I am merely providing you the opportunity.”

That remark caused him to stop midstep.

“Move on!” she frantically urged him.

He grudgingly did so, but his expression was full of vexation. “Honor Cabot, I have done as I said,” he snapped, and moved off step, so that she had to hop on one leg to catch up to him. “I have come to this wretched ball, I have danced with her,” he insisted, bumping into the couple behind them and tossing a curt “pardon” over his shoulder. “I have engaged her, seduced her—I’ve done all but ask for her fragile little hand in marriage!”

Honor was not the least bit chastised; she rolled her eyes at his declaration.

He looked surprised, but then his eyes narrowed. “By God, someone should have turned you over a knee long ago. I would take great delight in doing it myself.”

It surprised Honor that those words should send a delightful little shiver down her spine. “Don’t be so cross with me, George. I will concede that you’ve managed to make some headway, but you haven’t done it.”

“How do you know?” he demanded. “Your path has scarcely crossed Miss Hargrove’s this evening!”

“I know,” Honor said with confidence. “She’s not watching you now, is she?” She did not expect him to suddenly twirl her about as he did. He squinted in the general direction of where they’d left Augustine and Monica.

“Well, then?” Honor asked. “Are the eyes of a doe fixed upon you now?”

“For the love of God, she is with her fiancé.”

Honor shrugged. “That hardly keeps others from it, does it? Lady Seifert has openly admired you, and she is married.”

That news seemed to interest him in a way that Honor did not care for. “Has she?” he asked, and smiled as if that pleased him. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know!” What a rooster! Now Honor was cross. “Seems rather vulgar to me, to be ogling a man who is not your husband.”