“Octavia, you are stunning.” Valerie bussed her on both cheeks then stepped back to survey her gown. “Gold suits you beautifully. Thin as tissue and quite daring. Parisian design but Indian silk, I think, or Chinese?”
“Indian.” Always. She was an open book, if anyone ever cared to read it. Marcus Crispin did, of course, but with the cover merely ajar.
“That puts me in mind of someone you will be delighted to meet.” Valerie grasped Tavy’s arm and drew her toward the library. Books lined the recessed shelves from floor to ceiling. Mementos of Lord and Lady Ashford’s travels decorated tables and walls—a beaded mask, a pair of alabaster elephants, a model ship. Tavy glanced away from the shelves and her pulse ground to a halt.
“You and he were neighbors of a sort in Madras,” Valerie said as Tavy’s regard met the secret preoccupation of her thoughts for the past three weeks. And seven years. “Octavia, may I present to you the Marquess of Doreé? Oh, how lovely, clearly you have already met.”
Met. Laughed. Touched. Fell into sweet ecstasy.
Tavy barely managed to rise from her curtsy on jellied knees. After his unkindness at his house, she had not imagined merely encountering him in society could distress her.
Her imagination had not served her well.
He bowed, all elegant grace. “Good evening, ma’am.”
“The two of you must chat about Madras, old times, what have you,” Valerie said. “Ah, someone has opened up the pianoforte. How delightful. We will have dancing. Do you think dancing before supper is simply too rustic?”
“Of course not, m’dear.” Lady Fitzwarren’s round swell of a personage shuffled close, garbed in magnificent puce taffeta and peacock feathers. “Dancing at any hour is to be recommended for health and good spirits. Hello, Doreé. Met my niece yet? Of course you have. As handsome as a body can stare, you must know all the pretty girls even if their mamas don’t give you the time of day.” She tapped the tip of her fan on his coat. Black, the same as before, like the rest of his garments save his snowy white linens. Gone, apparently, were the splendid waistcoats of his youth.
“Miss Pierce and I are indeed acquainted.” He bowed again, this time to the dowager countess. “And I thank you for the undeserved compliment.”
“Undeserved? Pretty airs and false modesty disguise all sorts of depravities, Doreé. Don’t cultivate them too assiduously or those mamas might come looking for you after all.”
Valerie chuckled. The corner of his mouth crept up, a grin of sheer masculine ease. Tavy lost her breath.
“Your mama, Octavia,” the dowager stated, “is a widgeon of course. Always has been. Like her brother, George. Daresay you know the fellow, Doreé, though he’s still in the East Indies these days, ain’t he?”
“We must have dancing,” Valerie announced with a clap. “Mellicent, I know you will not dance, so do come turn pages for Miss Foster. Despite her talent she is missing every twelfth bar, what with having to do it herself, the poor dear.” She led the countess away.
Tavy met the marquess’s gaze. His eyes were quite, quite dark, without a hint of the pleasure in them that he had shown the dowager and viscountess.
She shoved back her shoulders. “Can you bring yourself to speak with me civilly, sir? Because if you cannot I am perfectly happy to walk away now and leave you to other company.” Rather, to run. Except that her joints seemed frozen. A violin’s bright twitter joined the pianoforte’s perambulations.
The slightest crease appeared in his cheek.
“Would you care to dance, Miss Pierce?”
Tavy frowned. “Can you?”
“Yes, the scoundrel who consorts with low characters can dance.”
“I meant, of course, can you bring yourself to speak to me civilly?”
“Ah. And the implication is entirely different in that case.” His tone had altered. Almost—almost—it seemed to tease. A tiny thrill of something sweet and forbidden passed through Tavy. She ordered herself not to trust it.
“I did not imply any such thing.” She attempted an indifferent air. “I only wonder that if we are to continually meet in society you will repeat the manner in which you spoke to me at your house.”
“It is unlikely we will meet.”
A knot formed in her stomach. “Why not?”
“I rarely go about in society.”
“I see.” Sticky nausea clawed at the knot. “Too dedicated to—to more enjoyable pursuits?”
“No. But forgive me for repeating myself. I recall already once informing you of that.”
Tavy’s breath stalled. Around her, the music and voices fell away and she was once again in the bazir, in a sea of people yet only able to see him. Silence enveloped them, his black eyes unreadable.
“Come now,” he finally said. “I cannot stand here with my hand outstretched indefinitely. People will begin to comment.”
“I don’t particularly care what people say. And frankly I do not think I can take your hand.”
“You will be obliged to if we dance.” He seemed entirely unperturbed. “The set is forming.”
Two lines of guests stretched along the length of the drawing room, the pair of them at the head by the library door. Panic slithered through Tavy, the same she had felt at the theater when she first saw him. With brutal will, she shut out the memories.
“Very well.” She placed her fingertips upon his palm.
And her world halted.
Then began again, with a great lurch and considerably more color and sound and thorough agitation than in far too long.
He guided her into place and released her to take his spot with perfect ease as he had always done everything. Until that night. The night when ease had become hunger.
Tavy barely managed the patterns, calling upon years of practice to make her way through the steps without disgracing herself, aware of little but her shaking fingers and her partner. Clearly, her mother was not the only widgeon in the family.
“Why don’t you go about in society?”
The pattern separated them. They came back together at the lead of a line of dancers. He drew her forward.
“Why don’t you?” she repeated.
“I have only a modest acquaintance in town.”
“That is impossible,” for a peer, an East India Company proprietor, and an enormously wealthy man. “I do not believe it.”
“Whether you believe it or not has little effect upon the truth.”
She bit her lip. “So I see you cannot be civil after all.”
“Not when you continually plague me with impertinent questions. No, apparently.”
Her gaze darted to him. He faced forward, but the dent had reappeared in his cheek. Tavy’s heart sped.
“I merely wondered.”
“I cannot fathom why you ask when you clearly know all the answers already,” he said with a brief glance at her and a lift of one black brow. He released her and they parted.
He had spoken to her as though they knew one another. As though it had not been seven long years and one horrid drawing room conversation since their last meeting. She watched him through the other dancers, allowing herself to stare now. She didn’t know why she should not. Every other woman must, when confronted with such masculine perfection.
“I came to you the other day because I haven’t any answers,” she said when the dance brought them together again. “Or, at least, very few.”