Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

B eside her, Captain Jack Balfour nearly choked upon his drink. “Miss Conway,” he finally said when he recovered himself. “You astonish me.”

No more than she had astonished herself. She wasn’t quite sure what had come over her, other than this surprising feeling of wanting to amuse and engage him—this cynical, handsome, interesting man who had been declared not for her.

Yet as much as she admired Lady Ivers, who was she to choose for Flora? Who was anyone to say who she might, or might not, choose for herself? And what she chose, was enter into the slightly sardonic style of the conversation—to amuse herself by flirting. “I like to keep the score even if I can.”

He took another sidelong glance at her. “I didn’t know we were playing.”

Flora gave Jack Balfour what she hoped was a leveling look. “Did you not? A man of your wit and experience? Come now, Captain.”

“However much I should like”—Jack Balfour lowered his voice so no one but she might hear him mutter—“to come right now—” He was stopped by a sharp rap from Lady Ivers’s attentive fan, before he corrected himself. “I fear I must decline. Lady Ivers has fired her warning shot across my bow, and her next will likely put a hole in my hull. So, I beg you will leave me what little pride I have left to my name, and let me withdraw from the line of battle—or rather, return to it, where, with what little luck I have left to my name, I will go aboard some frigate or another to make another fortune that the earldom will swallow whole and still be left hungry.”

“Indeed, you will.” Lady Ivers squeezed his hand in assurance and affection, clearly glad of the chance to steer the conversation into calmer waters. “You shall earn yourself another fortune to rival the first. That’s why I like you.”

“You like me because Admiral Ivers found me useful,” he countered. “God rest his soul.”

“God rest him,” the lady echoed with feeling. “I miss him every day. He loved you, Jack. He found you useful because you were useful—dutiful, determined, insightful and courageous. I find you useful because you are also wonderfully decorative. Even without any money, you do fill out drawing room quite nicely.”

Balfour smiled despite himself. “I live to serve, my lady.”

“And so do I. I will write what letters I can to the Admiralty in support of your cause. But until such time as you have a ship to go off to—” She glanced speculatively from the captain to Flora. “Don’t let me catch you drawing any more of my ire by flirting so outrageously that you make my darling Miss Conway fall madly in love with you.”

Flora was not sure which of them was more shocked—she just stared at Lady Ivers, but Balfour actually guffawed. Which piqued her pride in a way his previous banter had not. “I am perfectly able to defend myself from the captain’s wit, my lady.”

“My darling Flora.” Lady Ivers clasped her hand solicitously. “I know you cut your teeth on London’s bachelors, but I beg you will proceed with caution where a rogue like Jack is concerned. Handsome and witty is a powerful combination and when you add in the rest…” She gestured to his admittedly fine person, from his burnished head, down past his handsome face to his large but well-polished boots, before she threw her hands up in animated despair. “All that damnable charm!”

He did indeed possess a damnable amount of charm—to which Flora knew she was not impervious. She had liked her charming brother-in-law, Archie Carrington, almost instantly—far earlier than Maisie, who was much less susceptible to Archie’s particular brand of cheek, though she had eventually succumbed.

But Flora had her own charms to wield as her weapons.

And Lady Ivers clearly had eyes in her head. “Well, you can’t say I haven’t warned you.” The lady wagged her fan at the two of them. “Be good! And for God’s sake, be smarter than you are good.” And with that, the good lady fixed them each with her sternest glare and left them standing alone together.

“Well.” Flora was chagrinned to feel her face flame. “I haven’t been told off like that since—” She plied her fan to cool her cheeks. “Well, since forever.” Her father had rarely corrected Flora, preferring to save his instruction for her sister, Maisie. A glance told her Captain Balfour had weathered the storm of embarrassment more easily than she. “You?”

“Typically, I’m the one delivering the dressing downs, not receiving them,” he admitted with a rueful smile that hitched up one corner of his otherwise stern mouth. “But I’ll admit I’ve never had the dubious pleasure of watching a young lady be warned off me before. Quite a novel experience, this.”

It was the irreverent pleasure in his smile that encouraged her. “You’re enjoying yourself.”

“I admit, I am. Far more than I imagined.”

“And what had you imagined?”

He hesitated, and then turned himself toward her, so they were shoulder to shoulder as well as eye to eye. “That I would not like you this much.”

It was as if everything within her—her heart, lungs, the very blood in her veins—stopped and started and fell apart and came crashing together in one silent instant.

Flora found her mouth open and closed it. And instructed herself to breathe. And then ventured, “You like me?”

“Aye,” he answered quite simply, as if it weren’t the most astonishing thing in the world. “Another novel experience.”

“Is it?” She could barely put two words together—she, who had never in her life before this evening, been at a loss for words.

“Damn my eyes, yes,” he admitted. But then, as if he thought he had said too much, he donned his cynicism as if it were a comfortable old sea cloak. “When you’re older and more experienced, you’ll know that. Truly likable people are few and far between in this world.”

“Are they?” she asked, feeling instinctively that such a thing could not be true—she had met wonderful, likable people everywhere she had turned in their adopted city. She felt compelled to combat his cynicism. “And are you so very old and experienced? Despite your appearance—” His face was certainly weathered, and his clothing was worn—shiny at the collar and cuffs—though his bottle green coat was immaculately tailored. “—I gather you cannot be more than thirty or five and thirty.”

“I am indeed thirty,” he confirmed quietly, “while you cannot be more than one and twenty.”

Flora could do nothing but own her years. “Nearly twenty-two. Though I am not so naive or unworldly as such an age might imply.” She had come into something approaching adulthood at the tender, but bristlingly aware age of fourteen, when she had first understood the injustices foisted upon her sister as a result of her physical limitations. And then, as Lady Ivers had affirmed, she had cut her teeth on London’s bachelors—though she had never been tempted or troubled or amused—or so thoroughly engaged—by one of them the way she was now.

“Indeed?” Balfour agreed in the same evenhanded, but subtly cynical tone. “Most young women are married at your advanced age. I admit to some curiosity as to why you are not?”

“Yes, I’m absolutely ancient.” She entered into the spirit of his tease. “Best fetch me a Bath chair to roll me about. That will surely catch me a husband.” She found she liked matching wits with him. And making him smile. But she liked astonishing him more. “For my own part, I want purpose far more than I want a husband.”

Balfour’s brow lofted in a perfect arch. “I’m sure it ought to be easy enough to devote yourself to some worthy cause.” His eyes skated away, though, as if he was regretting speaking so openly. Or, worse, was growing bored.

And so, Flora took her courage in hand, and said exactly what she wanted to say. “But it is not easy at all. At the moment, I’m trying to decide if you’re a worthy cause, Captain.”

She had his attention now—his frown grew slowly fierce, creasing his brow as he tried to divine her meaning. She decided to help him along. “I’ve decided to follow your example and choose my own fate.”

“My dear Miss Conway,” he answered with a wry shake of his head. “In my experience, it is fate who has done all the choosing.”

“Oh, no,” she disagreed. “I dislike this idea of an unseen hand as the force that is moving us through this world. It is nothing more than fate that you excelled at your career?”

He pulled a thoughtful face, his mouth turning down at the corners. “I suppose I chose to apply myself and excel, but as I was twelve at the time my career was chosen for me, I cannot claim any agency in the act. My miserly Scots father chose for us all, my brothers and I—put us into His Majesty’s service when we were but lads, probably so he wouldn’t have to spend any money to feed us himself. He chose the Royal Navy for me, the Royal Marines for my younger brother, and His Majesty’s Army for the eldest, the best of us, who ought to have been spared from service, but was not. Duncan had the great misfortune to fall at Castlebar, thus making me the heir. If that isn’t fate, I don’t know what is.”

Was this the source of his cynicism, this anger at the choices that had been thrust upon him? How sad. “I am very sorry for your loss.”

“As am I. But as my family’s parting gift to me was a bankrupt earldom, I hope you will forgive me my lack of enthusiasm for the title.”

“I do,” she said simply. “And even if you needs must return to the navy, I hope it gives you a great deal of satisfaction to know your own merit the way you do.”

He was still for a long moment before his discomfort reasserted itself. “Forgive me. I did not mean to boast.”

“You did not,” she answered truthfully. “Your merit is a matter of common knowledge, known to anyone who reads the naval dispatches in the newspapers.”

“You read the newspapers, do you?” His tone returned to teasing. “I would never have guessed Miss Conway was a secret Bluestocking.”

She was no intellect, but she found she liked his image of her. “I like to be well-informed about the events of the day.” Such knowledge had mattered a great deal more when her father had been Lord Advocate. Now she simply read to please herself. “And I am in the fortunate position of having no one to forbid me.”

“Were you once forbidden?” He looked at her rather more intently than he had before.

Flora wasn’t sure of his purpose. “Not exactly. But censured, certainly.”

“And you read anyway,” he answered for himself, as a smile spread slowly across his lips like warm marmalade across a buttered bun. “What else do you do that’s forbidden, Miss Conway?”

Something within—her restlessness and dissatisfaction at the choices that were available to her, combined with the curious effect of that improbably mischievous smile—set the skin of her palms to tingling.

“I talk to impecunious men,” she answered with an arch smile. “For no other purpose than to enjoy myself immensely.”

“Is this your sin of the future, Miss Conway? Amusing yourself with me because you’ve been forbidden to?”

She had never thought of herself as a defiant type, but perhaps she had been too compliant in her efforts to mitigate her sister’s very reasonable defiance. “I am trying to amuse you, Captain,” she answered honestly. “Because of all the things I cannot choose, I can choose this.”

Balfour stood very still, looking out at the assembly with that cynical detachment. As if he were thinking of anything other than her.

But she was wrong.

Because he finally turned to her and said, “Then, my dear Miss Conway, I feel compelled to say, that if I were able to choose, I should only ever choose you.”