Chapter Ten

At the Southam assembly—the Earl and Countess of Southam were their hosts—Catherine began to recognize the many people she had seen at previous balls and yet hadn't met, and the many men she hadn't yet danced with and might never. Perhaps all of these people never, never tired of each other's company. She certainly would love an opportunity to discover why, if that was so.

Instead, her social circle remained stubbornly unexpanded. She stood again with Lucy, Miss Bernadette Seaver, and Mr. Hargrove while Lady Wisterberg gambled a few rooms away. She hoped the dowager was at least winning, because someone ought to be.

Tonight Miss Seaver wore a dress of lilac satin, trimmed at the bodice with little satin roses. It was so pretty Catherine's heart ached.

"Oh my goodness. You look like the personification of spring," Catherine told her. "That color is so beautiful."

Mr. Hargrove, flatteringly and unfortunately, seemed enchanted by this assessment. He beamed at her. "The personification of spring! How magnificently put. Why, she does, indeed. You do have an interesting way of seeing, Miss Keating."

She smiled at him carefully, given that the other two young women were watching her like hawks, their expressions tense.

"Thank you. That is very kind of you to say, Miss Keating," Miss Seaver replied. "Are you saving your nice dress for the Shillingford ball? I mean your nicest dress?"

Catherine stared at her for a full two seconds. For heaven's sake.

"I do plan to wear a nice dress to the Shillingford ball," she decided to say, with great, great patience.

Apparently the Shillingford ball was the event of the season.

It seemed improbable that she'd even be included on such a personage's invitation list, too, but, as Lady Wisterberg had said, complacently and intriguingly, Even Earls and Countesses have need of fresh blood, dear, and I know a lot about everybody. They were happy to include you and Lucy.

"Oh! I've something exciting to tell you, by the way, Miss Keating." Miss Seaver's eyes were alight with news. "That is, I hope you find it exciting. I wasn't certain whether I should say anything. But I heard from a friend... who heard from a friend... who heard from another friend... that Lord Vaughn said he would like to be introduced to you. Do you know who he is?"

Catherine's heart gave a little skip. My goodness, if this was true, her season was about to go off like a roman candle.

Because Lucy had indeed pointed Lord Vaughn out to her. He was remarkably handsome and artfully groomed. And while he seemed pleased with himself—he had every reason to be, she supposed, given that he was the heir to an earl, and given the face that looked back at him from the mirror—his general air did not seem to be too cool or haughty. One never knew, of course.

"Well," she managed to say casually. "How very gracious of him to say so."

"Do you recall what he said, precisely?" Lucy was eager to help, both for Catherine's sake, and likely for her own. Certainly the attentions of an earl-to-be would trump Mr. Hargrove's any day.

"I was told that he inquired about the ‘pretty blue-eyed girl in green,'" Miss Seaver said. "And"—she lowered her voice and scrunched her nose sympathetically—"you are the only one in green tonight. So I drew my conclusions. But I loved that shade, too!" she hurried to reassure her. "In 1817."

Catherine almost sighed. That was three years ago. Her dress was only two years old.

She could not imagine wanting to see Miss Seaver ball after ball after ball. Why was Lucy friends with this person?

"Well, I thought it might be my only hope for being noticed in such a crowd of lovely girls," Catherine finally said somberly. And wholly ironically. "I'm glad to see my strategy worked."

Miss Seaver looked uncertain.

Lucy cast her a wry look.

"But..." Miss Seaver continued, "I told my friend to tell him that I didn't know where your chaperone might be." She delivered this with wide-eyed innocence and gave a little shrug.

Catherine's heart sank. "But... Lady Wisterberg is in the game room. And I thought..."

She was going to say, "I thought everyone knew that, and you certainly did, too," but it might have embarrassed Lucy.

"As it so happens, he sought me out for clarification, and I'm going to be dancing the waltz with Lord Vaughn tonight." This was Miss Seaver's coup de grace. "I shall say kind things about you to him during it," she magnanimously lied to Catherine.

Catherine and Lucy stared at Miss Seaver, a bit awestruck.

If this was a chess game, they'd been roundly outplayed. Because now Mr. Hargrove looked a trifle jealous at the notion of Miss Seaver dancing with the young heir, and Lucy looked anxious about the fact that Mr. Hargrove was jealous, and Miss Seaver had snatched the attention of an heir from Catherine.

She recalled what Lord Kirke had said, about putting his enemy or rival Farquar on the back foot, which was where he'd wanted him. And this was what Miss Seaver was attempting to do: put Lucy and Catherine on the back foot.

On the one hand it was intriguing; on the other it was dispiriting. Catherine didn't think there was a chance in the world she could negotiate an entire season this way. Sincerity was her native language. She'd learned when she was much younger that lies were a drag on the spirit. She could just about trace this lesson to the day she'd sneaked a jar of jam from the kitchen, eaten nearly all of it, lied about it, lay upstairs with a stomachache—and then was compelled to eat dinner. She'd been casting her accounts for days.

She'd likely make a terrible politician, should the day come when women not only voted, but were elected.

Miss Seaver wouldn't dare say the things she was saying if he were standing here with them, she thought. He was somebody.

She was nobody.

She suddenly felt profoundly like a bumpkin in her two-year-old green dress. No, worse: as exposed as if she were naked. Before she could brace herself against it with anything like reason, desolation whistled through her and took her breath away.

What delusion had made her believe she'd been in any way prepared for London? She stood in the ballroom now, motionless, airless, and wondered if she knew herself at all.

No matter what, she was still without a partner for the next few dances.

And while Mr. Hargrove, Miss Seaver, and Lucy went off to dance their quadrille, she went in search of a comforting place to wait.

"Come, Kirke. Help me sell some newspapers." Thomas Barnes, editor of TheTimes exhaled his cheroot smoke, which joined the cloud wreathing the men in the Earl of Southam's library. "Go out there in the Commons and bang on about something patriotic to get English hearts pumping. You know—‘The intoxication of victory! What man is free and et cetera!' You know, that thing you do."

Barnes actually did a creditable Welsh accent. Kirke was darkly amused.

The editor shook his head admiringly, wistfully, and added, "Now that was some speech."

But there was a hint of warning in it. A suggestion that everyone was prepared to be indulgent of Kirke the politician, with his quirks and secret scandals and penchant for pushing everyone toward change, as long as he continued to perform in ways that benefited and entertained them.

"I must thank you for the suggestion, Barnes," he said evenly. "As it never would have occurred to me, otherwise."

Barnes, not without a sense of humor, hiked a brow and the corner of his mouth.

But Dominic could feel his inner barometer rising.

Across from Kirke, the odious Bertram Rowley—why was he invited?—was smirking.

"I'm looking forward to our contest next year, Kirke." Rowley's speaking voice called to mind a goat awakening from a rough night of debauchery.

Kirke smiled and tipped his head to study Rowley quizzically.

"‘Contest,'" he repeated affectionately. As though Rowley had said something adorable.

Around him, despite themselves, most of the men hid smiles.

Rowley's face went stony.

Kirke, however, had not been handily elected over and over by assuming getting elected would be effortless. He personally thought there would be a contest. As much as he loved a good fight, it was very witty of fate to decide to throw this new fight onto the tangled heap that was his current life.

A few moments later, under cover of smoke and laughter, he slipped out of the library and headed back down the stairs. He threaded past the dancers on the floor, his eyes running swiftly across them, before veering to casually peer into the game room. When he saw Lady Wisterberg, a white plume like a planted flag on top of her head, deep in play, his heart gave a single hard, odd bump.

He made at once for the stairs. This time he turned left, the opposite direction from the library, and made his way down a softly carpeted hall. From experience, he knew he would find an alcove.

He found her sitting alone on a bench next to an urn from which a froth of ferns and flowers spilled. She was somewhat camouflaged in a pale green dress.

Even he knew this wasn't this year's color.

He froze as two epiphanies struck:

He hadn't been so much seeking solitude just now as he'd been specifically seeking her.

After his little encounter with Barnes and Rowley, he'd wanted to see that light in her face the way he might want a breath of clean air.

He froze. She hadn't yet noticed him; it wasn't too late to turn around.

Suddenly she tipped her face into her palms.

It was so clearly a moment of private despair. It sliced right through him.

"Keating." The word was out of his mouth before he knew he could stop it. He said it almost urgently, as if he were warning her to step out of the path of a rushing carriage.

Her head shot up in surprise.

And her face brightened immediately when she saw him and that was better.

His heart was beating strangely quickly, as if some accident had been averted.

She slowly rose to her feet. They regarded each other for a tick or two of silence.

He wondered what she'd read in his face. He took pains to adopt a neutral expression.

She said cautiously, "Lord Kirke, I feel as though I'm forever intruding on your quiet places. You seem to know where they are in every town house."

It was almost another way of saying: "You seem to know where I am in every town house."

"I've had years of experience at the same parties. And I haven't a monopoly on quiet places. You are welcome to any and all of them. Do you feel unwell? Shall I go and fetch your chaperone?"

Every muscle in his body had tensed in preparation to act.

"Why would you... oh, you saw... Oh." She was flustered now. "No, thank you. You are too kind. I was just... resting my face for a moment."

"I see," he said both gently and dryly. "All that holding it up gets tiring after a time, I suppose."

Her mouth quirked at the corner. She turned away from him slightly, as if to hide her expression.

A wordless few moments passed during which he felt irrationally helpless because he couldn't fix whatever was wrong for her.

"Truthfully... I was just beginning to wonder whether I ought to go home." She gave a little laugh, to attempt to make her words sound wry. But they weren't.

"Back to The Grand Palace on the Thames?"

But he understood what she meant. He'd only said it because he knew, suddenly, with absolute conviction, that he didn't want her to leave.

"Back to my home in Northumberland. It's beginning to seem as though my London season is a farce. If it was a horse, it would have been shot for lameness before now." She gave a short, ironic laugh. "I would love to come to know the city, and I do not usually give up easily, but I am beginning to believe I might not be cut out for the place. I'm wondering if it's worth it, after all."

He remembered his prediction to himself days ago: she wouldn't last the month in London.

Two impulses warred in him: to encourage her to go home, before London could take that light out of her face forever. It seemed to him that one never stopped needing to conquer London, freshly, again and again. At least this was true of the circles of London in which he was obliged to move. Perhaps it was why he felt so at home here—fighting was what he was born to do. She should go home, to the green fields and the kinder people. And away from people like him.

"Perhaps if you return next year?" he suggested carefully.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to afford it," she said frankly. "I'm twenty-two now. Not precisely on the shelf, of course. But there isn't enough money for another season. My father has a habit of accepting things like piglets instead of money for payment, and we are not wealthy. Mind you, we like piglets, and don't lack for anything we want." She looked up at him earnestly, assuring him of this. "But he would like to see me safely settled soon because... he's... well, it's his heart."

"His heart?"

"It isn't... it isn't what it used to be."

His heart isn't what it used to be.That rather described his own, too.

"His heart is... failing?" he guessed.

"He thinks so. He grows tired climbing the stairs, and he cannot travel to see patients the way he once could... well, he believes it might not be long for him now."

And it immediately put into context what she'd said last night in the sitting room. She'd already lost her mother. She hadn't any siblings. How the thought of losing him, too, must frighten her.

Kirke's chest tightened. He'd heard the warmth in her voice when she talked about her father.

"I see. I'm terribly sorry to hear it."

She searched his face. She could hear how sincerely he meant it and he saw that she was grateful for that. Her expression eased.

She nodded. But she didn't reply for some time, and he honored her with silence.

"But that's simply life, isn't it?" she said finally. "One can hardly predict it. None of us are exempt from its... caprices. I have been luckier than many, I know. I try to make the best of the moments I have. I'm not certain I'm making the best of the moments here in London," she added dryly.

She didn't think life owed her a thing. And this, he realized suddenly, was why it was so peaceful and easy to be in her presence. Loss and experience seemed to have taught her acceptance and given her depth and strength and rare maturity.

She didn't have to say: "And when my father dies, I'll be alone." But that was absolutely implicit.

It was immediately clear that this London season for her could mean the difference between a future of security and joy and ease, or a future of genteel poverty and loneliness.

He knew firsthand that life could cut you off at the knees, and you could still go on. That the human spirit could be almost stupidly, defiantly resilient and indestructible. It built up fortifications and strange adaptations to do it, granted. But the realities he'd witnessed had not made an optimist of him. Women had far fewer choices than men.

He ought to drag Lady Wisterberg away from the gaming table by her nape and get her to do her job. He could think of no way to directly approach her about Keating that wouldn't be construed as insulting or wildly inappropriate.

"Was it... are you worrying about your father at the moment? Or did something particularly daunting happen this evening to have you contemplating the sacrifice of Helga's magnificent scones at The Grand Palace on the Thames?"

"Oh, I am always a little worried about him. But our housekeeper is there with him and I know she'll take good care of him, and he insisted I go to London. To be honest, I wanted to go." She paused. "But something did happen tonight."

She looked at him uncertainly.

"Would you like to tell me?" he asked gently.

"Just a moment ago, I learned that Lord Vaughn was interested in an introduction to me. Do you know him?"

He went still. Lord St. John Vaughn was the young, very handsome, very wealthy heir to the Earl of Vaughn.

And just like that, before he could hurl his considerable powers of reason in front of it in defense, the most shocking, black jealousy came at him like boiling oil dumped from a turret.

He went airless. His thoughts snarled as though a grenade had been hurled right smack in the middle of them. He could not get out a word.

What. The bloody. Hell.

He was stunned. It was an absolutely primal reflex. He hadn't known he was capable of that sort of jealousy.

He breathed through it as he would through any new shock.

And the young heir was just about the best match he could imagine for Keating.

"Lord Vaughn is interested in meeting you?" He managed to sound neutrally interested.

"I was told that he inquired about the ‘pretty blue-eyed girl in green.'" She cast a glance up at him, just a flicker of flirtation in it. "He told this as such to a friend of a friend of a friend of Miss Seaver, who told him she didn't know where my chaperone was. And... I know that she did know."

"Is Miss Seaver an eligible young lady this season, by any chance? Is she the one who also, er, carries a torch for Mr. Hargrove?" No one was more mordantly amused than he was that he knew these minutiae about the ton.

"She is." She paused. "Do you suppose it was a crocodile maneuver?"

She sounded so hopeful that it wasn't.

"I'm afraid so, Keating."

An inspiration was forming. Every now and then a bold and unexpected move in a chess game could throw off an opponent and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. He reasoned that her season could hardly be going much worse. Without a decent chaperone to facilitate things, it wasn't likely to get any better. She deserved better.

But he could not sort his strategic motives from the unwise ones. They resisted parsing, and this was because the battle now was between his common sense and his senses. He was unaccustomed to searching his mind and confronting a sort of mocking wall behind which all the answers lay.

There was almost nothing he hated more than feeling like a fool. But his need to ascertain a particular something was running roughshod over his acquired wisdom and ironclad cynicism.

He felt as though he ought to be certain of his reasons before he opened his mouth and said the words, for her sake and for his own.

So he didn't say them yet. He would give himself until the moment the music began. And then decide.

"Are you acquainted with Lord Vaughn?" she asked.

"Yes. Lord Vaughn," he began carefully, evenly, as if the terrain was volatile, liable to shoot hot geysers at him if he put a foot wrong, "has very good manners. Respects his elders. He's uncontroversial, possesses the normal amount and type of vices, all within reason. He seems a decent, intelligent young man, if not particularly driven. His father is an earl, a good sort, and I don't say that lightly about anyone. You could do much, much worse than Lord Vaughn. I should say he's nearly perfect. And he clearly is a man of discernment, if he sought an introduction to you."

She regarded him somberly, fixedly, at him and a rosy flush moved into her cheeks.

How odd it was that his breath should go peculiarly short every time his eyes collided with hers.

"I've seen him. He's very handsome," she said offhandedly.

She was studying his face like a map.

"Yes," Lord Kirke agreed, darkly amused. "When you meet him, you should tell him that, in case it hasn't occurred to him."

She smiled.

He could not quite force his mouth to commit to a smile.

"He ought to be easy to fall in love with," he added, casually. "If indeed that's the sort of thing you want to do. I expect stranger things have happened in a ballroom during the season."

She stared at him. Catherine was fascinated by how the introduction of Lord Vaughn's name had changed the conversational weather. She wasn't entirely certain why, given that Lord Kirke had given the man his approval, something he no doubt never gave lightly.

One, however, would be forgiven for thinking the opposite was true, based on how rigid his posture had suddenly gone.

She was afraid, suddenly, of what this could possibly mean. Or was she actually excited? The two emotions braided, and momentarily she was breathless at the implications.

"Have you ever before been in love?" she asked him.

"Yes."

The word came down with the deadly swiftness of a guillotine and it was edged all around in ice and razors and "keep away" signs. She was as jarred as if she'd walked into an actual wall. She nearly took a step back, but she was made of sterner stuff than that.

She was reminded swiftly and simultaneously of two things. He could be a rather scary man. Not a man to cross. At all times, including now, he was likely simply indulging her and that could end.

He was also not the sort of man likely to indulge anyone lightly, without a reason. And he'd been indulging her for some time.

These two things seemed somewhat contradictory.

She didn't know what she'd been expecting, or how on earth she'd gotten bold enough to ask the question yet she didn't think she was sorry. But it was just as much of a window into him as that soft vanishing warmth she'd seen during their little chat on the verandah.

That answer meant he was protecting someone. Was it himself?

Was he in love with someone now?

Her heart contracted oddly at the notion, as if curling in on itself in defense against that thought.

She remembered the word "by-blow" the man had lobbed at him the other night. Such a vicious term for a child who had not asked to come into this world.

Was it true? Did he have a child?

Her cheeks went abruptly hot, as they generally did around him. And yet she had the oddest impulse to touch his arm. By way of comfort or apology, she wasn't certain.

By way of saying: "Don't leave me just yet."

All she knew was she felt frantic when his eyes went remote, as if he was retreating from her.

But he had just drawn a line. And somehow nothing had ever seemed more seductive than crossing it.

And suddenly the music for the waltz drifted up to them.

"Keating." He seemed to be considering what to say next. "I should be honored if you would dance with me."

The breath left her.

She stared at him, stunned.

His expression revealed nothing but calm expectation of an answer.

"But... you don't dance. Everyone knows you don't dance."

Everyone.Listen to her sounding as though she were actually a part of the ton.

He raised his eyebrows at the "everyone." "I dance well enough. I seldom dance. There is a difference."

She studied him a moment longer, then her eyes flared. "Oh God. Don't do it because you pity me!" she breathed.

"Keating," he said so gruffly she blinked. "Do you really think I would stoop to anything so frivolous as pity? It's a strategy. A favor to a friend. Your season could hardly be going worse. This might be an opportunity to make it better. I feel it only fair to warn you, before you answer yea or nay, that it will have consequences. There is no chance at all that it will go unremarked. You will be noticed. This might be all to the good. It could be the opposite. It could be some piquant blend of the two."

"Surely you're not so scanda—"

"I never lie," he said patiently.

It also sounded very much like a warning.

No matter how intently she examined his face, he gave nothing away. And this was because he was hiding something, this much she was certain. It maddened her, this ability to disguise his thoughts.

Perhaps the fact that he wanted to dance with her as much as she wanted to dance with him. But why?

At the thought, her heart began to slam so hard she could hear it ringing in her ears.

"Thank you," she said gently. "I would be honored to dance with you."