Every Lady Curtsied as the Duke Entered — But He Walked Straight to the Woman Reading Alone by the Window, Unaware She Was About to Become the Only Choice That Truly Mattered

PART 4

Across the gallery, in the golden blaze beneath the great chandelier, the beauties of three counties stood abandoned in their finery, watching the most eligible man in England lean toward the shadows of a window and laugh at something the shawl-minder had said.

And in the doorway, the last to enter and the first to understand exactly what she was seeing, a woman in violet silk went very still and began quietly to calculate.

The Duke did not notice her. He had, for the moment, forgotten there was a room at all.

The woman in violet silk was named Lady Serena Voss, and she was the Duke’s cousin by marriage — the nearest thing to a female relation in his household since his mother’s death. She had spent three years arranging his dinners and his guest lists, quietly steering the daughters of her own choosing into his path, and she had built no small measure of her consequence in the county on being known as the woman who stood nearest the Duke of Gaspre. Kitpatrick knew her step before he saw her. She had a way of arriving at a person as though she were doing them a great and gracious favor, and she arrived at the window embrasure now with her painted smile fixed and her eyes very cold indeed.

“Kitpatrick,” she said warmly enough that a stranger might have missed the edge beneath it. “You have hidden yourself away in the darkest corner of the house. Lady Weathersby is quite in despair. She has assembled half the county for your pleasure, and you have gone to ground like a fox.”

Her gaze slid to Orwenna and performed a swift, contemptuous inventory — the mended sleeve, the yellowed pearls, the book — and dismissed it.

“I see you have found someone to keep the seat warm, my dear. I am sure your mistress or your aunt or whoever brought you is looking for you. Run along. The Duke has a great many people to greet who have waited a very long time.”

The Duke felt the old thing rise in him — the thing that had frozen better rooms than this one. But before he could speak, Orwenna answered. She did it without heat and without hurry, and it was far more devastating for that.

“I am sure they are looking for me,” she said mildly, “as the shawls will not carry themselves. But I was not aware, Lady Voss, that the seating in Lady Weathersby’s own house was yours to arrange. If it is, you have done it very ill. You have put all the finest people at the fire, where they are too warm to be clever, and left the only interesting chair by the window.”

She looked up unhurried and met the older woman’s stare. “The Duke came and sat in it. I did not summon him. I should not know how.”

There was a silence. Kitpatrick watched his cousin’s smile stretch thin over her teeth.

“You are pert,” said Lady Voss softly.

“I am accurate,” said Orwenna. “People often confuse the two when the accuracy is inconvenient.”

She opened her book again, quite calmly, and found her place as though the conversation had reached its natural and unremarkable end.

Kitpatrick rose. He did it slowly, and he did it in such a way that Lady Voss — who had been leaning over the seated girl — was obliged to step back and look up at him. He let her feel the full weight of his height and his displeasure before he spoke.

“Serena,” he said. “You will give Miss Kyniston your arm to supper. You will present her to Lady Weathersby as my particular acquaintance. And you will do it graciously — because I have asked it. Or you will do none of those things, and you will explain to me privately later why the woman I chose to sit beside was spoken to in my hearing as though she were a servant to be sent away.”

He smiled, and it was not a warm smile. “I leave the choice entirely to you. I find I am interested in what you will do with it.”

He had that gift. It was half the secret of his power. He never raised his voice. He merely arranged a situation so that a person’s own vanity did the work of trapping them. He watched now as the calculation moved behind his cousin’s lovely, furious eyes — the weighing of humiliation against danger.

She was clever. She chose retreat and dressed it as clever people do in graciousness.

“But of course,” she said, and the smile became a marvel of warmth. “How stupid of me. Miss Kyniston, was it? Do forgive an old woman’s confusion. The candlelight plays such tricks. You must let me present you properly.”

She extended her arm. Her eyes above the smile promised a reckoning.

Orwenna looked at the arm, then at the Duke. Something flickered across her plain face that he could not quite read — amusement, perhaps, or the wariness of a creature that has been offered food by a hand that usually strikes. But she closed her book, keeping her place again with that single finger, and rose. She was taller than he had expected. She laid her fingers on Lady Voss’s silk sleeve with the composure of a duchess accepting her due.

“You are very kind,” she said, in a tone that made perfectly clear she believed nothing of the sort — and allowed herself to be led away into the light.