‘Of course we haven’t started yet, Mr Ambrose. You’ve come just at the right time. May I introduce you to my family?’
‘You may,’ Mr Ambrose granted with infinite generosity.
The raven-haired beauty stepped up beside him.
No… not raven-haired. Crow-haired! She’s a crow! She’s just the sort to pick at rotting carcasses. She’s probably just waiting to sink her beak into Mr Ambrose.
She smiled. And it was an artificial smile that didn’t reach her eyes. I knew it! I knew she couldn’t be trusted. You could never trust females - they were so bloody conniving! Apart from unfortunate young secretaries and other kinds of feminists, of course.
She directed her smile at him, and he, although he didn’t smile, nodded graciously. More graciously than he had ever nodded at me.
A thousand questions buzzed through my head. Who was she? Why was she here? Why had he brought her? Was she rich? Was he in love with her? Were they engaged? And most important of all, why the blazes were all of my questions about her?
I forced my eyes back to Mr Ambrose. It was him I should be concerned about.
Should be.
But wasn’t.
I was concerned about her. Or, more specifically, her and him in combination.
My eyes snapped back to her. Heat welled up inside me. The heat of some dark unnamed emotion. Was it possible to want to claw a stranger’s eyes out? Well, people said there was such a thing as love at first sight. Why not hate at first sight, then?
‘Um, Miss Linton? My hand, if you please?’
Blinking in surprise, so suddenly ripped from my thoughts, I looked up at Lord Dalgliesh, then down at his hand, which I was clenching so tightly that it was white from lack of blood. I let go as if I had burned myself. ‘Oh, excuse me!’
‘No matter,’ he said, took his other hand off my arm and stepped back from me. His attention seemed to be on something else. He was looking towards the two newcomers.
Well, if he wasn’t interested in me any longer, all the better. Quickly, I stepped back and ducked into the crowd.
Just in time: Mr Ambrose had spotted Lord Dalgliesh.
There was a moment suspended in time. The two men’s eyes met, and it was as if they were two lions meeting at a Sahara watering hole. They were the kings, the rest of us were just so many zebras and antelopes.
Mr Ambrose prowled forward. Lord Dalgliesh, ignoring Lady Metcalf, who was still trying to engage the newcomers’ attention, shook out his mane of golden hair and started to advance as well. People in their way stood aside hastily, as if they felt the tension in the air. I certainly did.
Finally, they stood facing each other. I watched from behind the shoulder of a bulky military gentleman who didn’t realise he was being used as cover.
The two of them stared at one another, waiting for the other to bow first. After seemingly endless seconds, they both inclined their heads about half an inch, at the same instant.
‘Lord Dalgliesh,’ Mr Ambrose said.
‘Lord Ambrose,’ Lord Dalgliesh said.
A shiver went down my back? Lord Ambrose? What the…!
‘Mister Ambrose, your Lordship.’ Mr Ambrose’s tone was arctic, but Lord Dalgliesh didn’t flinch. He just smiled a friendly smile. A fake friendly smile. ‘Of course. My mistake.’
There was a spell of silence so intense it pressed against my eardrums.
‘It has been long,’ Mr Ambrose said.
‘Yes, it has,’ Lord Dalgliesh said. ‘Quite some time since last we met.’
The air between them seemed to crackle. Lord Dalgliesh started to say something else, but I didn’t catch it because at that very moment the evil crow descended on Mr Ambrose, grabbing his arm again.
‘Come, my dear Rikkard,’ she said with the broadest of smiles. ‘I wish to dance a reel or two.’
Rikkard? Rikkard? She was allowed to call him by his first name? Who was this creature? The writer of the pink letters?
Well, if so, he seemed to pay a lot more attention to her in person than he did to her correspondence. With a last dark look at Lord Dalgliesh, he took her by the hand and led her onto the dance floor.
‘What was that?’ I heard some lady whisper beside me. ‘Between Mr Ambrose and His Lordship, I mean. I’ve seen a lot of important people taking the measure of each other, but that…’
‘That was eerie,’ agreed another in whispered tones. I was inclined to agree.
Lord Dalgliesh still followed Mr Ambrose with his eyes. He had his back turned to me, so I couldn’t see his expression. But I didn’t really want to.
Then suddenly he turned, again with his charming smile on his face. ‘Miss Linton,’ he began. ‘I apologize for the interruption. Shall we finish our…’
His smile flickered and went out when he saw that I was no longer there beside him. I didn’t wait to see what he would do next. By the time the music had started up again, I was already halfway across the room, trying to locate my little sister Ella.
I had to find Ella! It was essential that I found her again and helped her through the evening as well as I could. It was also essential that I occupied myself with something, anything which could keep my mind off the fact that Mr Rikkard bloody Ambrose was dancing in this bloody ballroom, probably only a few yards away from me, with some bloody female I had never seen in my life!
I felt like hitting something. Preferably Mr Ambrose. Or her. Oh yes, he could snap at me and even continue to deny the fact that I was a girl, but present him with a girl with long lashes, a demure smile and a pretty dress, and he was suddenly dancing and going to balls and whatnot. Typical man!
Or is he? whispered that tiny voice inside me. You heard Dalgliesh call him Lord. It’s not every man who has a noble ancestry but chooses to deny the fact. Why do it?
No matter. Nobleman or common man, he was still a man! Self-centred, arrogant, infuriating!
I should just ignore his antics the way I had learned to ignore most men’s chauvinist behaviour over the years. But… but… there was this possessive way in which the black-haired girl had linked arms with him. For some reason I could not ignore that.
I spotted them in the distance, twirling over the dance floor, and a stab of envy shot through me. No, I could not ignore that at all.
But why?
Fuming, I whirled around and left in search of Ella.
Bloody hell, why?
~~*~~*
‘There you are!’
I swooped down on my prey like a hawk on an unsuspecting field mouse. Well, maybe not quite. For one thing, I didn’t grab Sir Philip Wilkins by the neck, but by the hand. For another, I didn’t carry him off to my nest on a distant, rocky crag to devour him, but simply dragged him over to a chair next to the closest refreshment table, away from an exhausted-looking Ella.
‘I have been looking for you,’ I said with a reproachful little smile and more or less forced the lanky, long-nosed lord into a chair beside me. Ella, an expression of sublime relief on her face, dropped into a chair on my other side, out of range of his romantic attentions.
‘All this dancing can be so exhausting, can’t it?’ I asked cheerfully as the first notes for the next dance sounded. ‘I’m sure you’ve been longing for a break.’
‘Well, actually I was rather enjoying-’ Wilkins began, his gaze wandering with dreamy longing between Ella and the dance floor.
‘So terribly exhausting!’ I cut him off. This was the perfect time to test a very handy technique for talking with men I had recently discovered: if they were gentlemen, and a lady intimated there was something she might like them to do, they were usually too polite to refuse. Of course, nobody ever used this technique because it was ruthlessly impolite. But then, nobody had ever accused me of politeness. ‘I’m sure you would love a little conversation for a change, wouldn’t you?’
He hesitated. ‘Um… well, yes, if you think so, but…’
It works! It works, it works!
‘I must admit I found our discussion of your house in town extraordinary,’ I cut him off again with a bright smile. ‘So exciting, in fact, that I was wondering: Do you have any estates in the country, too?’
‘Well, yes…’