“Lady Kathryn Bryant,” he repeated, sounding pleasantly surprised and a great deal closer.
Oh, fishtails!
Kathryn turned with the most pleasant smile she could manage. Whoever had ended up with her portion of luck, she hoped to God, they needed every confounded ounce of it.
“Lord Ainsley, what a pleasure,” she greeted politely.
He dipped his chin in lieu of a bow when he reached her. Piercing, gray eyes studied her from underneath a tousled mop of waves as pitch-black as his reputation. The man was far too attractive for his own good. The tall, hard body attached to that face was quite simply unfair.
“Have you no escort this evening?” he asked with a hint of a smile.
“Of course I do,” she answered simply. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She did have an escort, just not a conscious one.
“Indeed? And where is this elusive person?”
“Mr. Jeffery Peters is attending the performance,” she said. “It’s one of our favorites.”
“Is that so?” he mused. Then his brow knit. “Wait… what?”
“He’s attending the performance,” she repeated reluctantly. Attending wasn’t quite the word.
He shook his head. “No, the other bit.”
“It’s one of our favorites?” Kathryn frowned, uncertain why it should matter.
“That’s what I thought you said,” he muttered. He shot a quick glance down the hall toward the boxes. Then his quizzical expression turned back to her. “We are attending the same abomination, are we not?”
“It’s a wonderful production!” she shot back.
“Is it?”
Her lips pursed into a mutinous line. He was waiting for an explanation, but Kathryn was not about to waste a lifetime explaining art to a caveman.
He sighed. “Opera is an art, Kathryn. Not all of it is good, but few can discern between brilliant and god-awful. Take this one, for example.”
As he spoke, her jaw nearly dropped. She stood speechlessly as the Marquess of Ainsley went on to explain what made this opera so insufferable to him. Most of his issue was with the lyrics. Apparently, the marquess spoke Italian, and he was less than impressed with what he called nonsensical dribble assaulting his ears.
Kathryn bit the inside of her cheek, managing to control herself with a blank look. “Incredible,” she muttered when he paused. “In that case, I would hate to keep you from leaving such a disgrace, my lord. Good evening.”
She turned to go, but he stepped around her, blocking her path to the street.
“Are you not leaving?” she asked with forced calm.
He shook his head, looking at her as though she were mad. “A gentleman could never allow a lady to wander off on her own. I am afraid your Jonas Pickles—”
“Jeffrey Peters,” she muttered.
“—whomever he is, acted terribly deficient as an escort and a gentleman,” he went on. “I can’t imagine what sort of riffraff your mother is allowing you to associate with.”
A rake was lecturing her on her choice of companions? Of all the insufferable, arrogant boneheads!
“I am no longer a child for you to lecture, Ainsley,” she reminded him coolly.
“Not that it ever did any good,” he muttered.
“Because they were unnecessary—are unnecessary.”
He watched her silently, looking unconvinced.
“Don’t you have a club or something to attend?” she asked. “I assumed gentlemen of your ilk stayed out all night, drinking, gaming, and whoring.”
“It will wait.”
“Of course it will.”
He would obviously rather frustrate her all night.
She looked past him to the door. It had begun to drizzle during their little chat. Just brilliant. Bad luck was one thing, but this? This was about as unlucky as one could get without being dead.
He shifted, tilting his head to the side. “Are you not afraid of the monsters and goblins walking about London at night?”
“Of course not.”
“You ought to be,” he mused, “conversing as you are with one of the worst monsters of them all.”
Her attention snapped back to him. “What a ridiculous claim.”
Ainsley might have grown up to become a libertine with not a shred of honor, but she wouldn’t consider him the worst.
He assessed her with the barest hint of amusement. “Is it proof you want?”
“No, thank you,” she said flatly. “In this particular field, you may strive for excellence. I shall not be responsible for challenging you to become worse than you are.”
He laughed, and Kathryn’s heart did an uncomfortable flip in her chest.
“Good night, Lord Ainsley,” she said, hastily pushing the painfully familiar feeling to the back of her mind. Once again, she stepped around him, and once again, she found him blocking her way.
He offered his arm. “Am I escorting you back to your box or to your carriage, Lady Kathryn?”
Her choices were very clear: her box, her carriage, or stand here to be annoyed by him for all eternity, or at least until the end of the opera, which would feel like an eternity.